Category: Business Process Management

In our new eBook, “Streamlining Legal Service Requests” we explore the problems and headaches associated with processing legal service requests (LSR), the importance of allowing the legal department to focus on “real” legal work, and strategies to not only fix the problem but to supercharge your LSR process.

Today’s legal departments are oftentimes inundated, and sometimes overwhelmed, with the myriad of issues that crop up daily. Legal service requests should be relatively simple affairs to handle, but in reality they are a frequent and major contributor to a legal department’s organizational chaos. Business partner requests for legal services are often tossed into the legal department sporadically by email, text or informal conversations from various departments.

With no standard legal service intake process, tracking and assigning these requests is nearly impossible. To complicate matters, business partners typically do not include all the resources or documents in the initial request. Often, an email or phone conversation must ensue to obtain the relevant materials before the “actual” legal work can even begin.

Fortunately, there is one solution that can relieve a large portion of this angst. By implementing an intelligent, self-service portal to initiate legal service requests, the first phase of the battle is already won. The company will also be able to leverage their new system, since information can be shared across departments and systems. Fewer staff members will need to spend time entering data for the same client and matter, which saves money. All of this will allow the legal department to spend more time focusing on the needs of business consumers – not following up on paperwork and other purely administrative and time-consuming tasks. Optimizing the LSR process is crucial to the legal department’s success and to the organization’s bottom line.

Legal departments are often understaffed and have limited resources and legal service requests simply add more to their already stressful workload. But there is another problem that can be easily overlooked, unless you are the one needing legal assistance. The scenario often plays out like this: a business consumer of legal services needs assistance, but doesn’t know where in the organization to go, or the best way to initiate the request. This is where problems begin for the legal department.

As mentioned previously, requests for legal services are sometimes thrown at the legal department as a hodgepodge of emails, texts, phone calls, and informal conversations. Trying to sort through such an assortment of “requests” would prove daunting under any circumstance. And all of this before the “real” legal work even begins.

Another factor that may be troublesome is simply forming a good, old-fashioned relationship between the business consumer and the legal service provider. For legal assistance matters, the intake process is where the relationship often begins.

Recent legal market trends can be highly revealing not only for what’s happening now, but also as extraordinary indicators for future developments as well. We’ve discussed the serious problem of corporate legal departments getting bogged down in routine administrative tasks, with LSRs placing high on the list of troublesome processes. If organizations are not driving and implementing positive changes to eliminate such problems, the problems won’t go away.

It’s crucial that the legal department be allowed to focus more on the real legal work, without sinking deeper into the administrative quagmire. In most cases, a well-chosen and effective technology solution is the best answer. But driving and implementing change is another key element in the solution. Keeping up to date with the latest technology is always good, but to implement technology changes requires buy-in from leadership and IT, as well as an unwavering commitment to see the project through.

According to Blickstein Group’s 9^th Annual Law Department Operations Survey, we discover some enlightening statistics. 81% of respondents agree that corporate law departments will be the primary driver of innovation and change in the legal sector. This is an encouraging number.

But when we drill a bit deeper into the survey, we learn that the top challenge facing law department functions is driving/implementing change. Taking a close second place is “identifying opportunities for business improvement and cost savings.”

When asked, “Do you have a plan to develop a legal department technology strategy or three-year road map which addresses how you integrate, evolve and replace your systems to support the legal department’s processes and needs?” only 18% of respondents answered “yes.”

In light of these facts, a compelling question arises:

If corporate law departments are expected to be the primary shakers and movers of innovation, shouldn’t they be equipped with the proper technology to do so?

Onit’s Legal Service Request solution simplifies this intake process and provides a simple portal that allows business partners to interact and engage with the legal department. In doing so, the legal department obtains a more holistic view of the legal portfolio and the ability to better serve their clients. The legal department also gets a comprehensive view of all legal service requests and can report on request types (i.e. by department, region, phase, due date, etc.)

Client requests can be directed to the appropriate legal practitioner, even if the requester is not aware of the most appropriate recipient of the request. Clients can also self-serve to keep track of status and resolution of legal service requests. In fact, the requestor of legal services gets an automated email that allows them to track the status of their request directly from the email. The built-in feature to generate automated notifications exemplifies the very best in legal process solutions.

The chaotic world of emails, phone calls, and informal conversations to initiate legal service request is now gone and business process automation has ushered in a new era of cutting-edge customer service and efficiency. It’s worth reiterating that optimizing the LSR process is crucial to the legal department’s success and to the organization’s bottom line.

For organizations that already have other automated processes, that’s a good head start. Now it’s just a matter of implementing an effective LSR solution to complement their existing automated business process arsenal. For companies new to business process automation, a LSR platform is an excellent first choice since legal service requests are literally the “front line” where most legal matters begin.

Download this new eBook to learn how a premier, user friendly legal service request solution can streamline and optimize this process in your department.

Our new eBook offers the following insights:

• The problem of using outdated or inappropriate legal service request processing tools
• Current market trends concerning legal service requests
• Best practices of managing legal service requests
• A logical and powerful solution that can be quickly deployed

It’s time to let the legal department do what it does best – the “real” work of handling legal matters. And they can’t do this if they’re spending endless hours on day-to-day tasks that could be handled in seconds via an intelligent, self-service portal for legal service requests.

Imagine working in the legal department trying to keep up with the flood of “real” legal work. On top of that, you have legal service requests coming at you in no real organized fashion. They could be in the form of an obscure, confusing email, a phone call, an informal conversation in the break room, or an abrupt text message. In any case, you’ll likely have to follow up with these requestors just to get all the preliminary required information. And that’s just to get started. It’s frightening to think just how much time you’ve spent on this purely administrative drill, all the while taking your time from real legal work (which, of course, you’ll need to catch up on later).

Onit’s Legal Service Request (LSR) solution provides a legal department with an intelligent and user-friendly method for engaging with business partners. Oftentimes, business consumers of legal services don’t know where to go in the organization to obtain the assistance they need. By providing the business with an intelligent, self-service portal to initiate a request for the legal department, legal can reach more of the organization’s needs and provide better legal service to the business.

Client requests can be directed to the appropriate legal practitioner, even if the requester is not aware of the most appropriate recipient of the request. Clients can also self-serve to keep track of status and resolution of legal service requests. In fact, the requestor of legal services gets an automated email that allows them to track the status of their request directly from the email. The built-in feature to generate automated notifications exemplifies the very best in legal process solutions.

The chaotic world of confusing emails, garbled phone calls, and informal conversations to initiate LSRs is now gone and business process automation has ushered in a new era of cutting-edge customer service and efficiency. It’s worth reiterating that optimizing the LSR process is crucial to the legal department’s success and to the organization’s bottom line.

For organizations that already have other automated processes, that’s a good head start. Now it’s just a matter of implementing an effective LSR solution to complement their existing automated business process arsenal. For companies new to business process automation, a LSR platform is an excellent first choice since legal service requests are literally the “front line” where most legal matters begin.

Download this new eBook to learn how a premier, user friendly legal service request solution can streamline and optimize this process in your department.

Our new eBook offers the following insights:

• The problem of using outdated or inappropriate legal service request processing tools
• Current market trends concerning legal service requests
• Best practices of managing legal service requests
• A logical and powerful solution that can be quickly deployed
• A company’s success story using Onit’s intuitive, agile and user friendly solution

It’s time to let the legal department do what it does best – the “real” work of handling legal matters. And they can’t do this if they’re spending endless hours on day-to-day tasks that could be handled in seconds via an intelligent, self-service portal for LSRs. In our new eBook, “Streamlining Legal Service Requests” we explore the problems and headaches associated with processing legal service requests, the importance of allowing the legal department to focus on “real” legal work, and strategies to not only fix the problem but to supercharge your LSR process.

In the 2014 Ethicon legal hold case, the court awarded monetary sanctions against the defendant, as they had failed to implement a comprehensive and timely litigation hold notice. The court concluded that defendant’s failure to properly preserve data after it should have reasonably anticipated litigation was negligent, but there was no evidence that the defendant acted willfully or intentionally to delete evidence. Instead, the court found that the system used by Ethicon to implement litigation holds was “riddled with holes.” Part of the problem occurred when an employee left the company and a technician in the IT department unknowingly deleted or repurposed the hard drives.

A key point here is that even though a company issues a legal hold in a timely manner, other things can go drastically haywire if something is missed along the way. For example, if the issued hold was not broad enough in scope, some employees failed to comply with the order, or the company’s legal hold system was simply “broken,” severe court sanctions may result.

Some of the lessons learned from this case:

• Litigation holds should be specific to the case at issue, but also broad enough in scope to preserve potentially relevant information
• Companies must take all necessary steps to adequately implement any litigation hold in place and ensure compliance in a timely manner
• Companies must institute policies and procedures for lifting the hold when the company no longer has a duty to preserve evidence
• A robust legal hold system must be in place so the company is prepared for the threat of legal holds

In our new white paper, “Is it Worth the Risk? How to Implement a World Class Defensible Legal Hold Process” we discuss the significance of legal holds in today’s corporate environment, why you need gold-standard legal hold automation software and the strategies to fuel your company’s path toward a robust legal hold process.

Download this new white paper to discover how a cutting edge legal hold platform allows team members to gain real-time access to the status of collection requests, know when actions were issued, which tasks are in progress and which legal actions require immediate attention.

Our new white paper offers the following insights:

• Why you need a world class legal hold process
• A little history of recent landmark legal hold cases and why they should concern you
• Current best practices of legal holds
• Essential features to know before shopping for legal hold software
• The problems associated with using antiquated or inappropriate legal hold tools

A powerful legal hold solution offers a quick and highly cost-effective way to supercharge your automated business processes, as well as your bottom line. Reduce the ever-present risk of costly court cases. The stakes are high, and the time to act is now.