Category: Business Process Management

Current Legal News for Corporate Counsel (February 2022 Edition)

Posted on February 1, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Once more, we offer current legal news for corporate legal departments. This month’s edition includes a chipmunk lawyer, what the global legal market has in common with Apple, rethinking the title “in-house counsel,” associate pay raises and how better contract management can increase revenue.

1. The Global Legal Market On Track to Join the Trillionaire’s Club

Is the value of the global legal market joining the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet? These companies have famously broken the billion-dollar mark, cresting into the trillions in market value. A new report places the current global legal market at almost $900 billion and predicts a 4.4% compound annual growth rate through 2028 – meaning it will hit more than a trillion dollars by that time. Artificial Lawyer looks into why legal is snowballing and what it can mean for legal technology.

Source: Artificial Lawyer

2. Introducing the Chipmunk Lawyer

First, we got the lawyer cat, when an attorney had an incredibly adorable (and hard to remove) furry filter during a virtual hearing. We now have another video conferencing mishap in current legal news. This time, a faulty microphone converted a lawyer’s voice into a frequency and speed that Alvin, Simon and Theodore would appreciate. Fortunately, Judge Roy Ferguson – who also presided during the lawyer cat case – quickly identified the glitch and helped fix it.

Source: Above The Law

3. Is It Time to Ditch the Term “In-House Counsel”?

What are you called if you are an attorney working in a corporate legal department? Some may jump to “in-house counsel.” It’s long been an industry term. But corporate counsel may want to reset it. A CLO sparks a spirited debate about the title on LinkedIn. Spoiler alert: He isn’t a fan. Others in the same profession jumped into the conversation, talking about its pros and cons and offering alternative titles like “house counsel,” “internal counsel” and “crisis and strategy counsel.”

Source: Corporate Counsel

4. More Associate Pay Hikes for Law Firms, According to Current Legal News Outlets

International law firm Milbank announced an increase of up to $20,000 in pay for associates, creating a new salary range of $215,000 to $385,000. Many other firms, including Baker McKenzie, DLA Piper and Goodwin are following suit, according to the ABA Journal (who also relied on Above The Law, Law.com and Reuters). This follows a similar pattern from last year as law firms focus on staying competitive and retaining top talent. Corporate legal departments may feel conflicted about the raise since higher salaries can contribute to higher law firm bills. This blog post has a few pointers for those looking for tips to contain legal spend.

Source: ABA Journal

5. How Improved Contract Management Increases Revenue 9%

Improving how your company manages the lifecycle of contracts can bring impressive bottom-line benefits. The World Commerce & Contracting organization estimates that enhanced contract development and management can increase profitability to the tune of 9% of a company’s annual revenue. Here’s how technology like AI and automation replaces manual processes to create stronger contract management.

Source: Onit

We hope you enjoyed this digest of current legal news for corporate counsel. If you’re interested in learning more about how corporate legal departments use technologies like enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, AI and more, schedule an Onit demo today or email [email protected].

The Latest in Corporate Counsel and Legal Technology News (January 2022 Edition)

Posted on January 20, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Legal Management

Welcome to the January digest of leading legal technology news and resources for in-house counsel and legal operations professionals. In this edition, you’ll read about the issues shaping legal and legal technology as we enter the new year, including an expected increase in legal disputes, the legal technology that’s helping GCs succeed and the possibility that the elusive sabbatical may come to the in-house world.

1. Almost a Third of Global Companies Expect Disputes To Increase In 2022, Study Finds

According to a recent report from global law firm Baker McKenzie, almost one-third of the world’s companies expect to see an increase in disputes in 2022. Not surprisingly, issues related to COVID-19 and cybersecurity – two of the most significant challenges in the past year – are expected to be the biggest threats. Specifically, 57% of respondents said cybersecurity disputes were most concerning for their companies, while 48% saw the pandemic as creating the greatest exposure to potential legal disputes. As we move forward in the coming year, companies should be braced for an uptick in court filings.

Source: The Global Legal Post

2. The Software That Lets GCs Showcase Their Value

In recent years, legal technology has played a significant role in helping in-house counsel juggle the competing demands of getting more done for their companies while keeping costs to a minimum. Jared Correia recently sat down with guests (including Matt DenOuden, SVP of Global Sales for Onit) in the latest episode of his Above the Law’s Non-Eventcast podcast to discuss just that. The episode focuses on how in-house counsel can best leverage matter management and legal spend management software to help lower overhead and improve operations. You can listen to the full podcast on Apple and Spotify.

Source: Above The Law

3. The Latest Perk for In-House Lawyers: Sabbaticals

Here’s an interesting trend for those keeping up on legal technology news: Time off! We all know a lawyer or two who could use a break, especially after the past couple of years. The good news is that more might soon get one. Sabbaticals have not often been included in in-house counsel compensation packages. However, a record number of attorneys left the workforce in 2021, mainly due to burnout, increased personal demands, a need for more flexibility and other concerns prompted by the pandemic. This has some corporations rethinking their stance on sabbaticals. Many recruiters are positing that employers might start using sabbaticals as a means of attempting to retain top talent in a competitive legal market.

Source: Law.com

4. The Top Legal Technology News Stories of 2021

There’s no question that 2021 was a year of ups, downs and everything in between for legal technology news. Here, technology evangelist and lawyer Nicole Black lays out the top five legal tech news stories that dominated headlines last year for the ABA Journal. The stories include the evolution of remote work, the uptick in cybersecurity risks, the significant increase in resignations in the legal industry at the associate level, the prevalence of mergers, acquisitions and consolidations in the legal tech space (including Onit’s acquisitions of Bodhala and BusyLamp), and significant legal tech IPOs that occurred in 2021.

Source: ABA Journal

(PS: Onit recently announced its latest acquisition, SecureDocs, which brings contract management to SMB customers. You can read more about it here.)

5.  Legalweek Conference Shifts to March

COVID-19 continues to disrupt conference season. This time, Omicron concerns have pushed  Legalweek. One of the leading conferences for legal technology news and advances is moving from the last week of January to March 8-11. If you’re registered, you don’t have to change a thing except  your hotel reservations. The conference, which legal thought leader Bob Ambrogi estimates to be in its 40th year, welcomes thousands of lawyers, in-house counsel, legal operations leaders and legal IT professionals each year.

Source: LawSites

We look forward to bringing you more news and insights as the new year progresses. As always, if you want to learn more about our legal business solutions, including enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, AI and more, schedule a demo today or email [email protected].

How to Identify the Best Enterprise Legal Management Software For Your Law Department

Posted on January 18, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

In today’s fast-paced and quickly evolving business environment, corporate counsel and legal department professionals want to work faster, smarter and more efficiently. One of the ideal ways to do this is by automating manual processes, minimizing risk and gaining greater insight into matters and spend with enterprise legal management software.

How can you find the best enterprise legal management solution for your law department? If you’re interested in implementing the ideal ELM software to increase efficiency and help get a handle on legal spend, the following resources can help.

Enterprise Legal Management Resources

  • The History of the Enterprise Legal Management System and How Today’s Innovators Use It: ELM systems have evolved significantly since their first iteration more than 40 years ago. Before ELM solutions, paper ruled every aspect of legal operations. Now, with digitization, automation and AI, ELM systems transform legal operations, analyze spend, minimize company risk and drive process efficiency – all while helping corporate legal departments better support their businesses. Read more to learn how ELM software became critical to today’s corporate legal departments and how innovative GCs, in-house counsel and legal operations professionals are now using it.
  • Six Features of the Best Matter Management Software: Matter management software puts critical matter, financial and performance data at the fingertips of corporate counsel and legal operations. But what features should a corporate legal department prioritize to gain the best return on investment? This post outlines the top six features to look for in matter management software.
  • How to Prepare Your Team for an Enterprise Legal Management Software Implementation: An ELM implementation brings all-new operational efficiency levels to corporate legal departments. In fact, some estimate that the best enterprise legal management software can help save up to 10% on outside counsel spend. It’s critical, though, not to lose sight of the people component of ELM implementations. This blog post sets out the best practices to ensure that you have all your crucial players on board to make your implementation a success.
  • What to Look For in Enterprise Legal Management Software: ELM software turbo boosts legal operations and brings new levels of operational efficiency to corporate legal departments. A comprehensive solution that combines e-billing, matter management and legal service request intake into a single, streamlined platform provides a game-changing way to analyze legal spend, minimize company risk and drive process efficiency. However, all these benefits are only possible if you find the best enterprise legal management software to support your law department and its unique needs. This blog post breaks down what you should be looking for and why.

Legal Spend Management Resources

  • Legal Billing Review: How to Right-Size Invoice Charges: When it comes to legal billing, corporate legal departments often have a baseline expectation: Charge my company the correct amount. However, what sounds like a simple premise (and should be easy to meet) comes with serious challenges. The ELM helps alleviate some of those challenges, but companies still need the right approach to invoice review to ensure they’re not overcharged. Matt DenOuden, Onit’s SVP of Global Sales, sits down with Chubb and Sterling Analytics executives to explore the ideal approach that adds efficiency and expertise to invoice review while still honoring a company’s relationship with its law firms.
  • Ensure Accurate Legal Billing By Avoiding These Four Common Invoicing Problems: While having accurate legal billing is something all parties involved can agree on, it’s still a complicated process for large corporate legal departments. A single law firm bill may have hundreds of pages, clock in at millions of dollars and cover multiple matters, tasks and timekeepers. Outside counsel guidelines, billing code confusion and the sheer volume of bills further complicate invoice review. This blog post discusses some of the most common errors that make accurate legal billing challenging.
  • The Latest Advancement For AI in Spend Analytics: Legal invoice review is rarely a top-ten task for corporate legal departments, meaning it’s the ideal process for AI in spend analytics to improve. This post explains how AI, combined with the best enterprise legal management software, analyzes historical and real-time legal invoices to find errors “between the billing rules.”

Finally, if you’re in the mood for a fun ELM video, we have just the thing for you.

Implementing the best enterprise legal management software for your business can go a long way toward increasing efficiency and eliminating the most common pain points associated with legal spend management. Onit ELM is here to help. Reach out to us today to schedule a demonstration or learn more at [email protected].

The State of Law Department Operations, According to the Professionals Who Run Them

Posted on January 4, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation

Running the legal department like a business is the norm now. One of the most interesting surveys exploring this concept is the Blickstein Group’s Annual Law Department Operations Survey. Its 14th annual edition showcases the evolution of law department operations and shares insights from the operations professionals themselves as they rank their challenges, effectiveness and technologies.

Not surprisingly, one of the most significant themes is doing more with less. Lean legal continues to be a top priority in many corporate legal departments, as they work to drive efficiencies and control costs.

Let’s explore some of the most intriguing takeaways.

Top Law Department Operations Challenges

Law department operations professionals identified their three top challenges, which include business process improvements (59.7%), cost containment and savings/managing the budget (49.3%) and staying abreast of law department technology/managing and handling IT issues (35.8%).

Considering how LDOs spend their time, business process improvements – powered by automation – can play a crucial role in improving what they can accomplish. According to the report, the average survey participant devotes more than a quarter of their time to three areas:

  1. Cost savings, cost efficiency, cost management
  2. Outside counsel management
  3. Vendor management

(FYI: You can read about how ADM conquered vendor management challenges with their App. It  addressed three problems hindering efficiency: standardizing vendor approval,  automating engagement letter creation and execution, and streamlining the RFP process.)

For outside counsel management, most of the participants said they directly handle tracking legal spend, managing billing/audits and negotiating discounts and alternative billing arrangements. These directly link to what respondents said was their top key performance indicator: Actual spend vs. the law department’s total budget.

What Law Departments Are Most Effective At, According to LDOs

While there are always challenges, LDOs indicated that law departments are doing well on the operations front. When asked to rate their law department’s effectiveness, several areas took the lead. Eighty percent said their overall law department operations were “very effective” or “somewhat effective.” Sixty-five percent said the same for financial management and business client engagement and strategic partnering, and more than 60% responded likewise for legal technology.

On the flip side, 60.8% said they were either very ineffective or somewhat ineffective at document management, 48% said the same for alternative fee arrangements and 41.5% agreed that they lacked effectiveness around contract management.

Legal Technology Purchases for 2022

What impact did the pandemic have on digital transformation? According to the LDOs who answered the survey, it accelerated it. Twenty-six percent said it sped up digital transformation substantially, and another 46% agreed that it sped it up marginally.

With that in mind, what legal technologies are LDOs interested in evaluating or implementing this year?

 

34.5% Pre-execution contract management
34.5% Post-execution contract management
32.8% Document/contract assembly
29.8% Workflow/business process automation tools
29.8% Legal service intake/work intake
29.3% Matter management
28.1% Legal spend management

Legal operations are all about optimizing the law department’s ability to help grow the company. This requires a higher level of operational excellence, as evidenced by the embracing and reliance on innovation, increasing demand for automation of repetitive tasks and a workflow-centric approach. For legal departments still in their early stage of tech implementation, Onit’s Senior VP of Strategy and Growth, Brad Rogers, wrote a great article (in the survey) that offers valuable tips on creating digital transformation. Included are his “top five ideas” for companies pursuing such change.

You can read all the LDO survey results here.

Other resources that might interest you include:

 

Can Robots Replace Lawyers? Legal AI Experts Weigh In

Posted on December 28, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Here’s a question almost every in-house counsel and legal professional has considered: Can robots replace lawyers? After all, AI does everything from diagnosing medical conditions to driving cars. Isn’t it only a matter of time before AI practices law?

Well, it isn’t Terminator time just yet of robots replacing lawyers, according to experts. But … it will make your job a lot easier.

The past year has been an exciting one in terms of legal technology, particularly in the area of AI. As businesses have been required to constantly evolve in the face of shifting pandemic demands and the need to accommodate remote work, AI has taken center stage for contracting and other critical legal tasks.

We’ve compiled the latest educational resources for AI, featuring experts weighing in on everything from how it will affect lawyers, contracting and legal operations. Consider it your year-end AI wrap-up!

Can Robots Replace Lawyers? Let’s Talk AI and the Legal Profession.

  • How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law: Nick Whitehouse, GM of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, sat down with Jared Correia, host of Above the Law’s Non-Eventcast podcast (available on Apple and Spotify), to discuss how AI impacts the legal world. The truth is that most lawyers are likely already using AI even if they don’t realize it. In fact, Nick argues, AI is making it an exciting time to be a lawyer.
  • Will AI Replace Lawyers & Other Myths: Legal AI Mythbusters: As with most buzzwords, there’s a whole host of misconceptions about AI’s capabilities. For example, can robots replace lawyers? Nick and Jean Yang, Vice President of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence, united for a webinar dispelling common AI misconceptions. Together, they help legal professionals decipher marketing-speak and determine what’s genuinely AI and what’s just software.
  • To AI or Not to AI: The Great Debate on Legal AI Tools: While AI certainly plays a significant role in helping with routine, time-consuming tasks, is legal AI always the right answer? Onit hosted a webinar with Consilio and Buying Legal Council, titled “To AI or Not to AI? The Big Debate,” to answer precisely that question. Two teams addressed a hypothetical work scenario, alternatively arguing that AI tools for lawyers or outsourcing to an ALSP were the answer. You can also watch the webinar to learn which team’s proposal won.
  • The Future of the Legal Profession, AI and Legal Work: The legal profession faced seemingly endless changes in 2020 and 2021. Understandably, many people are anxious to know what’s in store for the future. Onit asked leading economist Daniel Susskind to tackle precisely that question. Daniel offers insights on what changes the industry should expect in the future, what role technology and AI will play and much more.
  • Four Legal AI Trends Impacting Corporate Legal Departments: AI accomplishes more every day. From medicine to piloting jets to dancing, AI grabs a foothold across all industries, including law. Ari Kaplan, attorney, legal industry analyst, author, technologist and host of the Reinventing Professionals podcast, interviewed Nick about how AI impacts corporate legal departments. He shared the legal AI trends that defined the past year.

How AI Makes Contracting Easier

Onit is a leading provider of AI-powered legal technology solutions, including contract AI. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you transform your legal function in the new year.

How Legal Hold Products Help Your Company Preserve Electronically Stored Information

Posted on December 16, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

At a time when the amount of worldwide electronic data approaches hundreds and hundreds of zettabytes, preserving data represents a sizeable challenge for many companies. Many turn to legal hold products to accomplish this.

Companies have a duty to demonstrate that they have exercised the proper care to preserve and collect digital evidence and ensure that the entire organization is not at risk. This duty arises at the point in time when litigation is reasonably anticipated, whether the organization is the initiator or the target of litigation.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 37(e) states that when “electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery,” the court may take certain actions. The actions may include sanctions or fines totaling millions of dollars for companies who fail to act.

A legal hold, or litigation hold, is a notification to a company or individuals that material or data regarding an active or anticipated legal proceeding shouldn’t be destroyed. However, it doesn’t guarantee that the material will be preserved. Actual preservation is the responsibility of the notified organization’s leadership and employees involved. Legal hold products can help alleviate the worry and help you sleep well knowing that all bases are covered.

Old Software, More Challenges

Using software that does not simplify the legal hold process is counterproductive and, unfortunately, more common than one may think. Some companies rely on outdated legal hold software or using software that isn’t even designed to handle legal holds. For example, consider programs such as Outlook and Excel. They’re valuable tools used daily in companies worldwide. But using them to manage legal holds would result in a highly manual process that is difficult to track and probably does not meet the necessary level of ESI preservation.

How a Legal Hold Product Preserves ESI

Keeping employees trained and aware of their responsibility in protecting and preserving data is a must. However, legal hold software should be an integral part of the equation. It lets you quickly issue legal hold notifications and manage custodian acknowledgments. Well-chosen legal hold software will also help you:

  • Easily track the status of legal holds to know where they stand
  • Collect and store custodian acknowledgments and questions
  • Send automated notifications and reminders to help track compliance
  • Preserve notices and custodian data in a secure location
  • Gain a complete audit trail of all legal hold activity

When the legal hold product is built on a business process automation platform, workflows can be easily configured and tasks automatically assigned to the appropriate in-house team members.

More Information on Legal Holds and Legal Hold Products

Companies must have a well-documented process for executing legal holds and exercising proper care to preserve and collect ESI. The financial and legal risks of doing anything less are vast and would likely fuel damaging repercussions across the entire organization.

If you want to learn more about legal holds and legal hold products, here are three resources.

You can also reach out to us to learn more about our legal hold software.

The Latest in Corporate Legal News, Including Legal Business Solutions, Gift Buying and More (December 2021 Edition)

Posted on December 9, 2021 by - Business Process Management

Welcome to the December digest of leading news and resources for in-house counsel and legal operations professionals. In this edition, you’ll read about what’s creating change in the business of law, building a scalable and future-proof contracting process, technology trends for outside counsel, the history of ELM and where to find gifts for the lawyers in your life.

1.    The Four Primary Drivers of Change in the Modern Business of Law

The legal industry has seen significant changes in recent years. Legal professionals are starting to think differently about the business of law, focusing on new models for driving value, efficiency and effectiveness. Change is happening faster than ever and on far more sophisticated levels for corporate legal departments and legal operations. In this article, Brad Rogers, who has more than 25 years of experience in operations excellence, discusses what’s fueling changes in the business of law and how that influences transformation.

Source: Corporate Counsel

2.    How to Future-Proof Surges in Contract Activity with Legal Business Solutions

Creating a contract system that handles legal work is challenging, as the ebbs and flows of legal work can be highly unpredictable. Inevitably, you’ll face periods where you see sudden surges of contract activity, whether due to regulatory changes, significant deals or something else. Are you prepared to handle the waves of work when they arise? Experts from VMware and the World Commerce and Contracting organization discuss how companies can best prepare for sudden workload surges.

Source: Onit Resource Library

3.    The Technologies Your Law Firms Are Prioritizing, According to New Research From the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA)

When it comes to legal business solutions, what technologies are law firms prioritizing? ILTA has released its 2021 Technology Survey, which features the responses of nearly 500 lawyers. It points out some of the overall trends, such as the move to simplify the legal desktop, accelerated digitization due to the work from home model and increased automation of areas like matter intake, conflicts and approval workflows.

Source: ILTA 2021 Technology Survey

4.    The History of the Enterprise Legal Management System

Did you know that a WANG VS word processing system kicked off the prototype for what is today’s enterprise legal management system (ELM)? ELM has evolved significantly since its first iteration more than 40 years ago, replacing paper-based systems with little oversight with sophisticated solutions that analyze legal spend, minimize risk and drive process efficiency. And this, in turn, helps corporate legal departments better support their businesses. This blog post breaks down the history of ELM and shares how some of the most innovative companies in the world are using it.

Source: Onit blog

5.    Holiday Shopping for a Lawyer? Here’s What the ABA Suggests for Gifts.

Holiday parties are in full swing now, meaning it’s time to consider what to get for the lawyers in your life (and yourself!). The ABA Journal has spared us some Google searches by compiling this list of gift ideas. Justice-themed socks? Don’t mind if I do.

Source: ABA Journal

Happy holidays! And remember, if you want to learn more about our legal business solutions, including enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, AI and more, schedule a demo today or email [email protected].

The History of the Enterprise Legal Management System and How Today’s Innovators Use It

Posted on December 1, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

The enterprise legal management system (ELM) has evolved significantly since its first iteration more than 40 years ago. Before ELM solutions, paper ruled every aspect of legal operations, overrunning critical processes like matter intake and bill submissions. Processes that powered critical legal operations workflows lacked visibility and efficiency.

Now, ELM systems digitize and automate legal operations, analyze legal spend, minimize company risk and drive process efficiency – all while helping corporate legal departments better support their businesses.

How did ELM software become critical to today’s corporate legal departments? And how are innovative GCs, in-house counsel and legal operations professionals using it today? Read on to find out.

The Enterprise Legal Management System – Introducing Matter Management

Enterprise legal management solutions trace back to 1978. Equitable Life’s legal department saw the potential for their new WANG VS word processing system to do more. They determined that it could be used to manage the details of each legal matter, outside counsel and many other things that the company needed to monitor for day-to-day legal operations.

Equitable developed a matter management system that ultimately became a product called Corporate LawPack. Over the next two decades, Corporate LawPack was ported to a variety of hardware and software platforms. This led to its eventual adoption by the legal departments of many Fortune 100 companies, government agencies and financial institutions.

During the 1980s and 1990s, matter management was broadly adopted and refined to facilitate the administration of corporate legal practices. These solutions provided a matter database and served as reporting tools but had little effect on overall efficiency. They required manual entry for a large amount of data to create meaningful value, which meant the systems were operated by support staff and not widely used by lawyers.

The Rise of Legal Spend Management

In the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, legal spend management – the companion to matter management and an essential component of an enterprise legal management system – made its debut. The DuPont Legal Model (1992) drove its development. DuPont partnered with outside counsel to manage the data provided on legal invoices, theorizing that it would lead to significant operational efficiencies and reduce legal spend. This led to the Uniform Task Based Management System (UTBMS) initiative and spawned the new class of spend management software.

Legal spend management systems gave clients visibility into the details of what law firms were billing and it became the primary means of exercising more control over how matters were managed by outside counsel. This transparency began a shift in the way legal business is conducted that continues today, with clients having more opportunities to require alternative fee arrangements, enforce billing guidelines and reduce costs.

The Modern Enterprise Legal Management System

Today, technologies like the cloud, workflow automation platforms, AI and business intelligence platforms have allowed for greater advances and enabled the execution of visionary thinking.

Corporate legal departments no longer want systems of record – software that merely tracks data added to them. Instead, they want systems of engagement for ELM. These systems move the needle of productivity, streamline and accelerate workflows and provide greater transparency and less risk to the legal department and the enterprise it serves.

Even more importantly, these legal leaders – both for operations and the practice of law – want to address larger challenges, ones that might be felt across the enterprise. Adopting a no-code platform approach for all solutions means legal departments can solve any needs, including enterprise legal management, NDA creation and distribution, legal holds and legal service requests. The no-code platform also makes it incredibly easy to create solutions that solve intradepartmental and cross-departmental needs. For example, this catalog shows how corporate legal departments have built their own Apps and solutions to work with HR, IT, compliance, marketing and more.

Innovative Use of ELM Solutions

How are innovative legal leaders using enterprise legal management solutions?

BT’s innovative approach, which combined matter management, legal spend management and a business process automation platform, won the 2021 Legal Innovation Awards in the category of “Future of Legal Services Innovation – In-House Legal Operations.” According to the awards program, “BT’s new platform, ‘My Legal,’ allowed the legal team to overhaul how it managed external spend, as well as several other process improvements. Judges agreed that this winner stood out, not only due to the speed of their roll-out of the platform, but by taking an existing process and migrating it into a streamlined, efficient platform.” You can hear David Griffin, Head of Legal Technology and Change at BT, talk about the company’s award-winning transformation in this Onit podcast.

Christine DiDomizio, Legal Operations Lead at Jaguar Land Rover North America, shared the company’s story about implementing an enterprise legal management solution, digitizing processes and how collaboration changed after ELM. As a bonus, the solution also prepared them for the onset of the COVID crisis by providing a seamless transition from in-office to virtual work.

In this blog post, legal technology experts discuss four exciting ways in-house professionals are leveraging enterprise legal management, including workload management, diversity and inclusion, proving value and enterprise-wide operations.

You can find more ELM innovation and digital transformation stories in this Quick Start Guide: Advice on Legal Digital Transformation from the Leaders Who Created It.

How Digital Transformation and a Contract System Future-Proof Surges in Contract Activity   

Posted on November 23, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

Creating a contract system that handles legal work is challenging, as the ebbs and flows of legal work can be highly unpredictable. Inevitably, you’ll face periods where you see sudden surges of contract activity, whether due to regulatory changes, significant deals or something else. Are you prepared to handle the waves of work when they arise?

Four experts gathered to discuss just this challenge recently during a World Commerce and Contracting event. They included Marcelo Peviani, Senior Director of Global Legal Services at VMware, Jean Yang, Vice President of the Onit AI Center of Excellence and Matt DenOuden, Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Onit. Together, they discussed how companies can best prepare for sudden workload surges by planning ahead and implementing a contract system and technologies.

Starting at Base Camp for Your Digital Transformation

When it comes to digital transformation and preparing for work surges, the panel likened the journey to climbing a mountain. You can think of your preparation stage as the base camp for your climb, while a full technology implementation is the summit.

They advised legal professionals to start by building a technology roadmap that considers the value you want the corporate legal department to deliver to the business and where you want to be in a year or two. Regardless of whether or not you have a specific current need or if you see yourself implementing a contract lifecycle management software in the future, it’s critical to start the conversation today.

Too many companies try to implement legal contract AI and other technologies as a reaction to events that happen. Unfortunately, though, this is rarely successful. Implementation takes time and digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight. You need time for experimentation and getting your champions on board before you can roll your contract system out across the enterprise. Even if you’re not looking to roll out right away, you want to start setting the posture for an easy transition to automation as soon as possible and start engaging your stakeholders now.

The base camp for your digital journey is where your climb is organized. Your team members should all meet and you should start building a culture of success. When you’re implementing digital transformation from scratch, you need to start by standardizing processes and technology across all your players. Determine your goals and the pain points you want to relieve, and then map out the roles that will be responsible for or involved in getting your company there.

Future-Proofing Surges with a Contract System

In terms of addressing future contract surges, you should consider the types of contracts that are integral to your business and the contract system infrastructure, processes and resources that support and drive that kind of contractual work. Legal departments are increasingly playing a pivotal role in company governance and setting standards for the transactions the company engages in. The planning stage for your digital transformation is your opportunity to translate those standards into playbooks and actual processes that will be implemented across the organization.

Once you know your goals, you can choose the contract system and technologies that will help you meet them. These solutions will play a key role in delivering contract and other legal services to the business, either via self-service or with document automation tools. It’s essential to build that into the company mindset at the outset.

Scale the Peak with Steady Progress

Much like climbing a mountain, digital transformation involves steady progress. You should constantly be evaluating whether what you’re doing is working, if you should continue with your current solutions or if you should recalibrate your contract system to achieve different results. Any technology rollout should involve a process of experimentation. Your first try won’t be perfect, but it’ll set you on the road to creating a better contract system.

That’s why the first implementation is always the hardest. Once you’ve created a culture that’s open to digital change, you can start finding more opportunities to drive value for the business. You’ll also be in a better position to know how to weather the storms on your way up the mountain.

For more valuable insights for handling contract surges and contract systems, as well as making digital transformation a success (including examples from VMware’s own transformation journey), you can listen to the entire webinar here.

If you’d like to learn about how Onit can help your company’s digital transformation, schedule a demonstration of our contract lifecycle management or enterprise legal management today.

New Podcast: Hear Onit and BusyLamp Leaders Discuss ELM Software for European Corporate Legal Departments

Posted on November 16, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

In late September, Onit proudly announced the acquisition of BusyLamp, a premier provider of ELM software – including legal spend management and matter management – for European corporate legal departments. The combined forces of Onit, BusyLamp and Onit’s subsidiaries SimpleLegal and Bodhala create one of the world’s largest enterprise legal management providers, with over 600 implementations completed worldwide.

We sat down with Eric Elfman, co-founder and CEO of Onit, and Dr. Michael Tal and Dr. Manuel Meder, CEOs and co-founders of BusyLamp, to discuss the acquisition and how it will benefit the corporate legal community.

The Most Complete ELM Software Offering On The Market

As they say in the podcast, Onit and BusyLamp were a match made in heaven.

The addition of Frankfurt, Germany-based BusyLamp to the Onit family of companies creates one of the most complete enterprise legal management offerings on the market. It adds to Onit’s existing global presence by bringing on board some of the brightest minds in legal operations and technology who understand European customers’ unique needs.

BusyLamp, co-founded by Michael, Manuel and CTO Konstantin Tadrowski, is designed to handle the most critical considerations for European companies, including VAT, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), regional tax policies and more. It serves many of Europe’s largest enterprises with its top ELM software offerings eBilling.Space, an award-winning legal spend management solution, and Matter.Space, a matter management solution that allows corporate legal professionals to manage all legal matters, service requests, documents and knowledge within one connected system. The company is operating as an independent subsidiary of Onit.

Joining Onit allows BusyLamp to continue its rapid growth and focus on its customers’ success. Onit’s AI expertise and impressive suite of technical solutions will enable BusyLamp to bring even more convenience to its customers. Together, the companies are building a solid roadmap for future success.

Going forward, Onit will continue to sell its highly customizable products worldwide while always looking for strategic ways to grow and improve our offerings.

Onit Acquisitions

The acquisition of BusyLamp marks our fourth acquisition in less than 12 months. In late 2020, we acquired legal AI innovator McCarthyFinch (now the Onit AI Center of Excellence) and launched three AI offerings for contract lifecycle management (ReviewAI, ExtractAI and business intelligence platform Precedent).

Thirty days later, we announced the acquisition of document automation provider AXDRAFT.

On September 1, Onit announced yet another acquisition – this time of legal spend analytics, benchmarking, and market intelligence company Bodhala.

These four acquisitions follow Onit’s first acquisition of modern legal operations software provider SimpleLegal in May 2019.

You can listen to the Onit Podcast featuring Eric, Michael and Manuel, on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.