Category: Company News and Events

Onit is thrilled to announce that our client TIAA is a finalist for the Transatlantic Legal Department of the Year award! TIAA was nominated based on the successful transformation of their legal department by implementing a new technology platform.

Brad Rogers, TIAA’s COO and chief of staff, was tasked with transforming the entire legal operations function by bringing together law department employees and vendor partners from across the world to streamline processes and implement a comprehensive technology platform that would allow the best use of each law professional’s time.

TIAA collaborated with Onit to implement cutting-edge technology at their firm. One of their law department’s core principals in choosing a software company was ease of user experience. The new technology chosen by TIAA was used to streamline processes including access to virtual resources and managing outside counsel. The ability and flexibility to make changes and easily make improvements in-stream as often as required was also an important factor. Rogers’ team was now also able to build tools to manage their day-to-day working list of matters. With Onit’s Apptitude platform they were able to develop what they needed quickly into easily configurable dashboards and collaborative workspaces with real-time visibility into the process.

This isn’t the first time one of Onit’s clients has achieved this honor. Previous award winners among Onit’s clients include global giants Jaguar Land Rover and Archer Daniels Midland. The Transatlantic Awards recognize excellence in handling transatlantic matters across the key areas of corporate, finance and disputes, as well as highlighting law firm innovation, commitment to pro bono, outstanding transatlantic strategy, and in-house leaders. The winners will be announced at a gala dinner in London on June 13, 2019.

Onit is pleased to announce that we’ve appointed a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO). Chris Fields is our new CTO, a position previously held by co-founder Eric Smith who will now assume duties as COO. Chris most recently served as CTO for Innovative Interfaces where he led the Engineering and Product Management team, converting client/server-based technologies into a multi-tenant system leveraging cloud-based microservices for global library systems.

As CTO at Onit, Chris will be responsible for overseeing the technical vision of the company and leading product research, engineering and development efforts. He will also be responsible for evaluating and implementing new systems and infrastructure and ensuring technologies are used efficiently and securely. Additionally, he will build quality assurance and data protection processes and communicate the company’s technology strategy to our consulting and business partners and customers.

Read the press release.

Onit CEO and co-founder Eric M. Elfman will serve as a judge for the 2019 Rice University Business Plan Competition. Scheduled for April 4-6, the program is known as the world’s richest and largest graduate-level business plan competition.

This will be the 18th year that Elfman has judged the competition, which is hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. The Rice Business Plan Competition is the world’s richest and largest graduate-level student startup competition. This is the 19th year for the competition. In that time, it has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001, to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes.

For the 2018 competition, roughly 400 applications were submitted. More than 180 corporate and private sponsors support the business plan competition. Angel investors, venture capitalists and other investors from around the country volunteer their time to judge the competition, with the majority of the 275+ judges coming from the investment sector. Since 2017, 205 past competitors have gone on to successfully launch their businesses and are still in business today, 28 of those have had successful exits. All RBPC past competitors have raised in excess of $1.9 billion in funding.

The competition is designed to give collegiate entrepreneurs a real-world experience to fine tune their business plans and elevator pitches to generate funding to successfully commercialize their product. Judges will evaluate the teams as real-world entrepreneurs soliciting start-up funds from early stage investors and venture capital firms. The judges are asked to rank the presentations based on which company they would most likely invest. Eighty-seven percent of judges surveyed considered investing in a team that presented at the 2018 RBPC or referred a team to a third-party investor.

About the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship (Rice Alliance) is Rice University’s nationally-recognized initiative devoted to the support of technology commercialization, entrepreneurship education, and the launch of technology companies. It was formed as a strategic alliance of three schools: the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business in collaboration with the Vice Provost and the Office of Research.

Since inception in 2000, more than 1,700 early-stage companies have benefitted by participating in the 175+ programs hosted by the Rice Alliance and have raised in excess of $3.3 billion.

Learn more about the competition.

Onit is gearing up and excited about this year’s Legaltech New York 2019 event! This year we’re especially enthusiastic since we not only have our booth and demos, but our customer Prudential Financial will be presenting an intriguing session. The session is titled, “A Process Improvement Case Study” and will be presented by Brian Burlew, VP, LCBE Ops, Digital Utility, Prudential Financial on Wednesday, January 30 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. EST in the Americas Hall I at the Hilton Midtown.

One of the key areas where law department operation professionals are seeking operational wins is by automating legal and business processes. Legal teams today are being asked to do more with less resources but they need tools to meet these challenges. Join Brian to learn more about Prudential Financial’s approach to process improvement. He will discuss how Prudential’s technology team is driving change with process efficiencies to manage its legal operations, and his presentation will highlight the following:

• The rationale of their technology team’s process improvement initiatives
• How automating workflows gives them a better view of all on-going business transactions
• Lessons learned from the implementation process
• Early results from gaining visibility into their legal operations

This year’s conference will be held January 28-31 in New York City and offers attendees a unique opportunity to learn about the latest legal technology trends and advancements in a peer-rich environment, while also collaborating to address shared issues and opportunities. To learn more about the conference, click here.