Category: Company News and Events

We’re excited to announce our membership today in the Legal Cloud Computing Association (LCCA).

A consortium of leading cloud computing providers, the LCCA facilitates the adoption of cloud computing among legal professionals and provides a unified and consistent voice for vendors in the legal cloud computing market.

The organization is responsible for collaborating and cooperating with Bar Associations and other policy-forming bodies in efforts to form policies and guidelines relating to the use of cloud computing in law practices; defining standards and best practices; and providing educational resources to attorneys and the broader legal community on cloud computing.

We’re excited to be a LCCA member and look forward to working with other cloud-based vendors including CalendarRules.com, Clio (Themis Solutions Inc.), Dialawg, DirectLaw, Inc., NetDocuments, Nextpoint, RealPractice, Inc., Rocket Matter and Total Attorneys.

Created on December 15, 2010, the LCCA’s goal is to promote standards for cloud computing that are responsive to the needs of the legal profession and to enable lawyers to become aware of the benefits of computing technology through the development and distribution of education and informational resources.

Visit the LCCA website for additional information about the organization and responses to the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 Proposals and the North Carolina State Bar Proposed Formal Ethics Opinion.

It is with great enthusiasm that I write this post to announce that we have raised $4.1 million in Series B funding. The funding round was led by Austin Ventures and includes participants from the principals of RedHouse Associates, a leading Houston incubator and consultant, and the Houston Angel Network (HAN), a non-profit organization that provides its members a forum in which to efficiently evaluate promising early-stage investment opportunities.

The funding will be used to accelerate growth in 4 key areas:

1. Provides ability to develop an effective sales and channel strategy
2. Enables expanded product development
3. Expands Onit’s market reach beyond the legal vertical market
4. Enables key hires in Engineering, Sales and Marketing

Onit Apps streamline everyday processes and empower managers across all departments, business units and divisions to achieve total visibility and management of their business processes.

Austin Ventures and RedHouse believe in the “consumerization” of the enterprise and understand the unique value Onit brings to the market. As people become accustomed to consuming data and information in social ways (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), they want their enterprise apps to behave in similar manners. Onit brings these consumer-like apps to the business enterprise.

Onit Apps are for companies that can’t justify the spend for a full blown Business Process Management (BPM) tool but that still need more than email and spreadsheets to automate, manage and track business-critical processes. Our apps equip business users with powerful tools but don’t require an expensive investment or IT resources.

John Thornton, General Partner of Austin Ventures will join Doug Erwin, RedHouse Chairman and Principal, and Eric Elfman on the Onit Board of Directors. Erwin will serve as the Chairman of the Board.

We announced a partnership today with RedHouse Associates, one of Houston’s newest, startup accelerator teams, and I wanted to share the good news. This partnership is extremely beneficial to Onit for many reasons as it will help us accelerate our product development, add functionality to our existing products and prepare us for growth.

Since the early 1990’s, the partners of RedHouse Associates have been involved as founders, senior executives, angel investors, directors, and advisors with a number of fast growth technology companies. Its team draws on a collective wealth of experience that has assisted Texas-based companies in raising more than $1 billion in growth capital funding, created hundreds of jobs, and participated in many successful exits.

Today, RedHouse Associates provides strategic advice and services to assist clients in developing business plans, devising product strategies, growing sales organizations, preparing senior management teams for interaction with investors, and advising its clients on raising capital and strategic exits.

Some of RedHouse Associates’ impressive portfolio includes PentaSafe (acquired by NetIQ in 2002), RLX Technologies (acquired by HP in 2005), The Planet (acquired by SoftLayer in 2010 and Phurnace (acquired by BMC in 2009). Some current ventures include LiquidFrameworks, Paymetric, GolfNet and Illumitex.

Mike Clark of RedHouse Associates shares our enthusiasm for Onit:

“After our first meeting with Onit, it was clear that they are able to deliver the next generation of Enterprise Process Management. The founders of Onit are proven entrepreneurs and we are excited about the size of the market, the potential sales pipeline, and referenceable customer base.”

It is with great pleasure that I would like to announce our partnership with Mosaic Consulting, a leading consulting firm in the corporate legal community. The partnership will leverage our technology (Onit Process) while combining Mosaic’s consulting services to give legal departments a powerful solution to automate legal processes, drive legal operational efficiency and extend legal services beyond the legal department.

The Mosaic partnership is a major win for us. Mosaic possesses a unique combination of technical and management skills and has a proven track record in the corporate legal environment. Our goal with this partnership is to allow legal departments to quickly implement new technology and see significant productivity gains and cost savings within weeks of deployment.

Our SaaS offering combined with Mosaic’s consulting expertise will make it easy for any legal department to implement a legal process management initiative. By joining forces, legal departments will have a powerful solution to reduce legal costs, better manage complex workflows and minimize company risk and exposure.

Dan Hamilton, president of Mosaic Consulting agrees that the partnership is a major power play in the industry.

“Legal project and process management are here to stay. Onit truly understands the unique needs of the legal industry and has the technology to make automating legal and business processes standard practice in all legal departments, regardless of their size. The technology is easily customizable and uses a simplified interface unlike any in the industry.”

The partnership will bring real value to legal departments looking to implement processes that have traditionally been paper-based and manual. With this partnership, we are uniquely positioned to make the implementation seamless and produce immediate ROI for your department.

Learn more about Onit Process and watch these screencasts. Contact me if you’d like to schedule a demo.

It’s summer. School’s out. Your family vacation is booked. Your mind is preoccupied with thoughts of pools, parks and picnics.

Before you slip on your figurative flip flops at work, remember that this (traditionally but not always) slower time during the work year is ideal for professional development. This is especially true for project management education. Here is a list of some of the hottest project management courses scheduled for these heat-stroke days.

Onsite, In-depth Training in Chicago

The Hildebrandt Institute revisits legal project management once more by offering a two-day workshop in Chicago on June 21-22. The seminar, geared towards lawyers, practice management professionals and professional development directors (which means anyone else interested in attending), covers best practices, the five phases of legal project management and exercises on how to apply these principles.

ILTA 2011 Conference

The International Legal Technology Association holds its annual conference in Nashville this year on August 21-25. In between healthy (as in size only) portions of ribs and live music at the Grand Ole Opry, make it a point to take in these two sessions:

Legal Project Management: Staff Roles

August 23 at 9:15 a.m.

Four law firm experts – including representatives from Seyfarth Shaw LLP, Borden Ladner Gervais and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey – tackle the basics of legal project management, different approaches and the roles and responsibilities of staff members who support legal project management for attorneys.

Legal Project Management

August 24 at 9:15 a.m.

The benefits and values of legal project management are easy to grasp but rolling it out to your firm may present challenges. This roundtable focuses on legal project management fundamentals, its goals and how to introduce – and implement – it in a legal environment.

Save the Date for these Non-Summer Sessions

You may have to retire your flip flops in the fall, but not your legal project management training opportunities. Though it’s only June, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) already has some informative sessions available.

The ACC Annual Meeting, the largest gathering of in-house counsel, kicks off in Denver on October 23. It offers this session during its first full day of presentations:

Outside Counsel Management – Project Management for Small Law Department Leaders

October 24 at 4:30 p.m.

Although presenters have not been announced just yet, the session promises to cover ideal types of matters and techniques for project management, how to assess outside counsel project management capabilities and how to supervise their work.

Our advice: Definitely make room for this session between the 30+ hours of networking and more than 100 CLE/CPD certified courses provided at the meeting.

What could be the complete opposite of summer dreaming? Try Boston in November. Anti-summer weather aside, Project Management for the In-House Law Department promises to deliver on content. Scheduled for November 8-9, the course will cover the strategic dimensions of project management, concepts and approaches for dealing with various factors such as project team dynamics and risk management.

So, now you have our list of the HOT legal project management courses filling up the summer months. Did we miss any? If so, let us know!

You didn’t have to be at LegalTech New York to hear the buzz. Legal project management is fast becoming the “it” set of business skills to infiltrate corporate legal departments trying to throttle down costs and rev up efficiency. From product launches (you heard about ours, right?) to breakout sessions to chatter in the hallways and at dinners, legal project management dominated conversations.

March continues the drum roll of legal project management interest by offering up three educational sessions on the subject varying from a friendly introduction to deep dives.

For those interested in breaking into the world of legal project management, the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute (ABA ALI) are offering a webinar titled, “LPM Update: Lessons Learned in Implementing Legal Project Management” on Tuesday, March 15 from 12-1:30 pm ET. The webinar, co-sponsored by NALP-The Association for Legal Career Professionals, features Pamela Woldow of Edge International, LLC. Pamela, who recently published an article on legal project management and blogs frequently, will tackle the basics, implementation approaches and practical lessons that have emerged from early-stage legal project management efforts. Bonus: The webinar qualifies for 1.5 to 1.8 CLE credit hours in MCLE jurisdictions that accredit webcasts and courses on law practice management.

For those who want more than a legal project management appetizer, InsideCounsel is partnering with West LegalCenter to host the Litigation Project Management Series 2011. The series features full-day sessions in Houston, Chicago and San Francisco, with New York kicking everything off on March 3. On the slate for New York are presentations focused on understanding litigation project management fundamentals and applying project management to the e-discovery process.

Finally, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) is offering a whooper of a program that spans two days: Project Management for the In-House Law Department. The on-site program, held in Boston on March 30-31, features an in-depth boot camp of legal project management including:

• Project management process, business context and deliverables

• Scoping and launching the project

• Executing and controlling the project

• The dynamics of a high-performance project team

• Applying project management in the real world

Sessions are lead by faculty members of Boston University’s School of Management.

So whether you are yearning to acquaint yourself with legal project management or want to take the Nestea plunge, March offers a plethora of educational sessions to meet your needs.

And while you’re waiting, take a tour of Onit and see what all the fuss is about or read Robert Ambrogi’s recent post about our latest announcement, Onit Premium.

Drum roll please .It is my great pleasure to announce that we are officially launching Onit Premium at LegalTech New York 2011 tomorrow. Onit Premium is an upgraded version of our free product but is designed specifically for corporate legal departments. Developed with input from 12 general and corporate counsels from the Onit Advisory Group (OAG), Onit Premium addresses the market’s growing demand for affordable legal project, process and spend management technology. Onit Premium has many unique features but some of the key advantages for legal departments include streamlining business processes, reducing operational costs, unifying legal knowledge, and gaining greater visibility into legal projects.

Onit Premium gives corporate legal departments access to a powerful suite of legal project, process and spend management tools for an affordable monthly subscription. We strongly believe that cost shouldn’t be a deterrent to improving processes and managing legal projects within a corporate legal department. Onit Premium is an easy-to-use system that empowers legal departments to create processes and templates unique to their business, ultimately resulting in enhanced transparency into legal projects and legal spend cost reductions.

Onit Premium delivers real value to the entire organization by enhancing communication and collaboration between legal departments and their law firms and vendors. It also empowers legal departments to centralize knowledge and manage their legal projects with more predictability. All documents, notes, tasks, project plan items, etc. are fully searchable in Onit and users can assign multiple tags to any documents. Onit Premium doesn’t require any up-front costs and there is no software to install.

With Onit Premium, corporate legal departments can:

• Automate current manual legal processes

• Electronically review and approve electronic invoices from law firms and legal vendors

• Monitor Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) and compare monthly retainers with shadow bills

• Create custom process templates specific to a legal department’s needs (e.g. Report Potential Risk, Request Employee Termination, Report Potential IP Infringement)

• Build custom legal forms for use by all company employees (e.g. Request ReviewAI, Request NDA)

• Create project budgets and see variance reports on actual vs. projected expenses

• Create pre-built project templates with relevant notes, documents and project plan items

Pricing & Availability

Onit Premium is now available and pricing is based on the number of monthly subscribers. We are conducting demos of Onit Premium in the Cyber Café at LegalTech New York 2011 on the second floor of the exhibit hall. If you are not attending the tradeshow and wish to see a demonstration, please email me at [email protected].

It’s that time of year again. The legal community is shucking its “holiday hangover” and jumping back in to the business of law. And what better way to hone your business and technical prowess than with a visit to LegalTech New York?

On January 31, New York will open its arms to more than 13,000 lawyers, litigation support professionals, MIS directors and records management experts. The programming, which begins that same day, extends until February 2 and is punctuated with keynote presentations on United Nations War Crime Investigations and a Look at Law in the Year 2020.

It’s long been viewed as a stalwart of education for law firms, but the programming meets the healthy expectations of today’s in-house professionals – including an entire track devoted to the corporate legal department on the opening day. Here are some sessions of particular interest that you might want to bookmark (asterisks denote CLE eligible sessions):

January 31

Legal vs. IT: Turn the Battle into a Solution to Meet Compliance*

9:00 – 10:00 a.m.

Featuring Gabriel Buigas, VP and Deputy General Counsel Hewlett-Packard Company

In an organization the size and breadth of Hewlett-Packard, lawyers working in-house are constantly challenged with having access to necessary information in real-time, working globally and meeting multiple countries’ regulatory and compliance demands. Gabriel Buigas, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Hewlett-Packard, will discuss how legal worked with IT to ensure that the appropriate tools, systems and processes are in place to meet these challenges.

Why the Legal Industry Needs to Change and Embrace Technology*

12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Featuring:

Honorable Dennis M. Sweeney (Ret.), Circuit Court for Howard County, Maryland
Joseph FitzGerald, Senior Vice President, Legal and Public Affairs, Symantec Corporation
Honorable David J. Waxse, US District Court, District of Kansas

As an industry, the legal field remains resistant to change and equally resistant to the technology. This panel presentation features members of the bench spearheading the movement to increased technology adoption within the legal world. Hear first hand why they feel now is the time to step up and how this impacts the legal industry going forward. Understand why you need to be working to meet their requirements and avoid the potential sanctions and issues which could affect you, your firm or your litigation.

A Game Show: Top Concerns of the General Counsel*

3:15 – 3:45 p.m.

Featuring:

Carmen Oveissi Field, Principal, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP
Dennis Browne, Senior Director and AGC, Capital One

Join this unique format to hear the issues and concerns facing your colleagues today. This discussion will feature in-house counsel as they discuss the challenges and issues they are facing today. Panelists will offer the top issues keeping them up at night and then discuss options and solutions they are employing in an interesting interactive format.

February 1

Efficiencies for your Bottom Line: Five Steps to Reducing Costs in the Next 6 Months

2:00 – 3:15 p.m.

Featuring:

Joy Saphla, Managing Director, Huron Consulting

Gary Nelson, Director of Operations, Medtronic

Lani Miller, Assistant General Counsel, Bank of America

Mary Pape, Legal Director, Litigation, Dell

The session focuses on moving away from the hourly rate model, cost drivers that really need to be managed, negotiating the right fixed fee arrangement and essential issues to raise while discussing fixed fee arrangements.

February 2

Intersection of Project Management and Practice Support*

10:30 – 11:45 a.m.

Featuring:
Michelle Mahoney, Director, Applied Legal Technology
Mallesons Stephen Jaques

The session will focus on project management principles, how to apply to the business of practice support and cost savings from applying project management.

A Look at the Law: 2020: A Radical Perspective on how Technology will Shape the Legal Industry 10 years from Now. Will you be Ready?*

3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Featuring Michael Rogers, New York Times Futurist-in-Residence MSNBC.com author of the Practical Futurist column

It’s 2020, and the challenges that are transforming every profession have also engulfed the practice of law. Will you still need an office? Will you meet more clients on social networks than at your club? Will courts convene in cyberspace? Will you outsource a third of your work to Mumbai? Will an MIT PhD in computer science be up for partner in your firm? Will you argue cases about virtual property‰ÛÓand get paid in virtual currency? But most important, when all this happens: will you be ready? Please join us as Practical Futurist Michael Rogers offers an enlightened look at what the future holds for the legal industry.

Cyber Cafe Visit

Stop by the Cyber Cafe on the second floor of the exhibit hall in between breakout sessions to hear about the latest Onit news and see a demo of our premium product. We’ll also be tweeting about the latest LegalTech news so follow us at http://twitter.com/dependonit.

Unable to attend this year? Catch real-time notes and comments by following LegalTech Twitter comments at #LTNY or join the LegalTech LinkedIn Group.

As we ring in 2011 and plan for yet another LegalTech New York later this month, I can’t help but reminisce about Onit’s accomplishments during the past 12 months. I first want to personally thank our users, community members, Onit Advisory Group (OAG) and industry thought leaders for their continued support and inspiration.

The legal community has welcomed us and was generous enough to tell their loyal followers about Onit. For that, I wish to give a heartfelt and personal thank you to Robert Ambrogi (LawSites), Toby Brown & Greg Lambert (3 Geeks and a Law blog), Paul Easton (Legal Project Management), Rick Georges (FutureLawyer), and Steven Levy (Lexician). We are forever grateful for their support and guidance this past year.

A “Big” Apple Launch

We have a certain saying in Texas that goes something like this, “Go big or go home.” We took that to heart and decided that nothing was bigger than launching the open beta of our legal project management tool than at the biggest legal tradeshow in the industry – LegalTech New York 2010.

For the Onit team, however, this event was much more than a product launch – it was our entry into the legal market. We also think it was significant for the legal industry because it hadn’t seen a new player in the electronic billing and matter management space since 1998. How do I know this? Onit co-founders Eric Elfman and Eric Smith were also the co-founders of that company (Datacert), now a global provider of enterprise legal management solutions.

2010 Company & Product Highlights

Market entry wasn’t the only thing that kept us busy in 2010. The year was marked with significant company milestones and product announcements, some of which are highlighted below:

• Secured more than 2,000 corporate, law firm and business beta users from around the world including 60% of America’s top 10 highest grossing law firms

• Created the Onit Advisory Group (OAG), an invitation-only group of 12 corporate legal general counsels, to assist in the strategic development of our premium legal spend and process management module

• Released new product enhancements to let users quickly add detailed information to tasks, assign to-dos to team members, set project deadlines and upload and attach multiple documents to projects

• Revamped our website to include an improved appearance, navigation and a simplified user interface with in-depth product and company information

• Released a new user interface to give users more control of how they view the information in their legal and business projects

• Created a library of product screencasts to highlight Onit’s key features in the new interface

We are excited about what 2011 holds for Onit and look forward to engaging with our customers to better understand their needs so we can deliver a superior product with the best support available. I encourage you to visit our community and give us your honest feedback about the product, team and features you’d like to see added to our product roadmap.

Are you struggling to reduce legal costs, gain greater transparency into legal projects and improve process management in your legal department?

If you’re a general counsel or associate general counsel of a corporate legal department and have at least $1 billion in revenue ……

We are actively looking for 10 corporate legal departments to participate in a beta program to review our premium legal project, process and spend management tool. Participation in the program gives your entire corporate legal department access online tools and nearly $14K worth of implementation services to create 15 templates, forms and processes that are unique to your legal department’s needs (see examples below).

Other benefits of the program include:

• Electronic review and approval of invoices from legal vendors, including law firms
• The ability to automate current manual legal processes
• Free use of the system for 3 months and discounted use afterward
• The creation of 15 custom templates, forms and processes:
  • 5 customized legal forms (e.g. Form for company employees to request legal services)
  • 5 customized processes (e.g. Process to hire a new outside law firm)
  • 5 customized legal templates (e.g. Template to report ethics violation)

Tell all your colleagues and join the beta today. Email me at [email protected] to get more information.