Category: Company News and Events

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.

How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law

Posted on November 11, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The legal industry has been undergoing a technological revolution in the past decade, and few technologies have been having a more significant impact than artificial intelligence. Lawyers everywhere are curious to know how artificial intelligence will affect the practice of law.

Nick Whitehouse, GM of the Onit AI Center of ExcellenceNick Whitehouse, GM of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, recently 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. Spoiler alert: it’s not Terminator time just yet.

The conversation started with an icebreaker about the latest Pixar movie, Lightyear, which proved to be an ideal segue into the topic of AI. Pixar is a prime example of how you can find success by using computers to do things differently.

Nick and Jared then discussed lawyers’ current attitudes toward AI and the lack of understanding about what AI truly is. To many, AI is an amorphous concept, made up of technical terms like “algorithms” and “machine learning” that aren’t always easily understood. Nick provides some handy definitions to clarify the terms.

How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law

AI can have a tremendous amount of value for corporate legal departments and law firms. Consider areas of routine work that involve a lot of data. AI brings efficiency to many traditionally time-consuming tasks, like due diligence, document preparation, eDiscovery, transcription, contract lifecycle management, and billing. With the time saved, lawyers can focus on more complex and meaningful tasks than administrative or manual work.

According to Nick, the reality is that most lawyers are likely already using AI even if they don’t realize it. The emerging technologies will continue to reshape the legal landscape. Technologies like chatbots and robotic process automation are rapidly changing the way lawyers practice law. AI is helping lawyers understand what clients want and assisting with the work that meets those needs. Whether it’s drafting contracts, answering billing queries, automating administrative work or something else, AI is making it an exciting time to be a lawyer. The time to start experimenting and capitalizing on AI is now, so lawyers can gain a competitive advantage going forward.

When you discuss how artificial intelligence will affect the practice of law, it’s helpful to understand what will happen in the near future. What can we expect from AI in the future? As Nick explains, we’ll see AI increasingly used for contract management, matter management and billing. For in-house teams, AI will be applied more often to managing assets. At law firms, it will be harnessed more and more for determining proper fees, billing, data management and back-office productivity.

You can find the entire Non-Eventcast podcast on Apple and Spotify to hear Nick and Jared’s entire discussion of all things legal AI.

To learn more about how artificial intelligence will affect the practice of law, we recommend the following resources.

Contact Onit today for more information about how AI powers contract lifecycle management, enterprise legal management and more offerings for corporate legal.

 

ACC Panel: BT’s Efficiency Gains Through Digital Transformation

Posted on October 14, 2021 by - Company News and Events, Digital Transformation

Every year, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) hosts the world’s largest gathering of in-house counsel. Onit is proud to be a gold sponsor of this year’s ACC Annual Meeting, which will take place virtually from October 19–21, 2021.

This year’s schedule features an impressive roster of speakers from some of the world’s top corporations, who will be addressing some of the most pressing topics for corporate legal departments today. Among them is Onit customer British Telecom (BT), who will be talking about the company’s digital transformation journey along with Matt DenOuden, Onit’s SVP of Global Sales, on Thursday, October 21 at 9:00 a.m. CT.

BT’s Digital Transformation Story

Digital transformation has recently been sweeping across corporate legal departments, and BT is a prime example of how to do it successfully. BT’s recent efforts allowed them to see increased efficiency and productivity gains in a short period of time, thanks to implementing the right tools.

BT’s legal team took a multi-pronged approach to digital transformation that allowed them to re-envision their processes and technologies to optimize the delivery of legal services to stakeholders across the organization. Ultimately, BT reduced the complexity of its technology stack by 75 percent, were able to track and report on 70 percent of matters and overhauled how they track and control legal spend.

For BT, the digital transformation journey started with implementing technology that would serve as the backbone for company-wide transformation. BT replaced its existing piecemeal solutions with Onit’s business automation and workflow platform Apptitude. Using the platform, BT’s legal department was able to build the Apps it needed to help manage its matters and documents.

Within three months, BT’s new system was live for matter management and real-time reporting. Within a year, BT had successfully implemented a cutting-edge platform that eliminated manual management tools and disconnected processes. Going forward, BT’s legal department will continue to build and deploy the configurable solutions it needs on Onit’s platform, Apptitude, to automate legal operations and compliance processes and increase collaboration across the organization.

To hear more about BT’s transformation journey, you can listen to our podcast.

At the ACC panel, BT and Onit will offer insights into creating a digital transformation plan, how to combine organizational health, customer service and technology to create organizational success, what we can expect to see in the world of digital transformation going forward, and more. You can read the entire program for the ACC Annual Meeting and register to attend here.

Onit will be offering demos of all our products at our virtual booth. To find out more about how Onit can help with your organization’s digital transformation, contact us today.

Event Announcement: Women Influence & Power in Law

Posted on October 7, 2021 by - Company News and Events

Onit is a proud champion of diversity and inclusion. This week, we’re sponsoring the annual Women Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) conference in Washington, D.C. The WIPL conference offers an unprecedented opportunity for women leaders, in-house counsel, and outside counsel to exchange insights and discuss some of today’s top issues facing women in the law and the legal industry in general.

Conference Snapshot

The three-day event takes place from October 6–8, 2021 and features an impressive roster of speakers, including Onit VP of Legal & Compliance, Stasha Jain. This year’s keynote speakers are Katharine Manning, author of The Empathetic Workplace: Five Steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job, Rev. Dr. Iyania Vanzant, noted author and personal growth expert, and Judge Rosemarie Aquilina of the 30th Circuit Court, Ingham County, Michigan, who is most famous for presiding over the 2018 USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal and sentencing Larry Nassar to up to 175 years in prison.

Every year, hundreds of the legal industry’s most powerful and influential women attend the conference. This unique event is the brainchild of an esteemed advisory board made up of high-ranking women around the globe who have extensive expertise leading legal departments and practice areas.

This year’s conference features 15 tracks and nearly 50 sessions, including keynote presentations, roundtables, and workshops, covering everything from social justice to privacy and security to quality of life and much more. You can see the entire schedule for the event here.

The WIPL conference offers something for everyone. Attendees typically represent a who’s who of corporate counsel, associate general counsel, chief legal officers, corporate compliance officers, senior counsel, and general counsel.

You can register for the conference here.

Onit at WIPL

On Thursday, October 7, 2021 from 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Onit’s very own VP of Legal & Compliance, Stasha Jain, will moderate a champagne round table entitled Building Healthy Boundaries & Creating Daily Rituals. The session will focus on how we can leverage technology to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

Stasha has been practicing law for more than 15 years, largely in an in-house counsel role. In her current position at Onit, Stasha is responsible for all legal support for Onit and its affiliates. Stasha and her team work closely with the Onit leadership team and other key stakeholders to efficiently deliver legal services. Her extensive experience allows her to give expert insight into not only running an efficient legal department, but also into what it takes to create a health work/life divide.

About WIPL

WIPL has a longstanding commitment to diversity, and for over a decade has been providing a forum designed to drive meaningful conversations and actionable solutions surrounding diversity, equality, and inclusion in the legal community. At the same time, they’re committed to uplifting and celebrating those who identify as women in the industry.

You’re welcome to join the conversation. Register for the conference today.

For more information on how Onit is helping organizations of all sizes transform their legal operations, contact us today.

Onit Acquires BusyLamp, a Premier Provider of Enterprise Legal Management Software in Europe

Posted on September 28, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management

The Onit family of enterprise legal management software providers has grown today with our acquisition of BusyLamp. We are now one of the largest enterprise legal management conglomerates globally, with more than 600 implementations completed worldwide by Onit and its subsidiaries.

Who Is BusyLamp?

BusyLamp, based in Frankfurt, Germany, serves in-house counsel with the information, data, trust and tools they need so they can focus on the strategic tasks that matter most. Founded in 2012 by co-CEO Dr. Michael Tal, co-CEO Dr. Manuel Meder and CTO Konstantin Tadrowski, the company has been recognized by Hyperion Research as “highly innovative” and a “market leader.” Corporate legal leaders across sectors including automotive, telecommunications and banking rely on its award-winning eBilling.Space and recently launched matter management solution Matter.Space every day.

BusyLamp joins Onit as an independent subsidiary.

What Does This Mean for Onit and Enterprise Legal Management Software?

The acquisition of BusyLamp makes Onit one of the largest ELM software providers in the world, capable of meeting the requirements of any corporate legal department.

It also aligns with several of Onit’s top strategic priorities, including continuing to innovate through disruption, expanding our presence worldwide and pursuing rapid growth. This acquisition, along with the acquisitions of SimpleLegal and Bodhala, positions Onit as one of the largest global conglomerates of ELM software providers and offers an even broader pool of best practices and best-of-breed technologies to help us serve customers around the world.

BusyLamp expands Onit’s existing presence in Europe with some of the brightest minds in legal technology abroad – experts deeply embedded in the local community who understand the challenges and complexities of the business of law in Europe and beyond. To complement the expertise, BusyLamp also brings an industry-leading offering well-equipped for considerations such as VAT, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and regional tax policies.

Continued Legal Technology Disruption and Product Innovation

Onit is continually looking to innovate and expand our offerings for our customers and throughout the legal space. Acquisitions play a pivotal role in our commitment to this.

The BusyLamp acquisition is the fourth for Onit in less than 12 months and the fifth overall.

In 2019, Onit acquired SimpleLegal, modern legal operations software provider. Onit acquired legal AI innovator McCarthyFinch in 2020, establishing its AI Center of Excellence. Thirty days later, document automation provider AXDRAFT joined the Onit family of companies. Most recently, Onit announced the acquisition of Bodhala, a legal spend analytics, benchmarking and market intelligence company.

Like BusyLamp, SimpleLegal, AXDRAFT and Bodhala all operate as independent subsidiaries of Onit.

In addition to acquiring disruptive companies, Onit also continues to innovate its product offerings – especially for AI. In less than 12 months, Onit has introduced five AI-based offerings to optimize critical business processes for corporate legal departments.

Onit’s InvoiceAI, which debuted to customers in May, uses artificial intelligence to help corporate legal departments increase potential savings and reduce time reviewing invoices from outside counsel and legal vendors. Onit released the news in this video announcement. On average, InvoiceAI identifies an extra 10-20% in potential savings in addition to enterprise legal management and bill review savings.

In addition to InvoiceAI, Onit also offers:

  • Precedent, an AI-based business intelligence platform
  • ReviewAI, AI technology that reviews and redlines contracts in less than two minutes
  • ExtractAI, which analyzes, reviews and exports contract data in seconds
  • Automate NDA, a best practice solution that helps automate and manage the NDA process, reducing end-to-end processing time by 70%

Learn More about BusyLamp and Onit

To learn more about BusyLamp, visit www.BusyLamp.com, or you can request a demo here.

You can request a demo of Onit’s highly configurable platforms and solutions here.

Customers of Onit and BusyLamp can reach out to their account managers to find out more about the acquisition.

CLOC Panel: Legal Department Operations Experts Weigh in on Transformation Best Practices

Posted on September 16, 2021 by - Company News and Events, Digital Transformation

Today’s legal department operations teams significantly impact how corporate legal functions daily, spurring transformation through innovation. A CLOC Ask the Experts panel (you can view the session here) gathered recently to discuss this phenomenon and best practices for legal digital transformation. Presenters included:

  • Danielle Antil, Director of Legal Operations at Barings LLC
  • Tony Curzio, Program Manager Legal Technology & Projects at MassMutual
  • Sarah Mintz, Legal Operations Analyst at Barings LLC
  • Brad Rogers, SVP of Strategy & Growth at Onit

The presenters drew from their extensive experience to offer listeners advice for successfully scaling legal transformation projects within a legal team and organization. Whether companies are just starting with transformation or are well into the process, the panelists offered up best practices, lessons and learned perspectives to help with success.

How Legal Department Operations Can Drive Transformation

The following is a summary of some of the biggest takeaways from the panel.

  • Include legal operations projects in the regular corporate budget and the roadmap of transformation programs. Start by establishing a high-level strategy and roadmap that articulates your business case for funding the transformation initiatives. Then, make that business case clear to the people who need to hear it.
  • Help your team develop a process-based mindset. It’s important to realize that lawyers may not be fluent in the language of process. When you implement training to support your transformation efforts, you want to make sure it speaks to the specific audience you’re trying to reach. In addition, after you start to implement change, you should have support materials available and offer yourself as a support resource for the department and the organization as a whole.
  • Start transformation from scratch. If you’re starting your transformation journey from nothing, an excellent first step is to inventory the current state of your infrastructure. Look at technology from the perspective of what isn’t compatible with your plans going forward. Also, evaluate its usability and whether it will lead to adoption. Before you can move forward, it’s essential to understand what your current processes are.
  • Ensure you have the right talent available when you need to quickly scale. You should always be networking to build a collection of internal and external resources to tap into. Consider bringing in consultants and subject matter experts that can help you prepare the groundwork or pitch in when you need additional help on short notice.

Listen to the On-Demand CLOC Session

These are just some of the insights the legal department operations panelists shared. To hear more, including discussions on what best-in-class legal operations support looks like, how to decrease your staff’s workload without increasing outside spend and more, you can listen to the entire presentation: CLOC Ask the Experts – Legal Transformation Projects and How to Scale Up or Down to Your Needs

Additional Legal Operations Resources

Brad, who served as Chief Operations Officer and Chief of Staff for Advocacy and Oversight at a Fortune Global 100 company before joining Onit, has executed more than 10 significant transformations at five different Fortune 100 companies. You can hear more digital transformation advice from him by listening to his Onit podcasts:

Onit Acquires Bodhala, the Leading Provider of Legal Spend Analytics, Benchmarking, and Market Intelligence

Posted on September 1, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Company News and Events, Enterprise Legal Management

At Onit, we always look for ways to innovate for our customers. An essential part of this priority has been strategically combining with other disruptive companies that are changing the way the world does business. To that end, Onit is proud to announce its fourth strategic acquisition since 2019: Bodhala, the leading provider of  legal spend analytics, benchmarking and market intelligence.

The combination of Onit’s and Bodhala’s capabilities creates the most complete enterprise legal management solution on the market, allowing corporate legal departments to evolve legal spend data into actionable intelligence.

Hear Onit CEO Eric M. Elfman and Bodhala CEO Raj Goyle discuss the acquisition and how actionable intelligence is the next wave of business transformation.

Actionable Intelligence for Legal Spend Management

A revolution of data and intelligence has been hitting every sector in recent years, and the legal industry is no exception. Running legal departments on actionable data is the future of digital transformation.

Bodhala helps corporate counsel understand what they should be paying outside counsel, making it easier to source law firms at competitive and market-driven rates. With its data and actionable intelligence, corporate legal departments can identify whether they should be paying the amounts they’re paying, whether they’re paying market price, if they’re properly allocating their work among their various law firms and more.

How does this translate to success? Here’s one example.

The general counsel of one of the largest private equity firms wanted to address annual rate increases from outside counsel. Their rates had been rising well above inflation every year. With Bodhala, the company conducted a competitive analysis of its law firms, compared rates to other firms in the market based on the type of law and complexity of work and gathered internal benchmarking across its panels.

After this analysis, the PE firm had the quantitative, actionable intelligence needed to negotiate a decrease in proposed annual outside counsel rates by 17% and save $27 million.

The Most Complete Enterprise Legal Management Solution on the Market

The combination of Onit and Bodhala creates the most complete, full-lifecycle enterprise legal management solution on the market.

Onit customers already have access to industry-leading enterprise legal management, AI-enabled invoice review and AI-based business intelligence and business process automation platforms. Now, with Bodhala, they can leverage legal spend analytics, benchmarking and market intelligence for a quantum leap in the value and savings they can produce for their businesses.

Bodhala will operate as an independent subsidiary of Onit. It is the third acquisition for Onit in less than a year. In November 2020, Onit acquired legal AI innovator McCarthyFinch and then document automation leader AXDRAFT 30 days later. Onit also acquired SimpleLegal, a modern legal operations software provider, in May 2019.

If you are an Onit or Bodhala customer, reach out to your account managers for more information or you can email Onit at [email protected].

To hear the CEOs of Onit and Bodhala discuss the acquisition, the strategy behind it and what it means for Onit and Bodhala customers, tune in to this podcast.

How to Intentionally Design World-Class In House Legal Operations

Posted on August 17, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The rise of in house legal operations is changing the way organizations approach and structure their legal function. As the discipline of legal operations continues to evolve, so does the conversation on what world-class operations should look like and how to intentionally design them to meet that status.

Last month, we sat down with Brad Rogers, Onit’s Vice President of Strategy and Growth and a former leader of operational excellence in Fortune 500 companies, to discuss what it takes to build world-class legal operations in today’s demanding legal environment. (You can find his full podcast here.)

In our first installment, we discussed the goals of an in house legal operations transformation journey and how to secure the funding to build the legal ops function your organization needs.

Now, we turn our attention to what that legal ops function should look like.

Legal ops should deliver productivity back to lawyers, significantly reduce and reallocate legal spend and future-proof the environment your lawyers are working in. But what would that legal ops function look like if it were intentionally designed?

Brad laid out three elements that are crucial to world-class legal ops: technology, support services and partnerships and business discipline.

In House Legal Operations Technology

Technology is a major factor in any legal ops transformation journey. We live at a peak time for innovation, with capabilities for legal professionals that are constantly evolving through advancements in areas like AI.

When you’re building your in house legal operations function, you should be thinking about your entire technology ecosystem – that means not just your foundational tools like matter management, e-billing and document management, but the surrounding technologies as well. You want to structure a solution set for your lawyers, not simply gather a collection of disparate tools for them to learn how to use.

A successful transformation journey requires a road map that connects all your capabilities to give you a better understanding of the nature and trends of your business. Once you understand that, you can start considering things like how AI would enhance your capabilities even further or where there are additional workflow efficiencies to be gained.

Support Services and Partnerships

One of the most beneficial capabilities a mature in house legal operations team can bring is the ability to leverage support services and strategic partnerships. When you’re first building out legal ops, however, this might look a little different.

You might start by approaching the lawyers and telling them to refer any nonlegal work they’re handling to legal ops. Even further, you can help them identify that work and cement your legal ops department as a valuable support team for legal. Going forward, legal ops should be involved in projects from the start and serve as proactive problem-solvers. Lawyers should be practicing law, not focusing on things like project management and business improvement. A strong legal ops team should also offer support for billing, which historically leads to significant lost time and inefficiency for legal departments.

The final aspect is managing the legal department’s internal partnerships with other departments, such as HR, risk compliance and security, and its external partnerships with vendors. Legal departments shouldn’t have to do everything by themselves. The point of legal ops is to let the lawyers focus on the law while ops handles the rest.

Business Discipline

One thing people often overlook when building world-class legal operations is the ability of in house legal operations to harness the power of data – both your internal data and data that exists outside the organization. Data analysis is key to understanding your business and trends in the market, allocating resources and making strategic plans for your organization.

Legal ops should be looking at all the available data and making informed decisions for the business. This can include outsourcing work, vendor management, strategic hiring and more. The goal is to get as much nonlegal work off the lawyers’ plates as possible to allow them to practice better law. Every legal department has hidden factories – pockets of inefficiency – that prevent them from being the most effective, disciplined legal function possible. Legal ops should ideally always be looking for those areas and figuring out the best way to eliminate or transform them.

For more legal ops insights, you can listen to the full podcast discussion with Brad here. You can also subscribe to the Onit podcast anywhere, including through Apple and Spotify or any service you use to listen to podcasts.

Celebrating 10 Years of Onit: A Podcast With Our Four Co-Founders

Posted on August 10, 2021 by - Company News and Events

2021 marks 10 years of Onit! In honor of our 10th anniversary, we sat down with Onit’s co-founders, CEO Eric M. Elfman, COO Eric Smith, VP of Marketing Jill Black and VP of Products John Gilman. The quartet, who have known each other for more than 20 years, chatted about how Onit began, pivots and successes along the way and what customers can expect to see from Onit in the future.

 

How Onit Started

Onit was born out of two early ideas:

  1. Finding ways to read invoices and get more value from them than existing rules engines
  2. Exploring how project management and workflow could be used with legal technology software.

“We were using some early natural language processing and concluded that we couldn’t extract the value [from invoices] at that time. The tools were not really at a point where we could do that,” explains Smith in the podcast. “We moved from what was the straight value proposition around the billing into something that we thought was a little more interesting, and it was around how project management and workflow could be used with legal technology software.”

Discussions with newer general counsels at the time underscored a growing priority for process improvement.

“We started heading down a path that was somewhat similar to support workflow and with a real sense that this needs to be ad hoc,” shares Gilman. “The problem with the business process tools at the time was that they were not flexible at all. We baked in some notions that anybody can add anybody else.”

Ultimately, they created a low-code business process automation platform – Apptitude – that allowed Onit to quickly build solutions such as enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, legal holds and legal service requests.

The Onit Nation, which includes Fortune 500 customers, partners and Onit employees, has also built more than 5,500 Apps and solutions on Apptitude that handle process challenges across the entire enterprise.

As Gilman summarizes in the podcast, “Our customers and partners are building apps that we’ve never even thought of. It’s really exciting to see.”

Building from 20+ Years of Entrepreneurial Experience

As with any business, there was some trial and error over the past decade. However, the co-founders have dedicated themselves to not repeating mistakes that had happened with past startups. This includes Datacert, the enterprise legal management company founded by Elfman and Smith in 1998 where all four worked together.

“It felt like we made every first-time entrepreneurial mistake possible at Datacert. The exit was great for all of the investors, but we felt like we could do it better. That’s what we dedicated the last 10 years trying to do at a minimum – not repeat those old mistakes. We’ve made plenty of new mistakes, but we don’t want to make any of those old ones again,” describes Elfman.

Award-Winning Legal Technology

Onit launched at a tradeshow and secured approximately 2,000 beta users – one of several proud moments for the co-founders. According to Black, an inspiring moment came from the industry’s validation of Onit and its customers’ work.

“About five years ago, we submitted a pretty prestigious award on behalf of one of our customers and he won. Not only did he win that award, he actually won four awards that year for legal technology and innovation in this space. For me, that was the pinnacle because I thought not only are we helping advance the industry, but our customers are seeing the value in this and the industry is taking notice,” she recounts.

The industry recognition continues to this day, with Onit and its customers winning titles including ACC Value Champion, Legal Innovation Awards, Legal Procurement Awards, Corporate Counsel Best Legal Department of the Year, Transatlantic Legal Awards and more.

Ten Years of Onit (and Beyond)

Since its launch, the company has gained more than 10,550 Fortune 500 and law firm customers and has grown into the only two-platform company in the market. Apptitude focuses on workflows and business process automation, and Precedent uses AI to drive business intelligence. More than 450 employees call Onit home and the company has a global presence with offices in Texas, California, New Zealand, Ukraine, the UK and India.

During the past 12 months, Onit has launched three AI offerings – Precedent and ReviewAI, ExtractAI for pre- and post-signature contract management. It debuted InvoiceAI, its AI-enabled invoice review tool, to customers in May, with a broader launch happening later this year. It also acquired two companies (McCarthyFinch and AXDRAFT) and its rapid revenue growth has been recognized in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, the Inc. 5000, the Inc. Private Titans and the Growjo 10K.

“We are building something significant here,” Elfman explains in the podcast. “I think that transcends any of us as individuals.”

To learn more about Onit, its founding and what to expect in the future, listen to the podcast embedded above or find the Onit podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify or anywhere you listen.

If you’d like to see Onit’s technology in action, you can reserve a demonstration here or email [email protected].

Legal Operations Manager Advice: How to Self-Fund Corporate Legal Transformation (Podcast)

Posted on July 22, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

A legal operations manager stepping into the role will probably face many of the same challenges peers do, according to the 13th Annual Law Department Operations Survey.  These include cost containment (60%), business process improvements (56%) and departmental resources, including funding for personnel and technology (38%).

As a result, corporate legal departments are building up their operations teams. CLOC reported that the average size of legal ops teams has increased compared to last year – one of many data points that illustrate the movement to transform how in-house counsel and legal professionals work. The ultimate goal is to spark transformation and create operational efficiencies that reduce low-value work for attorneys, save money and produce greater insight into legal spend.

Operational excellence comes with a price tag, though – one that may not be budgeted for. So the challenge is: How can corporate legal create world-class operations and self-fund the transformation?

According to Brad Rogers, Onit’s Vice President of Strategy and Growth, it requires a longer-term rethinking of how in-house counsel and legal professionals work. He recently shared his insight in a podcast (embedded below and available anywhere you listen to podcasts including Apple, Google, Spotify and more) on how to start a transformation journey and build a modern legal operations function. He draws this information from nearly three decades’ experience with operations excellence at companies including one Fortune 100 global financial services company with $1 trillion in assets, Bank of America, GE and JP Morgan Chase.

Goals of Transforming Legal Operations

Building world-class legal ops isn’t about changing what you do. In-house counsel will still give legal advice and manage matters. The concept focuses more on how this is accomplished by leveraging state-of-the-art capabilities – like automation and AI – to make work more streamlined and efficient.

A legal operations manager can lay the foundation needed for world-class legal ops by meeting these three goals:

  1. Protect the enterprise by practicing good law.
  2. Assemble a team of highly engaged top talent.
  3. Be efficient along the way.

It’s crucial to keep all three goals in mind. Too often, companies focus solely on efficiency and implement technologies that ideally save some time in day-to-day work. Ignoring the first two goals, however, is a misstep. Without keeping a purpose of protecting the organization in mind and strategically hiring the staff to meet that goal, technology alone won’t get you where you want to be.

When implementing new capabilities, legal operations should aim at building an environment that’s more engaging for lawyers and helping them get work off their plates so they can spend more time practicing.

Three Ways a Legal Operations Manager Can Self-Fund Transformation

Building world-class legal operations requires investment. You need to attract and mobilize the right resources that will help you accomplish your goals. However, when you’re starting from scratch, budget restrictions will likely make it harder to put the pieces together. There are three primary ways organizations can explore funding their journey.

  1. Examine legal spend. The first source of funding is to review your current spend and free up some dollars. Suppose you can find a way to cut your outside counsel spend by even 5 or 10%, either by better managing your outside counsel guidelines or finding other areas where you’re overspending. In that case, you can leverage those savings to self-fund part of your transformation.
  2. Redirect dollars. The second way is to keep an eye on the turnover in the legal department. If someone leaves, you might be able to leverage the money budgeted for that position into a few strategic, lower-price hires that can help you start the legal ops journey.
  3. Find investment funding. The third source, and typically the hardest one to tap, is to come up with a compelling business case to finance in an attempt to secure some investment funding. While it may be a long shot, it’s worth it if you can find any extra money to invest in legal ops.

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If you’d like to hear more about legal operations transformation, here are some resources to explore: