Category: Contract Lifecycle Management

The Merging of Art and Science Through the Evolution of CLM — Part Two

Posted on September 8, 2022 by - Contract Lifecycle Management

This article by Charmel Rhyne was first published on Law.com. 

The final part of this series on CLM’s growth examines how first- and next-generation solutions have evolved can help with selecting the right type of contract management tool. Part one outlined the distinction between contract management and contract lifecycle management and discussed the challenges solved by first-generation CLM platforms and what drives their continued evolution.

By the end of the 2010s, first-generation contract lifecycle management was starting to look very much like a comprehensive end-to-end solution close to enterprise maturity. But these offerings were still costly and expensive. Legal departments began to recognize the importance of taking CLM up a notch with factors like rightsizing, perfecting both buy-side and sell-side solutions, and implementing AI-driven CLM solutions. With those drivers in mind, next-generation CLM was just around the corner.

Brainstorming Next Generation CLM

Software developers have recently been diverging into two general branches of next-generation CLM. One is designed to handle all kinds of contracts—buy-side, sell-side, and otherwise. The second is for only buy-side contracts and primarily included with source-to-contract software packages. Interestingly, statistics show that organizations with either type of solution have been doing well with their CLM implementations of contract repositories and contract reports and analysis, but there is still room for improvement for other processes, particularly when managing all contracts.

Rightsizing is a crucial factor to consider when choosing the most appropriate CLM solution. All too often, a legal department will do due diligence and spend a lot of time deliberating, only to implement a solution that does not meet all its growth requirements or is more than what is needed. By choosing a rightsized CLM solution, you can’t go wrong. For example, by having the ability to configure and deploy the processes you need when you need them, you can enhance existing solutions and add new departments as your company evolves.

AI and machine learning are other areas of innovation taking CLM by storm. When pre-signature and post-signature AI contract solutions are built on an intelligent platform, machine learning and natural language processing come together to empower the organization with a solution that reads, writes, and reasons like a lawyer. Most CLM vendors have focused on the extraction of key terms/clauses, while very few have taken the much harder approach to automate redlining.

Connecting legal to the whole enterprise is another lofty goal, as legal departments often operate in a silo. While it’s no secret they are well-positioned to operationalize internal efficiencies, by investing in relationships with other departments, legal can have a significant impact on the enterprise at large. What does this have to do with contracting? Managing all the necessary steps in your contract process is hard enough internally across several departments. The complexity of managing contracts increases exponentially when you are overseeing them across several office locations, time zones, or languages. The ability to have everything centrally located with changes tracked in real-time becomes critical.

What About the Future of CLM?

One current school of thought says ERP and CRM vendors will expand in the CLM arena, forcing CLM out of its present niche. This is unlikely since ERP and CRM are transaction-driven and CLM merges art and science. The science here is clearly process automation, but what is the art?

A key factor in the future of CLM is the standardization of legal terms—the practice of law is the art. The art is in the negotiation and the exact, precise wording of what’s in the contract. Simplification of standard terms and conditions in contracts would make negotiations easier and less costly—think of how legal invoicing standards were finessed with the establishment of the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES). Even though some modern solutions allow users to set conditional rules for the review of nonstandard terms, the problem remains that we need more standard terms across the board. The merging of art and science in contracting will be something to watch for in the coming years.

The bottom line is next-generation CLM solutions and other legal tech innovations are driving the industry toward even more intriguing and uncharted territory, and it’s up to all of us to help it get there.

The Merging of Art and Science Through the Evolution of CLM — Part One

Posted on September 1, 2022 by - Contract Lifecycle Management

This article by Charmel Rhyne was first published on Law.com. 

This two-part series examines the evolution of contract lifecycle management (CLM), which has accelerated tremendously in recent years. Yet despite the continued innovation driving steep market growth, there is no true one-size-fits-all CLM solution. Many organizations purchase expensive platforms rich with features they will never use, rather than a solution based on their actual business needs. But the right system can help legal teams better position themselves as a partner within their organization, facilitating a streamlined approach to handling contracts with improved business outcomes.

Part I: Ancestors of CLM

The history of contract lifecycle management (CLM) can be traced back over 5,000 years when cuneiform tablets were used to record business transactions. Ledgers and contracts inscribed in clay were as important in ancient times as digital transactions are now in the 21st century. In fact, ancient Mesopotamians routinely used contracts such as labor agreements, sales agreements, and marriage agreements. Interestingly, writing was developed out of the need for contract recording, which was also crucial for true market-based economies.

CM Solutions, Late 20th Century

Fast forward to the late 20th century: The first digital contract management (CM) systems were systems of record — or document management systems — ensuring the accuracy of contract databases was their key function. These were the days before SaaS evolved to the point of sophistication it’s at today, so most software was hosted on-site. As a result, implementations required months to configure and complete. The early days of modern CM consisted of relying on spreadsheets, systems of record, emails, and phone calls, all of which contributed to difficulties of tracking contract status.

First Generation CLM Makes Its Debut

So, what’s the difference between CM and CLM? CM was essentially a document management system in the 1990s and early 2000s. Current CLM software, in contrast, empowers legal, sales, procurement, and other teams with end-to-end control of the entire contract cycle — its lifecycle — using the strategic mix of people and technology to maximize the process. Rather than dealing with a patchwork of spreadsheets and emails, CLM uses a contract repository with automated functionality that supports all phases of the contract lifecycle from capture and creation, through negotiations and approvals, to execution and post-execution management.

The era of first generation CLM was expectedly disjointed. Some software providers focused on specializing in certain domains such as spend management and matter management, while others focused on a specific stage of contract management. And to make matters worse, many vendors called their offerings “end-to-end,” adding to the confusion and disappointment. Although some legal departments and lawyers were initially happy with their rudimentary systems, in the end they invariably found themselves with limited CLM functionality. Since customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions were already well established by that time, some providers were targeting customers of CRM and ERP with their CLM offerings.

Tweaking CLM to Help Better Meet the Needs of Lawyers

However, CLM has evolved a lot over the past decade. Many of the early CLM solutions were little more than glorified CM solutions with a few extra bells and whistles. While easy to implement, they had difficulty handling the more complicated tasks involved with contracts, as the inherent challenges of contracts presented significant roadblocks to the development of CLM. For example, digitizing the complex contract process and not considering how lawyers negotiate and finalize contracts have been formidable obstacles, given the complexity of contracts and the various functions required (such as redlining).

When you add the fact that many early CLM solutions didn’t fully address how lawyers negotiate and finalize contracts, it exacerbated the problems incurred in software development and usage. Not to mention, there still exists a lack of legal terminology standardization, adding to the complexities of developing effective CLM solutions that meet the needs of most users. Many legal professionals would consider managing contracts to be the most challenging business task in terms of technological and legal issues because of the lack of contract standardization, contract noncompliance, limited contract visibility, and process isolation from other systems. Another key issue is change management – lawyers want to work in Word because it’s familiar and they can avoid having to learn how to do the same thing in newly implemented software. And if the new software isn’t intuitive enough for the lawyers, it won’t be long before they revert to Word.

Fortunately, first generation CLM has gradually evolved over the years to become true next generation CLM solutions and systems of engagement that manage the end-to-end process of contracts, supporting all phases of their lifecycle. Part II of this series will focus on next-generation CLM solutions, and the innovation driving the industry toward even more intriguing and uncharted territory.

Part two of this two-part series will take a closer look at next generation CLM solutions, and how innovation is driving the move toward more rightsizing that prioritizes what users really need, helping to promote long-term success by connecting the legal department across the enterprise as a valued partner.

Your New CLM Tool: 6 Unexpected Things to Consider Before You Buy

Posted on March 17, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

The challenges around finding a good CLM tool continue to occupy the minds of CLOs and GCs. In a recent survey, 70% said they are looking to improve their existing contract management software, which is not surprising since a sophisticated, enterprise CLM tool can accelerate revenue, reduce risks and provide consistency and standardization.

When it comes to implementing technology to help handle your contracts, all contract software is not created equal. The following list shares key characteristics you should look for in a CLM tool.

A CLM Tool for All Phases of Contract Management

Getting a deal inked is only half of the process. Many contract management systems focus heavily (or even solely) on the pre-signature contracting phase. This is understandable since that phase requires a lot of heavy lifting in terms of workflow, collaboration and communications – often across multiple departments.

However, as corporate legal departments know, the contract lifecycle doesn’t end when the papers are signed. The contractual obligations must be managed to ensure critical dates, times and deliverables are met and accounted for. CLM technology that accomplishes this includes capabilities such as:

  • Batch review – Extract data from multiple legal documents at once for due diligence, applying contract updates or importing legacy contracts.
  • Repapering – Identify which contracts need repapering due to regulatory, policy or commercial changes in less than five seconds.
  • Contract abstraction – Identify key legal clauses, terms and details in documents for easy analysis and management.
  • Audit compliance – Automate large-scale legal contract review during regulatory changes and export relevant details to .CSV reports and in-document notes.
  • Due diligence – Automate the batch review of contracts for routine legal due diligence, making time for higher-value tasks.
  • Legacy contract migration – Analyze legacy contract metadata rapidly to extract critical dates, terms and clauses to assist in the import.

Unlimited Users

Contracts reach far beyond legal and across the enterprise, including sales, marketing, HR, procurement and more. All depend on contracts to move the company forward. Yet, many CLM tools require pricy licenses for each user – a situation that prioritizes dollars rather than speed, collaboration and productivity. With unlimited licenses, any stakeholder involved in a contracting process can access the system for self-service, submissions, updates and more.

Pre-Trained AI for Your CLM Tool

Historically, training AI is a time-consuming and costly endeavor that requires specialized AI-specific skills and resources. It’s understandably an endeavor that corporate legal departments are equipped to handle.

Your CLM tool should come with out-of-the-box functionality with pre-trained AI, and it should incorporate thousands of existing clauses created by legal experts. This means you can start using it – and seeing its value – right away.

Independence from Legacy Products

Since contract management challenges extend across an enterprise, some popular CLM solutions are reliant on specific legacy products or platforms. In this context, the contract management feature may be an addition with limited functionality bolted to a system built for an entirely different business use. This can present challenges, as it limits contract management potential. Beyond limited functionality, you may not be able to use or have access to the product (or have to pay for additional licenses). Additionally, the legacy product may require you to invest time in implementing and training to understand it beyond the contract management functionality. A better solution is to have a CLM tool independent of legacy products – a full-fledged system robust enough to handle the challenges of contract management on an enterprise level.

CLM Tool Integrations

Your CLM should work where you work, meaning integrations are vital. Most contract stakeholders – including lawyers – rely on Microsoft Word for contracts, which means you want to make sure your CLM system has a Microsoft Word add-in. The same is true for any other tools you use heavily or are used in your company. You want to make sure your CLM solution offers seamless integrations, so you don’t have to switch back and forth between solutions or resort to data entry to continue the information flow. This includes integration with existing legal systems such as matter management, spend management, legal holds, legal service requests, analytics and more.

Proven Expertise and Support

Never underestimate the value of your experience with a CLM technology provider. When you’re purchasing something as crucial as CLM, you want an expert sales representative who can understand your needs, ensure your CLM solution is a good fit and offer services and partners that can help with configuration, implementation and support.

The right CLM solution can mean significant savings in cost, better use of your staff’s time, increased efficiency and more. Schedule a demonstration with us today to learn more about how Onit CLM can work for you.

2021: A Year in Review

Posted on February 22, 2022 by - Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

2021 was a notable year for Onit. We not only celebrated our 10th anniversary, but we also saw accelerated growth and significant accomplishments. These included:

In this blog post, we will run through the highlights of 2021 for Onit and its family of companies.

First, though, we want to thank our customers, employees and partners. We couldn’t have reach these milestones without you. Thank you.

We also invite you to connect with Onit during Legalweek. From demos to cocktails to dinner, we’re offering many ways to celebrate Legalweek and learn more about us. Find out more here.

New Products for Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)

Onit has continued its tradition of disrupting the CLM market, expanding our reach on a global scale in 2021. Last year we launched new AI technologies for contract management, including Automate NDA, which uses AI to streamline and automate the entire non-disclosure agreement (NDA) process, reducing the time spent on NDAs by 70%. We also introduced Smart Checklists, offered as part of the ReviewAI Microsoft Word Add-In, which turns playbook checks into intelligent, actionable and collaborative tasks.

Last year also saw Onit extending its contract management market reach to midsize and smaller companies. An essential move in this area was Onit’s acquisition of SecureDocs, which closed in 2021 and was announced last month. SecureDocs is a global software company for contract management, virtual deal rooms and electronic signatures. By acquiring SecureDocs, Onit expanded its product portfolio from enterprise-level CLM to include quickly deployable contract management software for new and growing legal operations teams. SecureDocs will integrate with SimpleLegal, Onit’s legal operations technology subsidiary, to empower greater efficiencies, transparency and intelligence for legal operations teams.

With the addition of SecureDocs, Onit now offers its customers technologies for all stages of legal operations – from newly established companies to global enterprises.

Continued Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) Leadership

In 2021, Onit became one of the world’s largest enterprise legal management conglomerates with the acquisition of BusyLamp, a premier provider of legal spend and matter management software for European corporate legal departments. The acquisition creates one of the largest global enterprise legal management conglomerates, with more than 600 implementations completed worldwide and $8.3 billion in legal invoices processed by Onit and its subsidiaries SimpleLegal and BusyLamp in 2021. It also augments Onit’s formidable global reach into 140+ countries with European domain expertise and a solution well-equipped for unique considerations such as VAT, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and regional tax policies.

BusyLamp wasn’t Onit’s only acquisition in the ELM space in 2021. We also acquired Bodhala, a legal spend analytics, benchmarking and market intelligence leader. Bodhala applies machine learning and AI to help companies source outside counsel at competitive and market-driven rates, with proven results for optimizing spend and the procurement of legal services. Onit’s acquisition of Bodhala creates the most complete enterprise legal management solution on the market, allowing corporate legal departments to evolve analytics into actionable intelligence to optimize outside counsel spend.

Our subsidiaries also reached several milestones and earned awards in their own right. You can read about them in our press release.

Looking Ahead

This past year’s accomplishments marked even more significant growth and expansion than Onit saw in 2020, which is no small feat. In 2020, we launched an artificial intelligence-powered business intelligence platform and AI contract review, closed two acquisitions in 30 days (McCarthyFinch and AXDRAFT), established our AI Center of Excellence and achieved a market-leading NPS score – all despite COVID-related complications.

In addition to our successful acquisitions and product launches, Onit grew its global workforce by 30% in 2021. We expect to hire at an even faster pace in the coming year to continue focusing on growth and innovation. If you’re interested in learning more about the positions we’re hiring for, please visit our careers page.

We’ve also already started to bring in the awards this year, being named to the 2022 Vet 100 list and Houston Inno’s first-ever Fire Awards.

You can expect even more great things to come as the year goes on. Whether you’re looking to revolutionize ELM and CLM for your organization or are interested in joining our team, contact Onit today.

Onit’s AI for eBilling Review Takes Home an Innovation Award

Posted on February 8, 2022 by - Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

We’re excited to announce that Onit has won a prestigious Business Intelligence Group (BIG) 2022 Innovation Award for our AI-enabled eBilling validation and processing technology, InvoiceAI. The awards program recognizes organizations, products and people bringing new ideas to life in innovative ways.

InvoiceAI debuted to customers in May of 2021 and then launched publicly four months later in September. It works with Onit’s enterprise legal management solution and traditional billing rules to conduct a first-pass review of outside counsel and vendor ebills submitted to corporate legal departments. Since AI and machine learning power it, it understands context, learns and can identify additional potentially noncompliant charges on top of what billing rules have already found.

This is the next evolution of eBilling review. Traditional billing rules rely on set parameters to identify invoices containing noncompliant line items, such as a specific word or series of words. Suppose a law firm or legal vendor uses billing descriptions that are similar but differ from what is outlined in the billing rules. In that case, an invoice may be automatically approved for payment.

How InvoiceAI Addresses eBilling Review Challenges

The review of a high number of invoices and their collective dollar total have challenged large corporate legal departments for decades. They’re often pressed to accomplish more in less time with fewer resources and lack the bandwidth to chase corrections or parse a large number of warnings. And they’re faced with invoice issues that include vague or insufficient details, block billing, improper coding of invoices and work being done by the wrong staff class. All of these issues are difficult for traditional billing rules to uncover and sort.

InvoiceAI finds issues such as administrative tasks and improper billing for time during travel and then integrates these findings with ELM and existing rules engines for a more intelligent eBilling review that continuously learns. As a result:

  • Attorneys can quickly review invoices
  • Legal operations can identify noncompliant billing guidelines and harvest early savings
  • General counsel can gain greater visibility into law firm performance and legal spend metrics.

As one customer commented:

“Now, our invoice review team doesn’t have to feel like the bad guy. The machine catches these issues (and does it better) so that we can focus on the relationships and let the system drive the needed action.”

Historical and Real-Time eBilling Review – Results

Before its public launch, InvoiceAI combed through the eBilling from 2020 for a set of Fortune 500 customers. It identified an average of six figures of savings in travel-related billed time and expenses submitted to the customers during the onset of COVID-19 when travel was severely restricted. These were invoices previously sent through traditional billing rules, meaning these savings surpassed what had already been found.

InvoiceAI yields positive results for real-time invoice review as well. When it is used with ELM and billing rules, some Onit customers have found up to 20% in savings.

Continuing AI Excellence

InvoiceAI is one of the latest AI innovations Onit has introduced since the founding of its AI Center of Excellence in 2020. Since then, we have released four other AI offerings in addition to InvoiceAI:

  • Precedent, an AI platform that automates and improves both legal and business processes for corporate legal departments, law firms, contract professionals and procurement teams.
  • ReviewAI, which quickly drafts, reviews, redlines and edits all types of contracts.
  • ExtractAI, AI which extracts and obtains usable data from executed, legacy and third-party paper contracts.
  • Automate NDA, an easy-to-implement, best practice AI solution that helps you manage and automate the end-to-end non-disclosure agreement process.

How to Learn More About InvoiceAI

Interested in learning more about InvoiceAI and how it helps eBilling? Start here or request a demonstration.  You can also learn more about AI and corporate legal with these blog posts:

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].

Benefits of Contract Lifecycle Management Software

Posted on January 25, 2022 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

How CLM can Increase Revenue 9%

When it comes to contract lifecycle management software, one thing is sure: It’s on everyone’s radar. Consider these findings from the Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2021 Legal Technology Report for In-House Counsel:

  • Contract management software was ranked as one of the top three most effective technologies, behind only matter management and e-billing.
  • 77% of participants said they want technology to help them better manage contracts.
  • 56% said they are looking into investing in contract lifecycle management software.
  • 81% in the $500M to $999M range said they are looking into a contract management software upgrade, while 44% of companies under $100M in revenue are doing the same.

It’s no surprise that interest is high. Contracting delays impact the entire enterprise, stalling revenue generation, new services, valuable partnerships and more. Outdated technologies (those that can’t integrate or scale, for example) and manual processes offer further complications, especially when considering the high volume of contracts and the often limited resources available to manage legal obligations.

What are the Benefits of Contract Lifecycle Management Software?

The World Commerce & Contracting organization estimates that improved contract development and management can increase profitability to the tune of 9% of a company’s annual revenue.

How does it accomplish this? It supercharges the speed of contracting with technology. Companies using contract management software soon find numerous advantages such as:

  • Self-service to create new contracts without legal intervention. Departments can select contracts from approved templates and the solution can facilitate a legal review of any deviations from approved language.
  • Easy access to all contracts stored in one repository, making it more effective to maintain compliance with audit and governance requirements.
  • Reduction of duplicative work by integrating contract data into order management, purchasing and invoicing systems.
  • Greater insight into risks, obligations and new laws and regulations through reporting and analytics
  • More transparent processes, with the status of any contract only a click away.
  • Faster contract turnaround with the help of automation, which steers each contract through its appropriate review cycle while providing automated updates to involved parties as necessary.
  • Reduced risk through consistent contract language upheld in the system via templates and contract playbooks.

Contract Management + AI – An Advantage for the Entire Enterprise

When you combine AI and contract management, the benefits multiple rapidly for everyone who depends on contracts.

Consider how AI helps first-pass review. It acts as a junior lawyer, making recommendations and delivering a risk profile. This makes the overall review process much quicker, including reviews by other lawyers. Instead of reviewing the contract, redlining it and adding clauses, an attorney opens up a contract with all of this already performed by AI. In fact, a study found that legal AI contract review software made new users 51.5% more productive and 34% more efficient.

When you apply a 51.5% productivity boost in the context of a typical midsize company, that boost translates into serious results. If you have 55 lawyers reviewing an average of 9,500 contracts, the same team can process an additional 4,900 contracts with contract AI. That’s the equivalent of adding 28 lawyers to the team.

Of course, the legal obligations continue after signature, and AI also supports that process. Contracts offer a wealth of usable data that should be harnessed. Their proper management ensures that the terms of the agreement are fulfilled and helps assess if the company is meeting expected business results. For most teams, this work is currently done manually or not done at all.

AI dramatically increases the efficiency and scope of data extraction, turning data into actionable information in several ways, including:

  • Batch review, by extracting data from multiple legal documents at once
  • Repapering, by amending or redlining contract details and critical terms to comply with regulatory changes or M&A activities
  • Contract abstraction, by identifying critical legal clauses, terms and details in documents for easy analysis and syncing with your CLM.
  • Audit compliance by automating large-scale legal contract review when regulatory changes occur and exporting relevant details in notes and reports
  • Due diligence through the automation of batch review of contracts for routine legal due diligence, freeing up resources
  • Legacy contract migration by rapidly analyzing and extracting legacy contract metadata, including critical dates, terms, and clauses, to assist in importing

AI won’t replace lawyers, but it will provide significant benefits when paired with contracting. This infographic on the benefits of AI and contract management breaks down the quantitative benefits of AI and contract management, including today’s contract burdens, their costs and how AI can accelerate sales cycles by up to 24%.

Additional Contract Management and AI Resources

Ready to start evaluating contract management solutions? Here are a few resources that may help:

Onit Acquires SecureDocs, Extending Contract Management to New and Rapidly Growing Corporate Legal Departments

Posted on January 11, 2022 by - Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management

SecureDocs - ContractWorks - ReadySignA little over two years ago, Onit launched its contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution, helping Fortune 500 companies streamline the complex processes of buy-side, sell-side and corporate contract administration. The solution quickly gained popularity with enterprises who found that they could shorten sales cycles, speed up revenue generation, improve risk mitigation and strengthen collaboration across departments.

Since the launch, Onit has continued on the path of innovation by introducing new CLM products, including:

  • ReviewAI, technology that uses AI to review and redline contracts in two minutes or less, resulting in a productivity increase of up to 52%.
  • Smart Checklists, which creates checklists made up of concrete, task-based actions that are generated from your company playbook.
  • ExtractAI, software that obtains usable data from executed, legacy and third-party paper contracts and turns it into actionable information.
  • Automate NDA, which removes manual work from high-volume and often low-value NDAs, resulting in faster agreement execution and a significant reduction in end-to-end processing time.

The Next Phase of CLM Expansion

Now, we’re excited to announce that we have expanded our CLM market reach with the acquisition of SecureDocs. SecureDocs augments Onit’s portfolio with a contract management solution ideally suited for companies that have new or rapidly scaling corporate legal departments.

SecureDocs, based in Santa Barbara, California, is a software company specializing in contract management software that can be set up in minutes (ContractWorks), a data room that streamlines the entire deal process (SecureDocs), and secure, legally binding electronic signatures (ReadySign). Its solutions have helped customers effectively manage more than 13 million contracts and documents across 96 countries.

Many midsize companies rely on spreadsheets, phone calls and emails to manage legal obligations. While these tools are readily available, they limit transparency and efficiency when it comes to contract management. ContractWorks from SecureDocs dramatically increases contract visibility, minimizes risk and ensures customers don’t miss renewal dates. Since it can be set up in minutes, it provides an effective and easy-to-deploy solution with a fast time-to-value.

SecureDocs and SimpleLegal

SecureDocs will integrate with SimpleLegal, Onit’s legal operations management software subsidiary.The companies share a similar approach to building simple, intuitive software. Together, they will provide solutions to streamline operations and offer greater efficiency for scaling legal departments.

As with all of Onit’s acquisitions, we are investing in SecureDocs, its employees and its products. We are excited to welcome the entire SecureDocs team to Onit and will continue to develop all of the company’s products.

Onit’s Growth and Expanded Market Reach

SecureDocs joins Onit at a time of exponential growth. In addition to SecureDocs, Onit has acquired four other companies in the past 15 months, including:

  • BusyLamp, a premier provider of legal spend and matter management software for European corporate legal departments.
  • Bodhala, a legal spend analytics, benchmarking, and market intelligence company.
  • AXDRAFT, a document automation provider.
  • McCarthyFinch, a legal AI innovator.

These acquisitions follow Onit’s first acquisition, SimpleLegal, which closed in May 2019.

To learn more about our acquisitions and products, customers are invited to reach out to their account managers or customer success managers.

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:

 

Having Contract Management Issues? Here’s How CLM and AI Can Help.

Posted on December 14, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

Many sales, procurement and corporate legal departments struggle with contract management issues. The issues may seem mundane – too much manual work, a lack of visibility or slow responses – but together, the issues collectively (and quickly) slow down valuable revenue-generating efforts or can lead to regulatory breaches.

Comprehensive contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions can defeat contract management issues by automating and standardizing processes and decreasing risk and manual work. They streamline the entire contract lifecycle and provide ease of use for all parties. With the ability to have unlimited users and an intuitive, user-friendly interface, these solutions dramatically improve supplier and vendor relationships and overall customer satisfaction.

How Your CLM Defeats Contract Management Issues

What should you look for in a CLM solution to overcome contract management issues? Consider this list of necessities.

  • Automatically generate contracts – The CLM software should allow you to save time and reduce risk by automatically creating a contract with the appropriate clauses based on a robust rules engine and contract metadata.
  • Work where you want to work – Most lawyers rely on Microsoft Word for contracts. An MS Word integration maintains seamless version control and secure links to the CLM software.
  • Let stakeholders help themselves – With a self-service portal, partners and clients can quickly request, submit or create contracts. Contracts can be automatically assigned and tracked, increasing visibility and improving turnaround time.
  • Reduce risks with less work – Manage and measure tasks or milestones related to compliance via a dedicated dashboard and reporting. Likewise, automated risk mitigation in a CLM identifies clauses and terms which add risk to your agreement and scores your contract repository to assist you in both negotiations and renegotiations.
  • A quick time to value – A CLM solution on an advanced cloud platform means your CLM solution can be deployed in 30 days or less.

The Role of AI in Contract Lifecycle Management – And How it Helps You

In recent years, AI has taken businesses by storm, gaining recognition for its rapid evolution and considerable accomplishments. From driving cars to diagnosing illnesses, it continues to prove its value to all industries.

Contract management is no different. Sales, procurement and corporate legal departments have the opportunity to benefit from AI during the contract lifecycle, realizing increased efficiency from technology that not only understands their organization but learns and continually improves.

As you look for AI-based CLM tools, here is what you should expect in your chosen technology.

  • Out-of-the-box functionality from day one – Your CLM AI should work for you from day one by being pretrained and coming with thousands of existing clauses created by legal experts.
  • Faster review – Need a first-pass contract review in two minutes or less? Your CLM AI can do this, quashing some common contract management issues.
  • Easy edit tracking –Open a contract in Word or PDF to view AI redlines with track changes and commentary.
  • Checklists to streamline review – AI tracks and assigns alerts for reviewers with interactive, automated tasks within Microsoft Word.
  • Identify negotiation positions – Obtain suggested primary and fallback positions directly connected to your checklists with AI.
  • Empower users – Business professionals can get an AI-assisted review of standard contracts like NDAs through email or a self-service portal.
  • Review in batches – AI can extract data from multiple legal documents at once for due diligence, applying contract updates or importing legacy contracts. You can also automate the batch review of contracts for routine legal due diligence, making time for higher-value M&A tasks.
  • Accelerate repapering – AI will amend or redline contract details and key terms due to regulatory, policy or commercial changes or M&A activities.
  • Quick analysis and management – Your CLM AI will identify key legal clauses, terms and details in documents. It can also analyze legacy contract metadata rapidly to extract critical dates, terms and clauses to assist in the import.
  • Large-scale contract review – Audit compliance with AI during regulatory changes and export relevant details to .CSV reports and in-document notes.

The Results

How much of an impact can AI and CLM have on contract management issues? CLM solutions can help you save 9% annually, reduce the average sales cycle by 24% and reduce the average hours spent on contracts by 20% or more.

A study of how legal AI contract review software affects in-house lawyers’ productivity showed that new users were immediately 51.5% more productive and 34% more efficient. And with post-signature contract AI, you improve efficiency by increasing the amount of data analyzed while reviewing and exporting data in five seconds or less.

As an example, consider what CLM AI can do for non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). NDAs are the highest-volume contracts handled by businesses today, with our customers telling us that they process anywhere between 500 and 100,000 NDAs every year. Processing that volume of contracts, no matter how standardized or routine, quickly adds up in cost and creates a real risk of spreading your legal department employees too thin. However, applying AI and CLM best practices can automate NDA management and cut time spent on them by up to 70%. This blog post shows you how this works.

Reach out to us to learn more or schedule a demonstration of our contract lifecycle management and contract AI, including ReviewAI, ExtractAI and Automate NDA.