Category: Enterprise Legal Management

The business climate around us has changed, and in many cases, not for the better, with undue value placed on eking out more productivity (not the good kind), while spending less. For legal departments, this means a triple whammy of smaller budgets, fewer resources, and increasing workloads being brought back in-house. Businesses that best adapt to their changing climate will not only survive, but thrive. In the words of Charles Darwin, “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” One way to ensure your business continues to thrive is by engaging in strategic process improvement.

In a recent article by George Dunn and Wendy Hufford, both experts in process improvement, the authors lay out a simple 3-step process improvement plan for legal departments. Process improvement can be an overwhelming project with many teams stalling just out of the gate because of the truly daunting nature of change. The article does a great job of distilling change down to a few exercises so that you can start putting pen to paper when it comes to a much-needed change.

According to the authors, step one is to get acquainted with the various process methodologies out there. Everyone may be talking about process, but there are many different ways to approach it. The five methodologies noted by the authors are Continuous Process Improvement, Business Process Management, Re-engineering, LEAN, and Six Sigma. Sometimes, it takes a combination of methods to find the right fit for your organization. At Onit, our solutions employ a combination of business process management (BPM), which focuses on “innovation and flexibility through combining process and technology changes,” and the continuous process improvement methodology, which focuses on making small changes over time rather than one big overall change.

Next, you should identify the areas within your department that could use improvement. Anyone who’s worked on an in-house legal team will be familiar with the common departmental vulnerabilities outlined by the article. Onit Smart Process Apps aim to create efficiency in common tasks that typically cause a lot of backlog and frustration. Processes such as contract management and administration, records retention and storage, and email communication are ripe with unnecessary frustration due to lack of visibility, the tracking down of documents, approval delays, and exposure to risk. So, how can you tell if a process is ripe for change? Look out for these five signs.

At Onit, we offer Smart Process Apps to tame common processes such as contract review and approval, NDAs or alternative fee arrangements. Need a custom solution? Our nimble App Builder platform allows you to create a customized solution that can adapt to grow with your business. Onit’s overarching philosophy across all of our technology solutions is to provide a new level of visibility and transparency into processes to help knowledge workers involved in the process be more productive, happier and more successful.

The third and last step is to create a process improvement plan for your department. The article lays out some specific items to think about, consider, and finalize, in order to put that plan into place. One important item is to start creating a culture of change within your organization. One way to do this is to build a coalition of like-minded individuals united around one inefficient process area. Check out our blog post: “3 Steps to Creating a Solid Foundation for Your Change Initiative.”

Another big part of creating a plan is to prioritize potential process improvement initiatives and to audit current processes to find soft spots and opportunities. Need help conducting a process audit? We’ve put together four exercises that will help you deconstruct your process in order to figure out your baseline and lay out a plan for improvement. Finally, an important step as you engage in any process improvement initiative is to enlist the help of a third-party partner who can help you every step of the way.

Have some process improvement ideas for your legal department, but not sure where to start? Onit can help! Contact us or schedule a demo to learn more about our Smart Process Apps and App Builder platform.

Need more inspiration to start a change initiative? The Darwin quote above comes from an excellent list of quotes about change from Inc.com.

Enterprise software arose to answer specific needs within corporations — from processing bills to tracking legal matters or managing content. In its inception, it helped enable the mastery of what would be considered simple tasks on an individual level, but were immensely complicated challenges when multiplied to the corporate level. Gradually, this software became more sophisticated, facilitating terabytes or petabytes of information. 

However, enterprise software is like steel plumbing — expensive to lay, difficult to manipulate or move and often more expensive to replace.

Due to the increasing complexity of the business needs these solutions handle, it is often extremely difficult to modify workflows, user preferences, reporting and more without intervention from IT and potentially more bills from the software provider.

Companies are looking towards a new model of systems of engagement, which encompass not only management of tasks or processes but also the communications and collaboration preferences of its users on a whole. These systems — enabled by technologies we know and understand such as email — serves customers, partners and employees equally, removing the barriers that prevent out-of-department stakeholders from taking part in vital processes that impact their goals and productivity. A system of engagement is focused on in-the-moment tasks and decisions, leverages social and cloud technologies and includes short, rapid, iterative release cycles.

Rather than trying to compete with existing enterprise software installations, these systems of engagement are embracing an “App” approach that enables them to fill in the gaps of existing software infrastructure. Forrester Research has coined the term “Smart Process Apps” for this new software and predicts it will be a fast growing segment of business software.

Find out how you can get ahead of the curve by reading our whitepaper on the transition from Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement.

Imagine seeing this title on your AmLaw 200 law firm bill: career associate. While a bit odd, it may be the latest way large firms are controlling costs and creating a lower threshold for billable hours.

The ABA Journal reports that law firms have been experimenting with different titles that can signify different career paths for outside counsel. For example, the above mentioned “career associate” references a lawyer at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe that works at lower rates and reduced hours and is excluded from the partnership track. The article reports similar trends at Greenberg Traurig and Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

But are these title changes semantics or substantive?

According to an expert interviewed for the article, the changes reflect the “economic challenges of the past five years” and “lawyers’ changing professional expectations and desires.”

Truth be told, law firms have been juggling titles for quite some time. While this may be just marketing machinations, the fact that some of these new titles charge a lower rate could translate into substantial savings for corporate law departments – who have, for years, pushed for an appropriate and applicable mix of billing levels on outside counsel bills. After all, basic work doesn’t need “drive by” billing from a senior partner. Now, with the advent of these new positions, there is the possibility to move basic work from associates to an even more budget-compliant level of attorney.

So if you happen to see career associate, legal resident or department attorney on your latest bill, give yourself a moment to smile as you (hopefully) savor the spend savings. 

Doubtless, you’ve heard the story that broke earlier this week. Amazon is proposing to deliver your orders by drones, which has sparked off an immense wave of commentary that includes everything from law enforcement complications to if the octocopters will deliver tacos to an Amazon drone Twitter feed.

The concept of flying machinery darting around the city in order to drop boxes at your doorstep is a complex one to get your head around. After all, there’s nothing quite like that happening now. And there are worries about their level of reliability and public safety as well as privacy concerns.  

But the basic idea of drone delivery is intriguing simply because it takes a complex problem – mass logistics and order fulfillment – and offers a new perspective on it. So much of the fulfillment process is automated. Is it possible to automate the actual delivery itself? How the process be streamlined to significantly cut the time traditionally associated with delivery?

Here at Onit, we took a good long look at processes that bog corporations down – everything from contract review and approval to legal process outsourcing to employee onboarding – and focused on how they could be improved from both a time and cost perspective.  How can we introduce easy collaboration capabilities that are both useful AND used? How can we automate extremely manual tasks such as document routing or review? How can we cut time spent herding cats (because – let’s face it – no matter how important the task sometimes, that can be what you feel like you are doing) in order to complete the project? What can we do to help refocus your time to more strategic contributions?

Well, it starts with a Smart Process App.

Below is a list of resources that speak to the successes our clients have realized with our Smart Process Apps including the challenges they faced and how they overcame them. Feel free to browse through them. If you’d like to bypass that and go immediately to our Smart Process Apps demo, you can request one here.

On-Demand Webinar

• Case Study: How Johnson Controls Regained Control of Their Quote and Approval Contract Process

White Papers

• A New Approach to Contract Management
• The End of An Era:  Evolving Beyond Email and Spreadsheets to Manage Your Law Department
• White Paper: Strategic Process Management: Improve Client Service & Operational Effectiveness with Onit App Builder

According to a recent survey of 71 law departments, legal spend is expected to increase, the use of alternative fee arrangements will continue to grow and ethics and compliance is now rated as the highest priority in 2013.

The crux of the survey examines how law departments combine numerous processes, practices and technologies in order to create a smarter working environment (along with smarter results.) Positioned by Huron Legal as “a comprehensive management program,” successful corporate law departments leverage a mixture of the following items to nurture more efficient (and cost-saving) operations:

• Defined panels and/or pre-approved lists for sourcing
• Regular budget reviews
• Matter-level budgets
• Alternative fee arrangements
• Matter management and e-billing technology

According to the survey results, law departments that used this mix realized 30 percent lower total legal spend as a percent of company revenue.

The surveyed law departments hailed from companies with revenues from $5 million to $89 billion. Operations on that size are consistently challenged with complex processes that need proper technological support. Even a “simple” process such as finalizing a contract can turn into a nightmare when you factor in reviewers from multiple organizations or departments, numerous versions of the contract and several review cycles – all which normally relies on tools such as Outlook or Excel to track it.

The right technology, such as a flexible, scalable, light-weight Smart Process App, can more easily support a law department’s path to more efficient and budget-compliant operations than enterprise-level software implementations.

You don’t have to watch Looper, Terminator or Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure to know that the future can be a tricky thing to predict. Even trends as close as two decades away can be difficult to see.

Think on this:

• Thirty years ago, you could find a typewriter in every office.
• Twenty years ago, we were figuring out this thing called the World Wide Web. (Remember dialing in?)
• Ten years ago, mobile phones – the kind with basic calling and texting capabilities only – became a widespread phenomenon.
• Now, mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets and applications allow us to work and play from almost anywhere.

Now, the International Legal Technology Association has launched an initiative to discover how technology and the way legal organizations use it will develop. This includes providing long-term insights into legal technology strategies for the next 10-15 years such as:

• Defining key driving forces shaping business and the legal profession
• Identifying a likely timeline of IT developments
• Examining how IT advancements can be leveraged to help enable and enhance tomorrow’s legal organizations

If you’d like to contribute to the study, ILTA invites you to answer two surveys:

• Business applications survey: http://s.zoomerang.com/s/futurehorizons
• Timelines survey: http://s.zoomerang.com/s/ILTAEmergingTech

The interim results will be covered in a keynote presentation during ILTA’s annual conference in Las Vegas. It features Rohit Talwar of Fast Future Research Ltd., who will also discuss the future of legal IT and highlight how law firms can leverage emerging technologies coupled with new paradigm thinking to change everything from firm strategies and business models to the way tomorrow’s lawyer is recruited, developed and rewarded.

The landscape of business and the technology that supports it is constantly changing. Already, legal organizations and corporate legal departments are trending away from enterprise-wide solutions to flexible, light-weight applications that can readily support their changing business processes and priorities. The legal organization that thrived 20 years ago operates very differently today and doubtless will continue to evolve as it works to accommodate the needs of its clients.

We’ll share more information on this study as it progresses.

We’ve all seen those offices – the offices with more paper than the Library of Congress. Folders perched on desk tops, piled high and proudly defying gravity. Stacks of paper poke out from inboxes. The trash bin is choked with cast off drafts and shelves sag under paper weight.

The people that own this office will look at you and say, “I have a system.”

They probably do. But how quickly can they track down pertinent information when its data is spread across multiple files on multiple pages in multiple locations?  Can they easily access the big picture? Can they surf the paper waves quickly enough to report on budget performance for a particular legal matter, grab the absolutely latest version of a document or ascertain the status of an important task assigned to a team member?

The right App can take all the information that exists on reams of paper and make it meaningful, insightful and accessible from your smartphone or desktop. Because if you don’t have the right tools for matter management, you may end up like … well, this woman.

Click here to schedule a demo today.

Anyone who grew up watching PBS or has kids will probably recognize the Sesame Street jingle “One of these things is not like the others.” The song preceded a visual of several things and the adults would dare the muppets to find the one that doesn’t match.

So here’s our own version of One of These Things is Not like the Other:

1. Lawyer: I love contracts.
2. Sourcing manager: I love contracts.
3. Salesperson: I love contracts.

Did you spot the item that doesn’t belong? Here’s a hint: It isn’t a lawyer or sourcing manager.

Sure, contracts mean the completion of a successful sales effort and a new client. But most sales people would argue that they’d prefer to be working towards new contracts as opposed to being mired in the administration-level efforts of tracking the progress of several existing ones, coordinating with internal stakeholders and pounding the pavement for the most updated copy.

That’s where Onit comes in. With the Onit ReviewAI and Approval App, sales managers can easily get a contract reviewed and approved. This means:

1. A quicker sales cycle
2. Automated handling of review and approval from inception to close
3. Advanced and automated notice for contract renewals
4. Enhanced insight into contract performance and intelligence
5. Improved communications with clients and external parties throughout the process

Let’s see how this sales manager did it.

When corporate legal departments shut down at night, I bet Excel and Outlook catch up. They poke their iconized heads out of computer screens, look both ways, step out slowly and start gossiping. The conversation probably goes something like this:

Excel: Did you see my latest spreadsheet? One thousand lines tracking the contract for the new client. I’m working on blinding the attorney cell by cell.

Outlook: Totally saw that in her in-box. Five hundred emails about it and counting!

[Cue the maniacal laugh from them both.]

So maybe I’m being a bit dramatic, but if you’re a lawyer in a corporate legal department this conversation may strike a chord. You may spend all day drafting, negotiating and executing licensing and contract agreements. Hey, it’s your job to minimize risk and exposure. You turn to the tools to help you accomplish this and coordinate with the necessary departments to finalize the contracts be it sales, IT, HR, sourcing etc. But while it is natural to turn to everyday tools such as Excel, Outlook or even a collaborative tool, your old friends may fail you when it comes to handling this process.

For one, they’re not efficient. Chances are you’ve seen an uptick in the amount of contracts coming in the door. And chances are your company has had staff reductions. Doing more with fewer resources demands that the correct tools are introduced for efficiency’s sake. What tools are you currently using for contract review? Do they help eliminate confusions such as which version is the most current or if it reflects the customer’s requirements? Can you easily pinpoint where you are in the process?

Also consider that manual processes can’t provide contract transparency. Less transparency equals greater risk. The review process is often too complex in today’s corporations to be accurately recorded with manual processes. This means important questions such as “Where is that contract?, “How long has it been there?” and “Is the correct party reviewing it?” – are difficult to answer. Manual processes, such as tracking with email or spreadsheets, break down the contract automation and management process. This means your company is vulnerable to more risks for errors and control gaps that slow down or sideline contract review.

So what tool do you need? Is it time to go to enterprise systems?

Not so fast. That’s a natural progression of thought, but remember that enterprise solutions are often hard to alter or update, normally don’t scale well and require extensive dependence on IT. With the best of intentions that enterprise solutions offer, often its characteristics impede the process more than aid it.

So what’s the right-sized solution for this challenge? Let’s see what Susan has done.