Tag: Event

Generative AI in Legal: What Are the Opportunities?

Posted on June 9, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Note: originally published on the CLOC.org blog. 

The rapid growth of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to fuel seismic changes throughout every aspect of the business world. A quick glance at recent headlines gives a good sense of just how the expanding power of AI-spawned text, images, and media is reverberating:

  • Google added the power of Generative AI to its search engine, allowing users to receive AI-generated summaries to select queries.
  • IBM is launching a new “WatsonX” studio for organizations to create their own generative AI workflows.
  • A Goldman Sachs survey forecast “significant disruption” to labor worldwide from Generative AI — potentially affecting up to 300 million jobs.

The legal industry will be in the middle of the Generative AI revolution. But what will that transformation look like for the legal world — and how can the industry best take advantage of its promises and potential?

Three areas of transformation

These three legal areas will see meaningful opportunities for value from generative AI:

  • SPEND MANAGEMENT. Generated AI can also boost departments’ ability to make sense of their tens of thousands of lines of invoice data by delivering insights into value, helping departments understand exactly what they are paying for. These quick, accessible insights are a powerful way to stop the attorney habit of “rubber-stamping” invoices and address capacity concerns for busy departments. It also increases the quality and speed of invoice review, flagging patterns that can violate billing guidelines (especially for lengthy, complex invoices).

Additionally, generative AI can assist with vendor management — particularly tough conversations around rate, value and performance. When backed by detailed, insightful data, it is easier to have productive, emotion-free, and surprise-free conversations.

EXAMPLE: Invoice summarization. Onit integration with ChatGPT provides a quick, insightful summary of a contract’s tasks to analyze overall value – allowing users to glimpse into the hours spent per task, the work done by specific timekeepers, and much more.

  • CONTRACTING. With Generative AI’s ability to generate content such as summaries and redlines, Contracting is a natural place where the technology will have significant impact. In fact, contracting is one area where we see more mainstream adoption of AI — for example, most of Onit’s CLM customers use AI in contracting. Fueling this growth? The improvement in legal comprehension by Generative AI; for example, GPT4 passed the bar exam, scoring in the top 90th percentile on one 2023 tryout. These advancements mean the industry can use AI as a co-pilot to run contract playbooks. AI serves as a powerful tool to help reduce some of the repetitive manual work plaguing this part of the process and improve consistency.

What about post-signature? In an era of constant mergers and acquisitions, regulation and compliance demands, companies often find themselves with questions about the contracts in their repository. AI-driven analysis gives a valuable look into these contracts and their clause libraries, allowing the new company to quickly identify risks and remediate them.

EXAMPLE: Contract analysis. Onit’s AI Co-Pilot sits alongside you as you review your contract. You can ask it to spot issues, suggest redlining, compare against your template language and flag deviations from your standards.

  • LEGAL REQUESTS. This impact is one our CLOC panel and audience were extremely excited about; sometimes, the most beneficial use of AI is to remove manual work (like form filling), remove friction and encourage the adoption of our tools and processes. AI technology can help to kick off the workflow with minimal user intervention, automating legal request creation, determining routing priorities, and establishing tracking — removing significant administrative tasks for attorneys. It can also assist as the “first response,” automating common business requests before they go to Legal.

EXAMPLE: Creating a legal request. Onit’s AI integration can read an email chain and automatically generate a legal request.

This is what our audience at CLOC 2023 said when we asked them about the impact of Generative AI. Do you agree with their thoughts?

Word cloud of Generative AI's impact on Legal
CLOC Session word cloud

As Legal takes its next steps into the AI world, it’s a good idea to have these general principles in mind:

  • Be future-minded. Seek out vendors with a clear, future-proofed vision and plan for generative AI in their product. Additionally, look to partner with organizations prioritizing privacy and security with AI; they should offer commercial licenses that protect privacy. Once partnerships and processes are in place, layer the technology on top of that solid foundation to ensure successful rollout and implementation.
  • Keep on top of technology. Designate some time for yourself or ask a team to keep up with the possibilities and enhancements of Generative AI. In a world where rapid advancements happen weekly (if not daily), education and knowledge are king.
  • Address the fear of the unknown. The disruptive effects of new technology can be intimidating for many. Don’t rush or push anyone into this new world; encourage them to learn and engage with the space, focus on opportunities and use carefully tested and validated tools.

Learn more about how Onit’s AI-enabled products digitally transform the contract lifecycle.

How Digital Transformation and a Contract System Future-Proof Surges in Contract Activity   

Posted on November 23, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

Creating a contract system that handles legal work is challenging, as the ebbs and flows of legal work can be highly unpredictable. Inevitably, you’ll face periods where you see sudden surges of contract activity, whether due to regulatory changes, significant deals or something else. Are you prepared to handle the waves of work when they arise?

Four experts gathered to discuss just this challenge recently during a World Commerce and Contracting event. They included Marcelo Peviani, Senior Director of Global Legal Services at VMware, Jean Yang, Vice President of the Onit AI Center of Excellence and Matt DenOuden, Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Onit. Together, they discussed how companies can best prepare for sudden workload surges by planning ahead and implementing a contract system and technologies.

Starting at Base Camp for Your Digital Transformation

When it comes to digital transformation and preparing for work surges, the panel likened the journey to climbing a mountain. You can think of your preparation stage as the base camp for your climb, while a full technology implementation is the summit.

They advised legal professionals to start by building a technology roadmap that considers the value you want the corporate legal department to deliver to the business and where you want to be in a year or two. Regardless of whether or not you have a specific current need or if you see yourself implementing a contract lifecycle management software in the future, it’s critical to start the conversation today.

Too many companies try to implement legal contract AI and other technologies as a reaction to events that happen. Unfortunately, though, this is rarely successful. Implementation takes time and digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight. You need time for experimentation and getting your champions on board before you can roll your contract system out across the enterprise. Even if you’re not looking to roll out right away, you want to start setting the posture for an easy transition to automation as soon as possible and start engaging your stakeholders now.

The base camp for your digital journey is where your climb is organized. Your team members should all meet and you should start building a culture of success. When you’re implementing digital transformation from scratch, you need to start by standardizing processes and technology across all your players. Determine your goals and the pain points you want to relieve, and then map out the roles that will be responsible for or involved in getting your company there.

Future-Proofing Surges with a Contract System

In terms of addressing future contract surges, you should consider the types of contracts that are integral to your business and the contract system infrastructure, processes and resources that support and drive that kind of contractual work. Legal departments are increasingly playing a pivotal role in company governance and setting standards for the transactions the company engages in. The planning stage for your digital transformation is your opportunity to translate those standards into playbooks and actual processes that will be implemented across the organization.

Once you know your goals, you can choose the contract system and technologies that will help you meet them. These solutions will play a key role in delivering contract and other legal services to the business, either via self-service or with document automation tools. It’s essential to build that into the company mindset at the outset.

Scale the Peak with Steady Progress

Much like climbing a mountain, digital transformation involves steady progress. You should constantly be evaluating whether what you’re doing is working, if you should continue with your current solutions or if you should recalibrate your contract system to achieve different results. Any technology rollout should involve a process of experimentation. Your first try won’t be perfect, but it’ll set you on the road to creating a better contract system.

That’s why the first implementation is always the hardest. Once you’ve created a culture that’s open to digital change, you can start finding more opportunities to drive value for the business. You’ll also be in a better position to know how to weather the storms on your way up the mountain.

For more valuable insights for handling contract surges and contract systems, as well as making digital transformation a success (including examples from VMware’s own transformation journey), you can listen to the entire webinar here.

If you’d like to learn about how Onit can help your company’s digital transformation, schedule a demonstration of our contract lifecycle management or enterprise legal management today.

Advice from Travel and Hospitality Legal Operations Leaders on How to Address Pandemic Challenges

Posted on October 22, 2020 by - Company News and Events

The U.S. Travel Industry estimates that travel spending is now 41% lower than last year at this time, representing a $9.1 billion loss. These losses are not a surprise, considering the rise of social distancing and stay-at-home orders. People have canceled vacation plans, including flights, hotels, cruises and more – resulting in $415 billion in cumulative losses for the U.S. travel economy. Restrictions resulting from the pandemic will have an even larger impact globally, with one study claiming that worldwide tourism revenues may take a $3.4 trillion hit.

Travel and hospitality legal departments face challenging times as their companies react, rethink and reset. Now more than ever is a time for legal operations professionals to connect and compare strategies and experiences.

On October 7, Onit and HBR Consulting held a virtual discussion with corporate legal department leaders in these industries to hear how they have been impacted by COVID-19, what changes they are planning for the short and long term and how lessons from this crisis will inform their approach to legal issues in the future.

The panelists, moderated by Kevin Clem, Chief Commercial Officer for HBR Consulting , included:

  • Fred Headon, Assistant General Counsel – Labour and Employment Law for Air Canada
  • Eric Kabot, Senior Associate Counsel of Royal Caribbean
  • Saumil Mehta, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of Gogo Air

The webinar, titled Checking in on Travel & Hospitality Legal Departments, is now available for on-demand viewing. It is one in a series of Onit’s online learning program for legal operations professionals called Lean Into LegalOps.

Pivots, Cross-Collaboration and More

No matter what impact the pandemic has on your company, the discussion offers valuable insight into navigating through unexpected changes.

Eric Kabot shared how Royal Caribbean’s corporate legal department has undergone staff reductions and now accomplishes more with fewer resources. As a result, the team has shifted from focusing on their respective functional areas prior to the pandemic to a cross-collaborative environment. Fred Headon of Air Canada described how they pivoted their business model on several fronts and how this change has affected the company and its legal operations. Saumil Mehta also said his company, Gogo Air, has changed course as well and emphasized the importance of partnerships and creativity in trying times. According to him, products from Onit helped when the pandemic hit – especially since they had to start working from home.

To hear more from the speakers, you can watch the recorded webinar here.

More Learning Opportunities for Corporate Legal Operations

Onit’s fall series for Lean Into LegalOps continues with more timely learning exchanges, including:

  • Virtual Legal Resourcing Debate with Buying Legal Council, where three debate teams present scenarios to their hypothetical general counsel, who has asked for options to reduce expenses related to outside counsel. (Wednesday, November 18 | 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. CST).
  • The GC’s Guide to Contracts and a Single Point of Truth, as Prosus explains its digitalization initiative and platform technology strategy to improve legal operations. (Thursday, December 10 |  2:00 p.m. BST / 8:00 a.m. CST)

You can register for these events and hear past ones here.

The Women, Influence & Power Summit: Furthering Diversity in the Legal Community

Posted on October 9, 2020 by - Company News and Events

General counsel want diversity from their law firms – and they’ll prioritize business based on that.

More than 170 general counsel and corporate legal executives from companies such as Google Fiber, Lyft and Heineken USA signed an open letter stating this in 2019. An excerpt reads:

“We expect the outside law firms we retain to reflect the diversity of the legal community and the companies and the customers we serve.” 

The statement validated the work of law firms focused on providing actionable results in support of diversity. It also served as a warning to those law firms slow to respond.

In December of 2019, the Vault/Minority Corporate Counsel Association Law Firm Diversity Survey results found that:

“Law firm populations are slowly becoming more diverse, although demographic changes have been slow to trickle upward, and firms continue to struggle with retention of diverse attorneys, particularly people of color. More women serve as partners and law firm leaders than in the past, although they have yet to achieve gender parity, and women of color enjoy fewer of these successes than their white colleagues.”

Diversity is a top priority for corporate legal, both for their departments and their outside counsel. The commitment started well before 2019 and will continue going forward as the legal community collaborates to build more diverse law firms and corporate legal departments.

Women, Influence & Power in Law

The annual summit Women, Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) has continually propelled awareness, interest and action to support diversity. For more than a decade, the conference has united prominent women in law to drive meaningful conversations and actionable solutions surrounding diversity, equality, and inclusion within the legal community. This year’s virtual gathering, scheduled for October 26-30, will be no exception, with keynotes from luminaries Tina Chen, President and CEO of the “Time’s Up” Legal Defense Fund and former chief of staff to Michelle Obama and Paula Boggs, founder of Boggs Media, LLC and executive vice president, general counsel and secretary, law and corporate affairs at Starbucks Corporation from 2002 to 2012.

Onit is proud to sponsor and participate in this year’s event.

Stasha Jain, vice president of legal and compliance for Onit, will host a roundtable session titled “Beyond Artificial Intelligence: The Future Of In House Legal Teams” on October 27 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. EST. Stasha has practiced law for more than 15 years, with in-house counsel experience at Onit, ZS Associates, Inc. and Hewitt Associates. The session will take a candid look at how in-house teams will transform in the near future and how technology can influence that change.

WIPL is free for in-house counsel and open to legal professionals who support diversity in the legal community. Visit here to register.

While you’re at the event, be sure to “stop by” to say hello to Onit via the Exhibitor Directory. If you join us for a demo, we’ll buy you lunch – or rather, a DoorDash gift card that you can use to treat yourself at your favorite restaurant. Even better: In addition to the gift card, those that watch a demo will have a chance to win a unique virtual foodie experience. We’re waiting until the conference to share more details. But trust us – this is worth it!

Continue the Diversity Discussion

Onit’s Lean Into LegalOps program hosts roundtable discussions every other week for legal operations professionals. One recurring topic will be diversity. If you’d like to join these roundtable calls and continue the diversity discussion, sign up for Lean Into LegalOps and you’ll get notifications of new events.

Onit Unites with Legal Operations Leaders for Two Presentations at the HPC Global Summit

Posted on October 1, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Are you interested in networking with some of the most intriguing legal operations leaders? Next week, you’ll have a chance to at the High Performance Counsel Global Summit. The virtual event, scheduled for October 6-8, serves as one of the leading forums for general counsel and chief legal officers in the modern legal industry.

This year, the event showcases legal operations leaders from companies including AccuWeather, Fujitsu, Federal Express and HSBC.

Onit will be participating in two sessions.

First, Robert Johnson, managing director of Onit, will moderate a panel titled “What are the Legal Ops & Analytics Imperatives for GCs and CLOs Moving Forward?” Panelists for the session, including Natalie Salunke, head of legal for RVU and Robert Mignanelli, SVP & COO, legal and associate general counsel technology and operations for Pearson, will address the following questions:

  • As the marketplace gets crowded with technology offerings, what’s the endgame for GCs?
  • What are the real priorities?
  • What would be truly game-changing for today’s leadership?
  • Are vendors listening and responding? What more could they be doing for greater alignment?
  • Is data a blessing or a curse? Is it driving real efficiency or just more reporting?

The session starts on October 7 at 1:45 p.m. EST.

Bonus: To hear how Pearson improved contract turnaround time with a transformational shared service center for more than 10,000 users, visit here. The company has already won three awards for this project, including the prestigious Association of Corporate Counsel Value Champions Award.

The second Onit session begins on October 8 at 1:00 p.m. EST. Graeme Scott, client delivery manager at Onit, will discuss “Flexibility on Solutions, Predictability on Cost.” He’ll explore managed services and how legal operations leaders can gain access to expertise that is often difficult for in-house legal to obtain. He will also dive into how managed services partnerships help software adapt to changing needs and continuously improve.

Click here to get tickets to the virtual HPC Global Summit.

We also encourage you to learn more about Onit’s Lean into LegalOps Europe program. The initiative, which connects legal operations professionals for unique learning opportunities, has partnered with The Lawyer’s Virtual GC Strategy Summit to present a panel discussion on automating processes to connect legal and the business (October 2 at 9:50 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. BST). The session is open to GCs, AGCs or director level in-house legal professionals and you can request a complimentary pass here.

Onit to Present at General Counsel Strategy Summit as Part of Ongoing Lean Into LegalOps Series for Europe

Posted on September 17, 2020 by - Company News and Events

We’re excited to announce that Onit will be in the spotlight again, this time at General Counsel Strategy Summit brought to you by The Lawyer. Known for hosting powerful speakers delivering business-critical information, the three-day virtual conference for European general counsel and corporate legal departments provides keynote presentations, TED-style talks, panel debates and roundtable discussions that enable effective learning and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. This year, the event will focus on resilience and developing a purposeful strategy that is future-looking and adaptable for general counsel and their corporate legal departments.

Robert Johnson, managing director at Onit, will moderate a panel titled “Automating Processes to Connect Legal and the Business.” The session, which is part of Onit’s Lean into LegalOps Europe series, unites leading legal minds to discuss how general counsel can leverage technology to create savings beyond reducing outside counsel spend.

Presenters include:

  • Kate Danson, General Counsel, Johnson Matthey
  • Kevin van Tonder, Legal Operations Consultant and former General Counsel, Legal Shared Services at Schlumberger
  • Nadine Stuttle, Managing Director, Duff & Phelps

The speakers will specifically talk about how general counsel can put automation in place to empower legal teams to better serve and collaborate with the business. This is a timely topic now, as operating efficiently and reducing spend is a top priority for legal teams at the moment. (To hear from a company that has had great success in this area, watch our on-demand webinar named “Transforming Legal Service Delivery and Enabling Self-Service at Pearson.”)

The virtual conference begins on 20 September and runs through 2 October.

The session moderated by Onit will take place on day three of the Summit, from 9:50 to 10:30 a.m. BST on 2 October 2020.

General counsel and legal professionals can request a complimentary conference pass to attend, but please note that attendees must be a GC, AGC or director level in-house legal professional to attend.

About Lean Into LegalOps from Onit

Lean Into LegalOps is an online community that connects legal operations professionals worldwide to share experiences and advice in this time of dispersed operations. Since its launch in March, there have been more than 2,000 registrations for Lean Into LegalOps events and networking discussions. Previous presenters include BT and McDonald’s. The fall program, just announced, features legal operations leaders from DaVita, Mylan, Royal Caribbean and Gogo.

General counsel, inside counsel and legal operations professionals can join at no charge for both the United States and Europe.

Legaltech101

Our own Rob Johnson has a depth of experience with presentations. He hosts a video series on LinkedIn titled “Legaltech101.” In it, he talks through concepts such as what legal technology is and why integrations are essential, fields questions and occasionally shows explosions to make a point. One of our favourite episodes here at Onit is “What is ‘Workflow’?”, where his young children show how difficult it can be for general counsel and corporate legal to execute contracts.

If you have missed the series so far, don’t worry as they can all be found on YouTube.

We hope to see you at the General Counsel Strategy Summit. Find Rob and ask him your legal technology questions. You may end up in one of his videos.