Tag: white paper

The Top Six Leading Corporate Legal Operations Trends for 2022

Posted on February 17, 2022 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

The pandemic changed everything about our world seemingly in the blink of an eye—corporate legal operations included. However, with change comes opportunity: to unlock novel technology solutions and discover cutting-edge ways of catapulting efficiency and catalyzing transformation for enterprise-wide excellence.

Consider these six corporate legal operations trends, compiled from the latest metrics and data, to tackle your ever-evolving law department challenges.

1. Turning Budgets into Roadmaps

Corporate legal departments are projected to triple their legal technology budgets by 2025, according to Gartner’s 2021 Legal Planning & Budgeting report. Additionally, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s (CLOC) 2021 State of the Industry Report revealed that technology implementation is increasing, a triumph in efficiency for legal operations professionals who often tend to handle as many as five different business areas.

Not surprisingly, efficiency is the principal motivator encouraging general counsel (GC) and chief legal officers (CLOs) in $1B+ organizations to purchase new tech. With legal operations teams seeking to streamline and automate workflows, these purchases prove more than the sum of their parts. They are an integral part of “a defined and actionable legal systems roadmap,” the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) 2021 Legal Technology Report for In-House Counsel says. In fact, 32 percent of respondents in Deloitte’s 2021 State of Legal Operations Survey believe that procuring state-of-the-art e-signature, e-billing and contact management tools have supplied them with the ability to “provide actionable KPIs and reporting without significant manual effort,” maximizing time, energy and expenses saved.

2. Championing Diversity and Inclusion

Not only do diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives contribute to more robust work quality and skyrocket a competitive edge, they simply encapsulate the right thing to do. Still, despite an American Bar Association (ABA) ‘s Model Diversity Survey determining a marked leap in diversity among in-house counsel senior leadership, only 11.5% of GCs at Fortune 1000 companies were ethnic or racial minorities.

There is good news, though: post-pandemic, the number-one priority that legal operations professionals cite is implementing a D&I program.

Bloomberg’s 2021 Legal Operations Survey concluded that diversity is bolstered by both tracking metrics and introducing new processes, such as internal diversity training, more remote work opportunities and forward-thinking recruiting patterns. Also imperative? Holding vendors, namely law firms, responsible for the same standards of diversity and inclusion.

Three trailblazing companies that have elevated D&I are Intel, Uber and Novartis AG. Corporate legal departments can start by asking their current law firms to complete the ABA Model Diversity Survey and combining that data with D&I information from RFPs in a centralized legal solution.

3. Bridging Cybersecurity and Compliance Gaps

With data breaches on the inevitable rise and the average cost of a breach $4.24 million, it’s no wonder that 57% of the respondents in an ACC survey noted the urgency of having a “comprehensive data management strategy to ensure compliance, defensibility and security.”

Legal operations are an essential puzzle piece in comprehensive cybersecurity. Law.com stresses that organizations collaborate with IT to conduct data security and privacy measure audits focusing on consumer protection. The American Bar Association revealed that only 43% of those surveyed use encryption, and only 39% execute multi-factor authentication. Because remote work protocols dramatically augment technical vulnerabilities and cost over $1M more per breach, investing in a secure multi-factor authentication tool is fundamental for risk management.

4. Capturing the Power of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer merely a visionary trick in sci-fi flicks: its tech has helped lawyers and legal operations professionals analyze data patterns and generate business insights.

AI has proven especially vital in legal contract review software by reviewing thousands of contracts simultaneously, migrating legacy contracts and exporting data in under five seconds. Studies show that its functional aptitude for performing first-pass reviews makes even the newest users more than 51% productive and 34% efficient.

Those percentages provide a compelling argument for AI when extrapolated across a legal department. Whereas an average company has 55 lawyers who review a total of 9,526 contracts annually, AI can propel the same legal team to process 4,906 more each year. That’s analogous to hiring 28 additional lawyers!

Another bonus? Saving in-house counsel countless hours while circumventing the 9.2% average value “leakage.”

5. Realizing the Win-Win of AFAs

Alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) have often been branded with a bad reputation. That’s likely due to many legal departments fearing they may pay more with an AFA than an hourly fee. However, the tide is slowly changing as the average amount of AFA revenue across AmLaw 200 firms has consistently increased since 2018.

However, AFAs –which offer benefits for spend management over traditional billable hours—can be incredibly advantageous for clients, legal operations teams and law firms. They provide more control over spend, more reliable billing and a greater capacity for companies to remain on budget.

Generally, the more flexible an AFA, the more appealing it is. Utilizing spend management software to analyze current AFAs and compare vendor rates can help make enterprise-changing decisions.

6. Navigating Data-Driven Vendor Processes

According to a survey of GCs, vendor management is their top priority. This is even though CLOC’s State of the Industry Report revealed only 27% of legal department respondents formally reviewed law firm performance. In such an absence of vendor evaluation guidelines, how can return on investment (ROI) be determined?

This is where legal technology software shines. By assisting legal operations teams in orchestrating a formal vendor performance review process, it can also track vendor metrics, billing compliance, accruals and spend totals, shifting to a data-driven strategy and the most cost-effective business resolutions.

Whether it’s accelerating staff, budget or technology, each of these legal operations trends shares one element: in today’s rapidly metamorphosing world, they are becoming more critical by the day. Embracing change and advancing unrivaled growth with enterprise legal management software, contract management and transformational vendor and diversity programs will revolutionize legal operations in 2022—and long into the future.

Read more about these top legal operations trends by downloading our latest white paper.

Checklist: Importance of Contract Lifecycle Management

Posted on September 8, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Sometimes, a company is so accustomed to a process that people don’t realize how manual it actually is.

This is especially the case for contract management.

Many corporations rely on manual processes to handle contracts, leaning on paper, spreadsheets and email. While it lets you work in programs you use every day, it also means you’re cutting and pasting information into templates, entering data, writing and sending emails, searching for documents and saving items to multiple drives.

The process is a nuisance, yes. But it also invites risks, such inconsistent legal language, a lack of insight into content and status and an inability to anticipate and accommodate renewal data, pricing changes and emerging legal requirements. (We break down more challenges regarding manual contract management in this blog post if you’d like to read more about them.)

What’s the new evolution of contract management?

A contract lifecycle management solution.

It allows companies to capture, automate and analyze the entire contract lifecycle from initiation through approval, compliance and renewals. It eliminates data silos, automates workflows and reduces the overall time spent. Studies have shown that businesses with a streamlined contract lifecycle management process can compress their time to revenue, mitigate risks and increase customer satisfaction. In short, a contract lifecycle management solution contributes value.

Contract Lifecycle Management Solutions Checklist: How to Vet a CLM Solution

How can you pick the best solution? Start with this checklist to ensure that the solutions you’re vetting offer you the features that work best with your corporate legal department.

  • Collaboration – A secure collaborative capability facilitates editing and communication among team members.
  • Client and partner self-service – Highly intuitive, streamlined portals give authorized individuals access to commonly used contract templates and verbiage.
  • Easy-to-access requests – These allow anyone within the corporation to initiate the contract process. They don’t have to set up an account.
  • A central repository – A single source for all contracts and associated documentation means no more searching for information.
  • E-sign capabilities – Timely signatures are vital to the contract process. Users should be able to sign contracts electronically and manage them within the contract lifecycle management software. It should integrate with tier-one e-signature solutions. Upon completion, the solution should automatically store the contract in the central repository with all of the expected notifications without any additional intervention.
  • Routing and approval – The technology should enable the easy building of configurable workflows to route contracts for review and/or approval.
  • Human-centric user interfaces – The system should be intuitive and lightweight, requiring little to no training.
  • Microsoft Word integration – Word is used extensively in creating contracts. An integration with Word captures changes and notes as they occur to contracts, speeding up the entire process.
  • Notifications – Proactive alerts such as notifications or reminders should be sent by the technology as the contract progresses through its lifecycle.
  • Enterprise contract management – The software should manage sell-side, buy-side and corporate contracts.

Are you interested in learning more? Download this white paper: “What to Expect from a Contract Lifecycle Management Solution.” You can also read more about Onit Contract Lifecycle Management or request a demo.

How to Calculate ROI for Contract Lifecycle Management Solutions

Posted on August 27, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

In the last two issues in this series, we explored contract lifecycle management challenges and how to choose the right solution for your organization. In this blog post, we will discuss how to calculate savings metrics for a solution and highlight a company that has won multiple awards for their contract lifecycle management transformation.

ROI for Contract Lifecycle Management Solutions

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions drive efficiencies and savings in many areas of the business – so much so that experts say the right solution will compress time to revenue, mitigate risks by having fewer contractual exceptions and increase customer satisfaction.

However, the question on everyone’s mind is this: What’s the return on investment?

To accurately assess the potential for contract lifecycle management ROI, we developed the Onit Savings Calculator. The calculator factors in time spent on contracts, missed renewals, obligation management needs, sales cycles and realization, rogue spending and expanding spend under contract.

For example, consider a company with more than $850 million a year in legal spend. The calculator determined that the company could save almost $6 million in the first year after deployment and close to $12 million by the third year of use.

Overall, we find that companies have an average cost savings of 9% and a 20% reduction in hours spent on contract review with a contract lifecycle management solution.

The numbers are generally the biggest persuader in whether or not your organization should invest in a contract lifecycle management solution. The savings calculator can help you build the business case and determine which cost-saving or revenue-generating projects to prioritize.

Our industry experts will help you pinpoint your CLM ROI. Visit here to request your evaluation.

An Award-Winning Success Story 

Pearson, a global learning company and an Onit customer, created a new way of delivering legal services. This initiative so transformed the company’s contract processes that it landed them multiple recognitions including:

Pearson, along with Onit partner Morae Global Corporation, developed, implemented and operated an innovative, highly efficient Transaction Service Center as an extension of Pearson’s legal team in support of the company’s businesses worldwide. This included the creation of playbooks, templates, workflows and standardized processes from intake on through drafting, redlining, negotiating, execution and post-execution support, as well as leading training and change management processes.

Morae partnered with Onit to deploy the Onit Apptitude platform that included a web-based “legal front door” for incoming service requests and a contract lifecycle management system for end-to-end processing of contracts. With Onit’s technology, Pearson gained a platform to drive automation, greater standardization, ease of access to information and increased process transparency.

The result: Pearson launched an innovative shared service center that supported commercial transactions worldwide for more than 10,000 users. Its ROI for contract lifecycle management included a 35% cost reduction and 30% improved contract turnaround time.

Bob Mignanelli, senior vice president, chief operating officer, legal, and associate general counsel for technology, strategy and operations for Pearson plc, discusses the project in this on-demand webinar.

Next Steps

We have information to help you through every stage of considering a contract lifecycle management solution.

To start, visit the previous two blog posts in this series on contract lifecycle management:

Next, download our white paper that outlines what to look for in a solution:

Hear what other customers have achieved with Onit contract lifecycle management solutions:

Finally, contact us to: