Year: 2020

The General Counsel’s Guide to AI Based Contract Management

Posted on December 29, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

Essential Steps to Establish a Single Point of Truth

Contracts are the lifeblood of most businesses, yet too many companies lack a comprehensive and effective solution for contract lifecycle management (CLM). Legal departments looking to digitize their contracts will find the most success with a platform technology strategy that avoids creating data silos and serves as a single point of truth for all contract data. Increasingly, most enterprise businesses are looking to AI-based contract automation to help them set up automated legal contract management processes.

Prosus, a global consumer internet company and one of the largest technology investors in the world, recently implemented a new CLM system from Onit with the help of Cognia Law, an international company that helps law departments and law firms find cost-effective, process-optimized, and technology-enabled solutions. Steven Van Oss, Group Sr. Legal Council at Prosus and Tyson Ballard, Head of Legal Consulting at Cognia, recently spoke with Onit to share valuable insights on choosing and implementing the right legal AI and CLM system.

General Counsel Seeks Contract Lifecycle Management

Like many companies, Prosus initially had some technology in place for contract management, but for the most part those solutions relied on legal staff to know how everything operated. At a certain level, such an approach becomes infeasible, as employees leave or the business grows.

Other solutions proved ineffective as pain points developed after implementation. A lack of continued buy-in from colleagues in other departments quickly saw the company back at square one. They had to define their legal automation and contract management needs. They needed a solution that was easy to understand and would allow them to gain insights from the large amount of contract data they had.

The answer was to partner with Cognia to workshop a strategy for legal operations, and it immediately became clear that the legal contract management process was a major pain point. Prosus needed to get a single source of truth for contracts while standardizing processes at the same time. Cognia’s job was to help Prosus navigate the vast jungle of legal tech that exists on the market today to find the right AI-based contract management tool.

Choosing the Right AI-Based Contract Management Tool

It’s critical to understand your people and the legal contract management processes before choosing your technology. You can have the best tool on the market, but if no one actually uses it, it’s essentially worthless.

Prosus had scoured the market and gotten lost in the legal tech jungle. Cognia helped them identify their needs, creating a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves, then guided Prosus through the possibilities and potential solutions.

The right AI-based contract management tool will provide the basic foundations of contract management every legal department needs – a good repository for searching and finding contracts, the ability to import and harness data to help with decision-making and understanding risk, and the ability to generate workflows. Too many solutions focus on a lot of bells and whistles, rather than providing the necessary base functionality for CLM.

Integrations were essential to the general counsel at Prosus. While the company initially focused on their need for CLM, they quickly realized that they needed to manage their vendor compliance efforts as well. The best place to capture vendor data is in your CLM tool, since it serves as a single source of truth for that data. Prosus needed its CLM solution to integrate with ethiXbase, it’s preferred third-party compliance screening tool.

In the end, Prosus got not only its must-haves, but its nice-to-haves, too, with contract lifecycle management from Onit.

Advice for General Counsel Implementing AI-Based Contract Automation

Choosing the right CLM solution isn’t the end of the story – in reality, you’re really only halfway to the contract management goal at that point. Implementing that solution always comes with a few hurdles.

  • The first is timing. Implementation of your AI-based contract automation will almost always take longer than you think it will, since it relies on a large number of internal and external resources to complete. Add more time to your expectations. In other words, hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
  • You should also be prepared to take a deep dive into all your legal contract management processes. Even day-to-day processes that may seem simple to you require an extreme level of detail to implement into your CLM tool. Chances are you’ll be thinking about the processes at a level you never even considered before.
  • Finally, it can be hard to maintain the excitement you had when you first choose your AI-based contract management solution. Throughout the implementation process, it’s important to remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing and stick with it. By keeping to a simple implementation approach, you’ll end up with both your must-haves and your nice-to-haves.

The right contract management solution can change everything for general counsel. Visit here to hear the entire discussion between Prosus, Cognia and Onit on creating a single point of truth for your legal contracts.

Onit Takes Home Three More Awards in 2020 for Rapid Growth

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

As 2020 draws to a close, Onit is proud to announce that it has won three more awards, including the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, the Growjo 10K and the Vet100.

Deloitte 2020 Technology Fast 500

Deloitte has named Onit to its distinguished 2020 Technology Fast 500 list, an annual ranking of the fastest-growing North American companies in the technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, and energy tech sectors. Onit landed at #190 on the list, with a three-year growth of 641%.

This is the third consecutive year Onit has been included on this prestigious list.

The rankings over the years demonstrate a consistent increase for Onit. Last year, we ranked #249 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 with a percentage growth of 441%. In 2018, we landed at #264 with a three-year growth of 327%.

Technology Fast 500 awardees are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2016 to 2019. Overall, the 2020 Technology Fast 500 companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 175% to 106,508% over the three-year time frame, with a median growth rate of 450%.

You can view the entire Technology Fast 500 list here.

The Growjo 10K, an Exclusive List of the World’s Fastest-Growing Companies

For the second consecutive year, Onit is honored to be included in the 4th edition of the Growjo 10K, a list of the world’s fastest-growing companies. Growjo evaluates more than one million companies for the list each year.

This year, Onit scored #648.

Growjo also ranks the 10,000 on its list by geography and industry – meaning that Onit earned additional recognition, including:

  • #4 for the fastest-growing companies in Houston
  • #20 for the fastest-growing companies in Texas
  • #52 for the fastest-growing companies in technology services

Growjo, the leader in identifying the list of the top growing companies in the world, utilizes unique growth indicators like revenue growth, alternative competition analysis, valuation increases, funding news, hiring announcements, job openings, leadership team developments and other financials.

Click here to see the Growjo 10K report.

The Vet100, a List of the Fastest-Growing Veteran-Owned Businesses

Finally, Onit has been named to the annual Vet100, a compilation of the nation’s fastest-growing veteran-owned businesses. The ranking, created in partnership with Inc. Magazine and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF), was born out of the iconic Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies based in the U.S. Both distinctions are considered hallmarks of entrepreneurial success.

Onit’s co-founder and CEO, Eric M. Elfman, served in the Navy for 10 years and credits it for helping him define his entrepreneurial path. As he told the One Million by One Million blog earlier this year:

“I had a different educational journey compared to a lot of entrepreneurs. I dropped out of high school when I was in 10th grade and joined the Navy. The Navy turned me around and straightened me out. It helped me understand that the path from a high school dropout to running a successful business required education. My experience in the Navy showed me the need to get my GED and go to college. I eventually got my MBA here at Rice University.”

“Military experience provides veteran entrepreneurs with skills and knowledge we know to be valuable in the business world,” said Mike Haynie, Syracuse University Vice Chancellor and IVMF Founder and Executive Director. “The growth of this year’s list is a hopeful and inspiring indication of how important and valuable veteran entrepreneurs are to our society and economy. These businessmen and women not only served in defense of our collective freedom and security, they now continue to serve by bettering the economies in their communities and across the country. We are proud to partner again with Inc. magazine and are grateful for their efforts to shine a spotlight on the success of veteran-owned businesses.”

For more information on the Inc. Vet100 List, visit here.

Additional 2020 Awards

This year, Onit has won more than 10 awards – many of them linked to the company’s cumulative growth and increased revenue over the past three to five years. Inc. included Onit on its Inc. 5000 (#737) and 250 Fastest-Growing Companies in Texas (#70) as well as its Private Titans list, which names the 1,000 largest iconic private companies in the United States. The Financial Times placed Onit as #153 on its 500 Fastest-Growing Companies in the Americas award, and the Houston Business Journal ranked the company number nine on its 2020 Fast 100 list and number three on its inaugural Middle Market 50 awards.

Onit is positioned to continue its assertive growth in 2021. In the past 19 months, we have acquired SimpleLegal, McCarthyFinch and AXDRAFT. In November, Onit introduced AI technology with its second platform, the Precedent Intelligence Platform, and ReviewAI, software that uses artificial intelligence to quickly review, redline and edit all types of contracts. Now, Onit is the only company in its space with two platforms – Precedent and Apptitude, its no-code business process and automation platform. Additionally, we’ve continued hiring in the pandemic, adding 140 new employees worldwide this year alone.

These awards would not have been possible without the exceptional dedication of the entire Onit team and our amazing customers. In 2021, we will continue to focus on what we value the most: our customers, our people and our passion for legal technology and innovation. Thank you to everyone!

Legal Operations Experts Have Hacked the House; Now, We Have a Hackathon Winner

Posted on December 18, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

They came. They saw. They hacked. And now, Onit has a Hack the House winner!

In October, Onit launched its first hackathon – Hack the House. The friendly competition consisted of Onit customers, partners and staff seeing who can build the most useful and compelling workflow and collaboration solution using the Onit Apptitude platform.

Five teams accepted the Hack the House challenge. They include legal and business experts, certified App Builders and project managers. Within three weeks, each group identified a corporate legal department challenge, defined the requirements and built the solution from scratch using Apptitude.

Team Europe created the Data Breach Incident Reporting App to report a data breach in compliance with GDPR and other data privacy regulations. Many organizations currently use spreadsheets, phone calls, and emails – a highly manual process that is the perfect candidate for Apptitude automation. Their Hack the House App simplifies the process and helps meet expectations by regulators in Europe that reporting must happen within 72 hours from the point of breaches.

Team HR wanted to veer away from the traditional goal-setting and reviewing goals with a supervisor with their mentorship and career development App. Their Hack the House solution is a combination of several Apps for mentors, mentees and project opportunities. Users select areas of interest and then anyone across the company can find them and invite them to participate in special projects in their area of interest. Employees then gain more exposure throughout an organization to progress their careers.

Team IP focused on the trademark renewal decision process for Hack the House, one they identified as a challenge for any company that owns a significant number of trademarks worldwide. They combined Apps into a solution that streamlines the communication out to global teams, alerting them that it is time to make decisions about whether to renew trademarks or not. It gathers feedback on why decisions were made and automates the process for trademarks that will unquestionably be renewed. The team also built an additional App that tracks who in an organization has access to which trade secrets.

Team Diversity created an App to help law departments establish a baseline for diversity statistics and tracking. Using the App, a legal operations professional can gather a high-level view of a law firm’s diversity efforts, track historical progress and report on efforts. The App sends law firms a survey where they can upload their diversity stats and initiatives. They based the App on the ABA Model Diversity Survey to align with existing industry standards.

Team Pro Bono Program Management wanted to help pro bono leadership track, manage, recognize and report on time spent by attorneys and be able to thank each one for their volunteer efforts. Their Hack the House App centralizes requests and gives lawyers a space to collaborate with internal resources and third parties such as outside counsel on pro bono initiatives. Users can easily report out the work to different bar associations or internally. Best of all, it helps show appreciation for pro bono work in the form of automated document generation for thank you letters.

Judging Hack the House

The five judges found an impressive array of solutions to evaluate. The panel included:

  • Maria Anassutzi, Lead IP Counsel EMEA, Canon Europe
  • William Hayes, Senior Lawyer, BBC
  • Mary Shirley, Head Of Culture Of Integrity And Compliance Education, FMCNA
  • Jonathan Powers, Director Of Learning & Development, Onit
  • Kristi Gedid, Senior Director, Global Legal Operations, Mylan

They judged based on a variety of criteria, including the ambition of the idea, how closely it fit with the original idea, the ease of use and the constructed App’s completeness. They also had a helping hand from hundreds of voters in the legal space.

“It was awesome to see the level of work and the thought that everybody put into their respective projects,” commented Mary Shirley, a judge and Head Of Culture Of Integrity And Compliance Education, FMCNA. “There is going to be a lot of real-world use for the Apps that have been produced. I had a fantastic time being a judge.”

“This hackathon made me feel empowered – not only as a judge but also as someone who works in and heads up legal teams,” said William Hayes, judge and Senior Lawyer at BBC. “I say empowered because I work with data scientists and technologists and developers, and often we are relying on them to try to get a solution developed. Seeing what the hackathon teams did with Apptitude, I feel like I can take my legal team now and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to do it ourselves.’ We can use these tools. We can use these ideas and create something ourselves. So it was empowering. I think that was something that I didn’t expect.”

After much deliberation and admiration for all the teams and their Apps, the judges selected the winner.

And the Winner Is …

TEAM IP!

Congratulations to Team IP and all the teams!

Thank you to everyone who participated in Hack the House.

Team EU

  • Ed Rastelli, Standard Chartered Bank
  • Lee Harrison, BT Group
  • Robert Johnson, Onit
  • Claire Banham, Onit
  • Alyssa Kokilah, Cognia Law
  • Tyler Reno, Onit

Team HR

  • Curtis Batterton, McDonald’s
  • Chris Hultgren, Deere and Company
  • Weston Wicks, Morae Global
  • Brett Baccus, Morae Global
  • Dipish Parmar, Morae Global
  • David Duffey, Onit

Team IP

  • Matt Burdman, Colgate Palmolive
  • Ken Capece, Colgate Palmolive
  • Ed Kelly, Colgate Palmolive
  • Nadine Stuttle, Duff and Phelps
  • Rebecca Cotton, Duff and Phelps
  • Atlantis Langowski, Onit
  • Larry Gianneschi, Colgate Palmolive
  • Josie Johnson, Onit

Team Diversity

  • Eric Kabot, Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD.
  • Michele Compasso, Corteva Agriscience
  • Gregg McConnell, Corteva Agriscience
  • Jesse Viani, Onit
  • Sam Lu, Consilio
  • Lisa Morris,  Consilio
  • Debby Young, Consilio
  • Rhonda Oliver, Onit

Team Pro Bono

  • Nick Panagoplos, Chubb
  • Kim Takacs, Chubb
  • Paige Edwards, Onit
  • Massimo Penzo, Morae Global

Thank you also to Cosmonauts, who collaborated with Onit on Hack the House.

The Latest Onit Acquisition: Your Contracts Drafted 10 Times Faster with Document Automation from AXDRAFT

Posted on December 17, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Hear Onit’s CEO and the General Manager of AXDRAFT discuss Onit’s latest acquisition and what it means for contract lifecycle management, document automation and contract drafting in our latest podcast below.

AxDraft - An Onit Company

Drafting contracts just got easier with document automation from AXDRAFT – now an independent Onit subsidiary.

Onit announced the acquisition of the Y Combinator-backed company today. AXDRAFT – now AXDRAFT, an Onit Company – enables in-house counsel to draft legal documents 10 times faster and complete contracts like nondisclosure agreements and service agreements in less than five minutes.

This is Onit’s second acquisition announcement in 30 days. In November, Onit acquired legal AI company McCarthyFinch and immediately launched Precedent, its intelligence platform, and ReviewAI, software that accelerates contract review by up to 70% and improves user productivity by more than 50%.

Continued Contract Lifecycle Management Innovation

The AXDRAFT acquisition addresses Onit’s commitment to innovating its offerings, especially contract lifecycle management (CLM).

“Disruption is in Onit’s DNA, from launching the industry’s first no-code business process and automation platform, Apptitude, to bringing machine learning and natural language processing to the practice of contracting with Precedent and ReviewAI. We’re also the first in our space to offer two platforms, one for workflow automation and one for artificial intelligence. AXDRAFT is a disruptor to old-line businesses in the document automation space. Our guidance and resources will help the company scale significantly, secure new customers worldwide and contribute to Onit’s aggressive growth strategy,” said Onit’s CEO and co-founder Eric M. Elfman.

Addressing the Challenges of Contract Drafting with AXDRAFT

The contract drafting process comes with multiple challenges – especially when a corporate legal department has a high volume of them to complete. It’s highly manual, repetitive and time-consuming. Plus, as a manual process, there are numerous ways to make mistakes.

AXDRAFT breaks that cycle with its document automation by providing lightning-speed, error-free and multilingual contract drafting.

Yuriy Zaremba, co-founder of AXDRAFT and now its General Manager, understands these challenges firsthand.

“When I was a lawyer, I experienced how routine legal work can be when you draft the same types of documents over and over again. It’s a process that invites mistakes and keeps attorneys from focusing on higher-value contributions,” he explained. “AXDRAFT drafts the contracts and other legal documents in less than five minutes, making it significantly easier for legal professionals to maintain accuracy and collaborate with the businesses they support. We’re excited to join Onit and begin the next phase of our company’s evolution.”

Fueling AXDRAFT is a proprietary algorithm created by its co-founder and now CTO, Oleg Zaremba. The algorithm enables streamlined and extensible document drafting in any language, including Chinese and Japanese. It supports live document preview and data integrations to transform complex documents into simple Q&A processes. Another important distinction: AXDRAFT onboards customers’ documents at no cost, making it a truly turnkey solution.

AXDRAFT is available immediately as a stand-alone, out-of-the-box document automation tool.

Listen to the Latest Episode of Onit’s Podcast 

You can hear more about the acquisition in this podcast interview featuring Eric M. Elfman and Yuriy Zaremba.

To find out more about the AXDRAFT acquisition:

  • Read the press release.
  • If you are an Onit customer, speak with your account manager.
  • Visit the AXDRAFT website at AXDRAFT.com.

 

 

Reporting Tips from Legal Operations Professionals: How to Get It Done Right

Posted on December 15, 2020 by - Enterprise Legal Management

There’s a business quote you might have heard about analytics: “Data will talk if you listen.” Indeed, savvy corporate legal departments are increasing their investments in legal operations and technology to “hear” how they are performing. In return, legal operations professionals have evolved into dedicated analytics experts, turning data from sources such as e-billing and matter management into cross-departmental bastions of intelligence.

Viatris (formerly Mylan), a global Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company with products marketed in 165 countries and territories, is no exception. Its legal operations team is well versed in capturing and interpreting legal data.  Kristi Anne Gedid, Sr. Director Global Legal Operations, Eric Wallas, Legal Finance Manager and Brandt Gray, Sr. Manager Business Analysis, recently partnered with Onit to share their best practices on legal reporting.

How to Maintain Data Integrity

One of the fundamental steps of reporting is data integrity. We’ve all heard the saying “garbage in, garbage out.” To bypass that result, the legal operations experts at Viatris have these seven tips.

  1. Keep data clean, consistent and concise – It all starts with intake. Any information – whether e-billing, invoices, timekeeper rates or financial data – must be kept clean and compatible with expectations or it won’t tell a true story.
  2. Monitor data moving between systems – Typically, once approvals are reached for invoices, that data moves into a company’s financial system. Then, it often cycles back into an enterprise legal management system to update payment records. Monitor that lifecycle of data movement to ensure no wires are crossed and all data is transferred/updated appropriately.
  3. Remember currency conversions – When you’re working with law firms in different jurisdictions, data undergoes changes based on countries and currency conversions. Ensure the data is always aligned, especially as it moves year-to-year and throughout different companies, benchmarks and exchange rates. Report in the same and consistent currency.
  4. Set consistent parameters – However your accounting function is set to track invoices (billing period dates, invoice payment dates, etc.), keeping this consistent helps with alignment between different business units.
  5. Consider taxonomy – Lean on this scientific process of naming, defining and classifying groups of information based on shared characteristics. This is especially important when you’re moving data from an old e-billing system to a new one. Don’t give a thousand drop-down options when 20 will suffice.
  6. Blend data – If you’re introducing other data sources from other systems or even spreadsheets, try to keep blended data clean.
  7. Update data – Ensure everyone is aligned when making modifications to your enterprise legal management system, such as adding fields. These changes will have to be incorporated into reporting and accurately reflected.

The legal operations team also shared their tips on identifying basics like big numbers, providing data-driven answers and the best ways to drill down into data. Visit here to hear their entire discussion. Titled “Legal Operations Reporting Done Right,” it is part of Onit’s Lean into LegalOps online learning initiative. You can sign up to join the complimentary program that connects legal operations professionals around the world here.

 

Three Surveys of Interest for Legal Operations Management Professionals

Posted on December 10, 2020 by - Business Process Management

Data is the cornerstone of operations, which is why this blog post focuses on three surveys of particular interest for legal operations management professionals.

Data, Business Strategy and Higher Profitability 

In the 20th Global C-Suite Study, IBM surveyed more than 13,000 C-suite executives around the world to learn more about their organizations’ use of data and how they drive value from it. The study identified four stages of the data journey, including highly sophisticated Torchbearers who have aligned their data strategy with their business strategy, and Aspirationals, those who are just beginning to capture and explore the value of their data.

Unsurprisingly, the Torchbearers lead all other levels in revenue growth, profitability, innovation and managing change.

How do they manage this? The study provides numerous details, but one area in particular is especially helpful. To gather, share and eventually drive better business performance with data, Torchbearers adopt and extend their business platforms to external parties like partners and customers. It provides this example: “A platform that links real estate agents, home inspectors, insurers, and mortgage lenders, for example, puts the customer at the center of a more seamless experience.”

This approach can be replicated with similar success within the microcosm of corporate legal. With a unified, intuitive platform, corporate legal can collaborate across the enterprise (marketing, sales, R&D, HR and more) and outside of it with law firms, legal service providers and other stakeholders. Not only is the level of support and responsiveness enhanced, but legal operations are collecting valuable data to analyze for performance, spend and more.

Modernizing Legal Service Delivery

The 2020 Legal Operations Survey from Deloitte found that 86% of in-house counsel see “an opportunity to modernize legal services provided to their stakeholders.” However, they still have obstacles to overcome, such as a high-volume of time spent handling manual tasks (71%) and a lack of metrics to provide insight into completed work for in-house lawyers and external parties.

Legal operations professionals might find this data point especially interesting:

“77% of respondents felt their legal systems were not integrated with a consistent data taxonomy to allow for visibility into workflows and real-time data.”

The Pandemic Proves Just How Valuable Legal Operations Management Professionals Are to Their Employers

A new survey covered by Law.com shows the pandemic’s effect on corporate legal.  Altman Weil’s survey gathered responses from more than 100 CLOs, finding that 66% of them say the pandemic has decreased their companies’ revenues. Unsurprisingly, 44% say they will reduce 2021 budgets. A decrease in money correlates with these data points:

  • One-third said they have requested additional discounts from law firms
  • 11% said their law departments had to lay off employees
  • 77% said their workloads have increased

One bright spot: Legal operations professionals are invaluable during times like these and law departments recognize this. The survey found that:

“None of the CLO participants reported that their companies had laid off a legal operations manager during the past year. Meanwhile, 75% of legal departments with 50 or more lawyers had at least one legal operations manager in the house and half of all CLOs said they had someone in that role in their department … ”

Investing in legal operations has been an ongoing trend. For example, the CLOC 2020 State of the Industry Report found that:

The size of Legal Operations functions has continued to increase through a combination of full-time employees (FTEs) and contractors as teams demonstrate more impact.

Conclusion

Legal operations management professionals continue to approach their data-driven discipline with innovation. Here are three examples.

  • The Onit Hack the House hackathon, where they had three weeks to create Apps that address critical business challenges across IP, HR, compliance and more. (Voting on the winning App is open to everyone, by the way. Your vote enters you for a chance to win an electric scooter. The link also includes demos.)
  • Three teams of legal operations experts debated the best way to control costs for a fictional corporate legal department. You can see who won here.
  • The Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference featured a presentation with a head of legal operations, a partner for an AmLaw 200 law firm and a Legal Lean Sigma expert to explain how they worked together to create stronger relationships and results. You can read more about that here.

Legal ReviewAI and Drafting with AI Improves Productivity

Posted on December 8, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

Legal contract review and drafting can take up to 70% of an in-house legal department’s time. The process is often painfully tedious and repetitive – especially if it is paper-based or spread across multiple systems like emails and private drives. Without a more effective digital enablement, the process to review and draft legal contracts is slow and inconsistent, requires enormous attention to detail and continues to be prone to costly errors. These challenges directly impact a company’s ability to reach favorable contract outcomes and achieve business objectives.

With ever-increasing pressure on legal teams to do more with less, enhancing contract efficiency through automation and the latest technologies represent a significant opportunity to improve business performance.

Artificial intelligence, specifically legal contract AI, has the power to deliver significant productivity gains and allow lawyers to utilize their skills, experience and talent on higher-value business objectives. Onit undertook a study of its AI for the pre-signature contract phase, ReviewAI, to determine just how much it can help and found commendable results (you can read more about them here.)

Key takeaways from the contract AI study include:

  • Testers found that ReviewAI accelerated legal contract reviews and approvals by up to 70% and increased legal team productivity by more than 50%.
  • New users were immediately 34% more efficient with their time and 51.5% more productive. The average midsize company employs 28 lawyers who review 4,850 contracts annually. Unlocking more capacity – up to 51.5% – means those same lawyers can now process 2,498 more contracts annually. It’s like adding nine lawyers to your team.
  • The team leader, a senior lawyer, was able to reallocate 15% of his time from contract work and team management to higher-value activities.
  • The efficiency and productivity gains from using ReviewAI increased over time, allowing corporate legal departments to optimize team performance, reallocate resources to engage the business better and reduce the amount of contract work handled by external counsel.

To learn more about legal contract AI software, contract review and drafting, read about the study’s results.

 

These Legal Operations Pros Hacked the House. Now You Decide Which App Wins.

Posted on December 3, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Three weeks ago, Onit kicked off its inaugural legal operations hackathon – Hack the House. The friendly competition, which includes Onit customers, partners and staff, has one goal: to see who can best use Onit Apptitude to solve challenges faced by legal departments and the business units they support.

Now, we need your vote to determine who will win Hack the House.

Five teams of legal operations experts have created Onit Apptitude Apps that address challenges in areas such as HR, IP, data breaches, diversity and Pro Bono work. (You can see demos of each App here.)

App: Data Breach Incident Reporting

Team Name: Team EU

Members:

  • Robert Johnson, Onit
  • Claire Banham, Onit
  • Alyssa Kokilah, Cognia Law
  • Ed Rastelli, Standard Chartered Bank
  • Lee Harrison, BT Group
  • Tyler Reno, Onit

Organizations must take immediate action to report potential data breaches to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 72 hours. Team EU created joined the legal operations hackathon to build an App that reports, manages and tracks data breaches and notifies regulators. It collects data breach information, automatically sends a notice to the security and compliance team and offers a rules-based dashboard and a quick entry point to review records. It even generates ICO reports and submits them in addition to collecting feedback from the organization.

App: Mentorship and Career Development

Team Name: Team HR

Members:

  • Weston Wicks, Morae Global
  • Brett Baccus, Morae Global
  • Dipish Parmar, Morae Global
  • Curtis Batterton, McDonald’s
  • Chris Hultgren, Deere and Company
  • David Duffey, Onit

Team HR, or rather “Hackathon Royalty,” created an App that allows people seeking professional development to connect to people who can offer it. Mentors and mentees can access the App to fill out a short intake form and provide information about themselves, their areas of interest and hobbies. It alerts users of new projects that align with their interests, giving them the ability to review and apply. Overall, it enables self-serve professional development while allowing a central administration to oversee the process.

App: Trademark Renewals and Trade Secrets Access Management

Team name: Team IP

Members:

  • Nadine Stuttle, Duff and Phelps
  • Rebecca Cotton, Duff and Phelps
  • Matt Burdman, Colgate Palmolive
  • Ken Capece, Colgate Palmolive
  • Atlantis Langowski, Onit
  • Larry Gianneschi, Colgate Palmolive
  • Josie Johnson, Onit

 Team IP, who consider themselves the “dark horse” in this legal operations hackathon, has used Apptitude to automate the annual trademark renewal process. This exercise typically includes highly manual work and often relies on stakeholders in various regions and departments to decide whether to renew or not. The App streamlines the process, providing visibility into the status of each trademark renewal and automating some of the communications and reminders involved while gathering decisions.

App: Vendor and Law Firm Diversity Tracking

Team name: Team Diversity

Members:

  • Eric Kabot, Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD.
  • Michele Compasso, Corteva Agriscience
  • Gregg McConnell, Corteva Agriscience
  • Jesse Viani, Onit
  • Sam Lu, Consilio
  • Lisa Morris, Consilio
  • Debby Young, Consilio
  • Rhonda Oliver, Onit

Team Diversity has devised an App-based solution to help expand opportunities for diversity and an equal opportunity workspace. Using the App, a legal operations professional can gather a high-level view of each of their law firm’s diversity efforts, as well as track historical progress and report on efforts. The App sends law firms a survey to gather the information, where they can share their diversity status and initiatives.

App: Pro Bono Program Management

Team Name: Team Pro Bono

Members:

  • Nick Panagoplos, Chubb
  • Kim Takacs, Chubb
  • Paige Edwards, Onit
  • Massimo Penzo, Morae Global

For decades, lawyers have volunteered their time and expertise to donate legal services to those in need. In recognition of this effort, Team Pro Bono has built a solution to help Pro Bono leadership track, manage, recognize and report on time spent by attorneys of these programs. The App provides details for Pro Bono opportunities, including the location and can volunteer via the App. Using the App, Pro Bono program administrators can generate thank you notes to participants and review and report on all Pro Bono activities employees participated in.

Vote now!

Now it’s your turn. Choose the team you think has built the best App and vote for your favorite! Voting closes on Friday, December 11 at 5 p.m. EST, so vote soon.

As a thank you for your vote, we will enter you for a chance to win an electric scooter –  the same grand prize the hackathon winners will receive. The winner of the scooter will be selected at random from the public voting pool.

We invite you to join us on December 15 at 11 a.m. EST for the Hack the House winner announcement.

Many thanks to Cosmonauts, who collaborated with us on Hack the House. And many thanks to everyone who participated. All the teams and their Apps are already considered winners!

The Great Debate: Three Teams of Legal Operations Management Experts Explore How to Reduce Outside Counsel Expenses

Posted on December 2, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The general counsel of your $30 billion conglomerate approaches you with a request. As the new GC, she’s looking to make her mark while addressing the unique challenges brought on by COVID. She’s tasked you with a critical mission: Discover how the corporate legal department can reduce outside counsel expenses.

This was the hypothetical scenario presented in a recent debate hosted by Buying Legal Council and Onit. Three teams of legal operations professionals examined how to accomplish this for this fictional company, which has $200 million in legal spend, a panel of 100-200 law firms and 75 internal staff in multiple countries. Here’s an overview of what each team proposed.

Team One: Bring More Work In-House

Members:

  • William Bremner, Sr. Director, Law Department Management, Consilio (captain)
  • Vianka Wong, Sr. Corporate Paralegal, Tronox
  • Roycee Hasuko, Director of Product Engagement, SimpleLegal

The first team proposed in-house staffing optimization, including work analysis and skills assessment, to preserve in-house positions while maximizing existing resources. This included a value review of all outside counsel work based on a level of complexity, quality and cost. Based on this research and resulting analytics, the team proposed a Legal Entity Management beta program that brought more work in-house and resulted in 60% program savings. When extrapolated to an entire year, the team found a potential for outside counsel savings of $34 million.

Team Two: Leverage Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) More

Members:

  • Robin Snasdell, Managing Director, Consilio (captain)
  • Jo Ellen Hatfield, Sr. Manager, Procurement Professional Services, Bunge Ltd.
  • Brad Rogers, COO and Chief of Staff, TIAA

Team Two determined that the best way to achieve savings with the lowest risk and better results is to leverage ALSPs. This “replacement cost revolution” relies on new firms offering alternative ways to get work done at a lower cost.  Lawyers spend 25% of their time below their license and permanent staff can eventually end up overqualified. The ALSPs offer numerous opportunities, including costing three to seven times less than in-house or law firms, instant access to talent and expertise and the ability to “plug and play” repetitive tasks with established and consistent performance metrics.

Team Three: Renegotiate Terms With Existing Outside Counsel

Members:

  • Silvia Hodges-Silverstein, Buying Legal Council (captain)
  • Greg Kaple, Sr. Director Legal Department, Kaiser Foundation
  • Richard Brzakala, Director Global Legal Services, CIBC

Team Three advocated for renegotiation to focus on transparency, partnership and innovation. In this scenario, the company’s relationship with firms goes beyond transactional work. However, there is still the need to balance the value of those relationships with the company’s fiscal responsibility to shareholders ahead of a potential economic downturn. The team recommends cost management actions such as a temporary moratorium on market-rate increases, budgeting, leveraging technology to reduce costs and an emphasis on working effectively and efficiently. As a result, cost savings could measure up to $1.75 million with information security mitigating against higher costs on items such as class action litigation and increased insurance premiums.

After a round of questions from GC judges Stasha Jain of Onit and Michael Flanagan of Consilio, debate attendees selected the winning team.

We won’t spoil the results here, but we do invite you to watch the recorded debate to learn about the strategy and tactics recommended by each team. Congratulations to all the teams on their insightful work.

This debate is part of  Lean Into LegalOps, a virtual learning and networking program for legal operations professionals worldwide. For notices of future educational events, sign up here.

From the CEO’s Desk: 2020 – A Year in Review

Posted on December 2, 2020 by - Legal Operations

It’s been nine months since we last set foot in our New York City office, shared stories with each other “around the water cooler”, grabbed lunch with coworkers, or held company-wide meetings in-person – rather than in “gallery view”.

We could have never predicted how tumultuous 2020 would be: A global pandemic, an economic crisis, civil unrest, racial injustice – all amidst an election year, no less! 

As a startup, we’re accustomed to being scrappy and adapting on the fly, but I think it’s safe to say that 2020 has certainly redefined what that means. As I replay the last several months in my head, I’m in awe. Despite the challenges, the uncertainty, the spotty WiFi connections, the guest appearances by our kids in Zoom meetings, and the journey to maneuver the “new normal”, Bodhala has thrived.

Spend management has never been more important – and it shows. 2020 has undoubtedly been the biggest year yet for our business. I’m incredibly proud of our team’s commitment to our mission, and can’t wait to see what 2021 will hold for Bodhala. 

Check out these highlights from 2020: 

$10M Series A Funding 

In March we closed our first institutional round with a $10M growth investment led by Edison Partners. Edison Partners understood our mission to create a transparent market for legal services by leveraging data to drive price discovery and innovation. Since our funding we’ve expanded our product, accelerated our sales and marketing efforts, and enhanced our machine learning to deliver even more to our clients. Edison has been a fantastic partner over the last several months and we look forward to continued success in our partnership.

New Product Features

We’ve enhanced the product tremendously over the course of the year, rolling out new features that will better serve our clients. Take a look at a few of the new features we launched in 2020 to help clients surface sophisticated insights on their outside counsel spend:

  • AmLaw 100 Market Benchmarking – Compare firm rates against relevant AmLaw 100 competitors, on everything from matter-type to partner-hours and gain the upper-hand in your law firm negotiations.
  • Internal Benchmarking: Firm Report Cards – Compare individual firms against relevant competitors in your panel, with granular rate analysis by practice area or matter type. Shareable benchmarking reports for each firm drive transparency and encourage better business practices
  • Savings Calculator – Instantly calculates overall impact to your spend, allowing you to drill down on rates across firms, practice areas, and matter types to identify savings opportunities.

New Partnership – And More To Come!

We recently launched our partnership with Mitratech, a leading global provider of legal and compliance software. The combination of Mitratech’s robust workflow and eBilling solutions with Bodhala’s proprietary machine-learning engine will allow companies to visualize their legal spend data in new ways and unearth powerful insights that support better business outcomes. Mitratech is a pillar in the legal tech industry, and we are thrilled to integrate Bodhala’s market intelligence with their world-class solutions to deliver sophisticated insights to our customers.

And look out for more exciting partnerships in 2021!

Diversity Report: Dismantling the Barriers to Racial Diversity at Elite Law Firms

At Bodhala, we believe that everyone has a part to play in the fight for equality. We wanted to take action that could help drive real change, going beyond the virtue-signaling we so often see from others. So, we put our minds to addressing the stark lack of diversity in the legal profession, specifically the dismal number of Black equity partners at elite law firms. Our report, “Dismantling the Barriers to Racial Diversity at Elite Law Firms,” takes a deep dive into the history of this issue, the minimal progress that has been made over the past few decades, and offers concrete steps corporate legal departments can take to hold their law firms accountable. I am incredibly proud of the work each member of our team is doing to address this issue and we’re hopeful that true change will come. 

Awards & Recognition

We’re honored and humbled to be recognized as the Legal Spend Management Innovation of the Year by Legal Tech Breakthrough and as an Emerging Startup of Legal Tech by Tracxn. 

Read All About It!

In a year filled with such big news for Bodhala, we’ve been fortunate enough to have numerous media outlets take interest in the work we’re doing to transform the legal industry. From discussing the opacity of the legal services market on Nasdaq Trade Talks to diving into Big Law’s Lebron James problem with Industrial Exchange to sharing insights on hypothetical election outcomes with Radiolab, we’re thrilled to be a source of industry knowledge for such reputable outlets. 

It’s safe to say that we’re all more than ready to bid adieu to 2020, but there’s no denying that this year was a defining moment for Bodhala. Strong teams are the foundation of success and I am incredibly proud of the tireless efforts of each team member here.

Stay tuned because we’ve got more exciting news, new features, and great content coming in 2021! 

Looking forward to a bigger, better, and healthier 2021, 

Raj

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.