Year: 2020

Listen to Onit’s CEO Eric M. Elfman Discuss 2019 Milestones

Posted on January 30, 2020 by - Company News and Events

It’s time again for another stimulating Onit podcast! In this episode, Onit’s CEO and founder Eric M. Elfman discusses the company’s amazing milestone achievements attained in 2019.

Eric starts by offering a birds-eye view of Onit’s stellar growth in 2019. The company’s revenue grew 75% over 2018, and recurring revenue grew a whopping 68 percent. According to Eric, the acquisition of SimpleLegal was the most exciting milestone of the year. It was our first acquisition and signifies the beginning of Onit’s plan to “integrate companies into the whole.”

Eric then speaks a bit about what he thinks of the legal operations market, explaining that Onit is poised to take advantage of two key themes. One theme is a sharp focus on process and how we can help lawyers and paralegals be more efficient. The other theme is “platform,” meaning that we need to get more features, functionality and products out of fewer vendors, so there are less failure points in integration.

Eric goes on to comment on what it is that customers can expect from Onit. “2020 will be the year of the customer,” he says, pointing out that superior implementations, delivery, support and expansion are all part of the recipe. “In fact,” he says, “we’re developing two more products that in 2021 will become the next CLM product.” Eric also mentions that his mission as a company is to deliver one brand new product in an entirely new market each year.

In closing, Eric explained what keeps him up at night. You’ll have to listen to the podcast but he did say that running a large, complex company will only continue to get bigger and more complex!

Legaltech 2020 – Demos, Dining, Drinks and maybe even Dancing with Onit!

Posted on January 28, 2020 by - Company News and Events

What do Mardi Gras, Mediterranean and Modern Technology have in common? They’ll all be featured in Onit’s lineup of activities at Legaltech 2020! Like last year, Onit will be fully energized and busy at Legaltech NY. The New York Hilton Midtown will be bustling with activity, and Onit doesn’t intend to sit on the sidelines.

Onit will be stationed on the third floor near the show registration desks. Here, you’ll find the Onit and SimpleLegal Smart Charge Station, and have the opportunity to see demos of our cutting-edge process automation solutions for enterprise legal management, contracts, legal service request and more. You can learn more about our recent launch of Onit Contract Lifecycle Management, as well as our acquisition of SimpleLegal.

You won’t want to miss this: Onit will be hosting a thought-provoking session titled “Career Up! LegalOps for eDiscovery Professionals & Tech Wonky Attorneys” in the Legal Operations Technology and Emerging Trends Track on February 5 from 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. This session features our own Paige Edwards moderating a discussion between legal operations professionals from Prudential, Toyota and Purdue Pharma. The session will cover career statistics and trends in the legal operations job market, certifications and degrees that matter most, salary guidelines and business of law implications.

And it doesn’t end there. Join Onit, SimpleLegal and NetDocuments for an early Mardi Gras happy hour on February 4 a few blocks from the show at the Dream Hotel for great jazz, cocktails and light bites. The party will get started at our booths during the Legaltech opening reception at 5:00 p.m. and carry on to the Dream Hotel. Get Details and Register here

We also invite you to join an exclusive dinner for in-house legal leaders, co-hosted with Consilio. Enjoy cocktails and a seated dinner at an acclaimed Mediterranean hotspot two blocks from the show. Seats are very limited so request yours today! You can email us at [email protected] or request a seat here.

Last but not least, please schedule time for an Onit demo in our private demo room away from the exhibit hall floor to take a deeper dive into how Onit products can help your legal department better manage legal work, costs and risks. The schedule is nearly full so don’t wait! Request a time slot here.

Onit Named a Top 25 Legal Vendor for 2020

Posted on January 24, 2020 by - Company News and Events

We’re excited to announce that Onit and our sister company, SimpleLegal were both named a Top 25 Legal Vendor for the 2020 OnCon Awards!

The OnCon Icon awards recognize the top professionals and vendors in the world in the areas of marketing, human resources, and legal. The OnCon Icon Award winners are determined by more than 4,500 peer-to-peer votes.

“It is a tremendous honor to be selected as an award winner, as the selection is based off of peer recognition of performance, impact, and contributions. Winners represent many of the most senior leaders from the world’s top organizations. Company winners represent the best vendors as determined by the end user,” commented Sean Tomarelli, Founder & CEO at OnConferences.

Click here to see Onit’s listing.

LegalOps Highlight: News, Trends and Legal Technology Vol. 7

Posted on January 24, 2020 by - Business Process Management

The LegalOps Highlight is a bi-weekly blog series that features relevant news, market trends and legal technology updates from the legal ecosystem. The content is curated from legal and business trade publications, consulting and analyst firms, and Onit | SimpleLegal partners, customers and subject matter experts. Be sure to subscribe and follow Onit and #LegalOpsHighlight on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates!

Highlights


Law firms Still Don't Get Legal OperationsThe Global Legal Post: Law firms Still ‘Don’t Get’ Legal Operations
Since we’ve started the Highlight Blog series we’ve been talking about how important we think having dedicated legal operations staff is, and we’re happy we have another opportunity to beat that drum. At CLOC London, most of day two was spent bringing this point home with legal ops professionals and GCs running an open dialogue. CLOC London attendees now have a better understanding about what makes the most effective legal operations partnerships and are now more equipped than ever to move their organizations toward the future. We would expect to see legal operations become ever more important in Europe as more discussions like these happen. Spoiler alert…Onit and our partner Duff & Phelps might even host a few! Stay tuned.


Alibaba Legal Tech Summit 2019: 5 Key TakeawaysAsian Legal Business: Alibaba Legal Tech Summit 2019: 5 Key Takeaways
Lawyers have been hearing the same line over and over for the last few years: legal technology will make your operations more efficient so you can deliver better service for clients. Speakers at the Alibaba Legal Tech Summit also conveyed how deep legal technology runs as it affects many business units outside of legal that are still integral to service delivery. The main point being driven home was how technology enhances lawyers’ abilities to tackle complex matters and how they should be looking at these technologies as a revitalizer rather than a replacer. This idea of incorporating business units outside of just legal in order to make all legal processes more efficient is foundational to Onit’s approach to our customers’ challenges.


The New Legal Tech Leaders: 8 Big Industry Moves From 2019Law.com: The New Legal Tech Leaders: 8 Big Industry Moves From 2019
2019 was a big year for technology, and an especially big year for the legal tech sector. The eight people listed in this article made colossal waves during a year crammed full of M&As and tectonic technology shifts. These industry shifts were in the news throughout 2019, but this summary shows some of the biggest news in one of the biggest legal tech sectors – eDiscovery.


As Legal Tech Incubators Multiply, Past Entrants Reveal What Makes a Successful EngagementLaw.com: As Legal Tech Incubators Multiply, Past Entrants Reveal What Makes a Successful Engagement
It’s well known at this juncture that the process of creating and selling new legal tech products has about as many similarities to starting up a regular tech company as it does differences, and one of those differences shows through the incubator experience. Victoria Hudgens from Legaltech News shares this difference that mostly comes from Big Four and Biglaw organizations running the incubators as well as how the experience can differ once companies have been accepted. Respondents share that while incubators that provide support in a wide range of business areas are the most helpful, accelerators and incubators for legal tech often don’t have as much investment experience as the companies being incubated have much less effect on their bottom line. These insights are especially interesting to us since Onit started in a “regular tech” incubator. My how far we’ve come!


The 2019 Legal Department Operations Survey ReportAbove the Law: The 2019 Legal Department Operations Survey Report
In case you missed it, the LDO Survey Report is back. The 12th edition of this report, produced in association with Morae Global and sponsored by Onit, comes to us on the heels of another year of impressive growth, but even the mightiest can still fall. This year’s report covers professional assessments of legal project management, contract lifecycle management, formal metrics programs, AI and other emerging technologies.


Women Hold Editor-in-Chief Positions at the 16 Most Elite Law ReviewsLaw.com: Women Hold Editor-in-Chief Positions at the 16 Most Elite Law Reviews
We’ve heard a lot about workplace equity and diversity for the last couple years now, but one lesser talked about cornerstone of legal culture among professionals is literature. Among the top 16 law schools’ law review publications, all 16 of them have women as editor in chief for the first time in their history. This is part of an upward trend over the last decade with women only making up 29% of the editors at these top institutions in 2012. This milestone is a strong victory for lawyers and institutions trying to cultivate a more hospitable environment for women, people of color, and first-generation law students.

Onit Announces 2020 Training Schedule

Posted on January 23, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

Here at Onit, we have established ourselves as a leading provider of innovative software products for the legal industry. Our organization and global market share have grown exponentially over the last couple of years through strategic investments and successful acquisitions. As we continue this exponential rise in customers, end-users, and partners, our primary focus and vision remain the same, the support and service of our customers. At Onit we pride ourselves on our ability to arm our customers, new and existing, with the ability to not only use our products to their fullest potential but to ensure they are utilizing them in ways that fit their business needs and maximize adoption, productivity and ROI. We employ teams of industry thought leaders and software experts that teach proper business processes, techniques, and best practices throughout various disciplines and how to utilize our software to support those processes.

Today, we are excited to announce that we have rolled out our new training schedule for 2020! There are three training tracks: Apptitude, Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM). The Apptitude track offers courses for Apptitude developers. Within the ELM and CLM tracks are courses that are in either the technical or non-technical lanes, depending on whether you are an Apptitude developer or project manager. All tracks consist of four certification levels.

Whatever your role, and whether you’re a valued Onit customer or partner, attaining formal Onit credentials demonstrates to the world that you have the knowledge and skills to transform business processes using the Onit platform. Our formal certification program provides an easy-to-navigate framework for both securing and quantifying your Onit expertise.

Here are the upcoming courses that we have posted on our training calendar. If you find an upcoming course that you’d like to attend, sign up on our registration page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out directly or send an email to [email protected].

Product Comparison: Bodhala vs. Tableau

Posted on January 21, 2020 by - Legal Operations

Tableau: A Business Intelligence Platform, NOT a Legal Intelligence Platform

With the abundance of data available at our fingertips, organizations are increasingly challenged to utilize data in meaningful ways. IT departments often overstate the utility of data visualization tools to internal legal teams to map out high-level metrics through charts and graphs – in ways that otherwise wouldn’t be apparent through traditional spreadsheets.

Tableau has been the leader among ’self-service’ business intelligence platforms — yet this popular generic data visualization platform fails to cover the nuances of legal spend management and often fall short of delivering meaningful insights.

Bodhala provides the solution through Hercules, our proprietary data tool that analyzes rates, practice areas, matter types, matter, and other factors to create peer sets that provide accurate apples-to-apples comparisons when it comes to cost and staffing. 

Let’s dig further into why Bodhala is the most powerful end-to-end legal spend management platform.

Quick and Easy Doesn’t Always Mean Insightful

Tableau is a presentation tool, not an analysis tool. Tableau gives you the “what,” but not the “why” and “how.”

With Tableau, you need to not only know where you’re starting but where you’re trying to go. While building simple dashboards on Tableau is easy if you have an admin on staff, legal spend management is relentlessly complex and requires data-backed insights to drive impactful decisions.

Bodhala is a groundbreaking technology platform created by lawyers to transform the half-a-trillion dollar global legal industry. Our platform refines organizational processes by empowering your legal team with deeper insights that allow you to better analyze, interpret and optimize outside counsel spend, trailblazing a new era of legal market intelligence.

Our dashboard answers the following questions that your traditional data visualization platforms can’t:

  • How do firms allocate work to their associates?
  • How do law firms account for different discounts?
  • How much time, on average, does each matter take and what does it cost?
  • How much are you paying compared to the industry rate?
  • How are your rate cards impacting your total legal spend?

Utilizing Data You Trust

One of the greatest operational challenges Tableau users face is data cleanup. Although the platform was built with big data in mind, Tableau users find it difficult to manipulate and model data in an efficient manner. Some Tableau power users even recommend that data work be done outside of Tableau, and then be imported back into the platform for the best results.

On top of this, they must ensure that the imported data is clean and uniform, which is a process that requires countless hours by your data team to just make sure that everything is tagged appropriately and nothing falls through the cracks.

Bodhala removes this key operational headache with Hercules, the god of all analytics platforms. Hercules’ proprietary suite of data tools helps companies marry legal spend data in a clean, organized, and pain-free way.

Hercules uses machine learning to automatically organize, categorize, and taxonomize your legal data so you’re always working with clean data. The algorithm also detects any major disruptions in data patterns and helps you identify any anomalies within your massive dataset.

Fundamental Data Errors Lead to Bad Behavior

Law firm discounting is complex and difficult to measure through your invoicing platforms. Bodhala’s Hercules engine identifies and simplifies the following structures right out of the box:

  • Write-offs and task-level discounts
  • Invoice level discounts
  • Line item discounts
  • Relationship discounts

Leveraging Unmatched Business Intelligence

Teams utilizing data visualization tools like Tableau have traditionally relied on 3rd party benchmarks to determine the “best” rates when negotiating with their law firms. Unfortunately, this process doesn’t allow in-house counsel to go into the specifics of how those rates came to be.

Bodhala goes beyond the ‘rack rate’ and provides precise industry benchmarks that work closely with your proprietary data to identify how your legal fees weigh up to industry averages.

Our benchmarks empower teams to make true apples-to-apples comparisons. Unlike publicly available benchmarks, we provide transparency on integral factors like matter-type competitiveness, bankruptcy history, law firm financials, and aggregated client data.

Try Bodhala Today

Real transparency, real accountability, real control.

LEARN MORE
SCHEDULE A DEMO

Shoot us an email at [email protected], and let’s talk about how to get started.

Everything Must Go: Legal Bills Mount Over Sears Assets

Posted on January 16, 2020 by - Legal Operations

Creditors and former workers struggle while Big Law firms see the softer side of the Sears bankruptcy.

Over at The Wall Street Journal last week, journalist Soma Biswas illuminated the “tug of war” between former professionals, vendors, and the teams of Big Law firms vying for a piece of the shrinking pie of Sears assets in bankruptcy.

Some of the biggest firms with the biggest price tags have charged more than $200 million in legal bills since Sears went under in late 2018. Sears’ main bankruptcy firm, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, maxes out their billing at $1,695 an hour according to the article, and their total payout has been more than $65 million.

In October, a $50 million estate fund was set up to pay creditors. Akin Gump, who represents unsecured creditors, has so far billed for more than half the funds of that pot, while vendors and creditors were paid $21 million in December.

Meanwhile, more than $3 million in severance to former Sears employees remains unpaid.

While these numbers might sound shocking, it’s a trend we’ve seen growing in the legal industry over the last decade. Last summer, WSJ wrote a groundbreaking piece, based largely on data we provided, that examined the changing nature of law firm partnerships and their interactions with clients. In the span of a few decades, white-shoe law firms have transitioned from a relationship-based model to a system where “data and money rule.”

Bodhala can’t keep you out of the headlines but we can keep the headlines from covering your legal spend. 

We unlock the power of the data you already own to help your corporate legal department make decisions to keep your company’s legal billing under control – and out of the news! Our machine learning algorithms immediately identify patterns in your legal spend to give you the best three-dimensional view of your billing, giving you the confidence to negotiate from a position of strength in every interaction and enhance your relationship with your trusted outside counsel.

Our platform gives you instant snapshots of every facet in your legal matter, from the number of timekeepers to surfacing the true rate per hour, and staffing diversity.

Bodhala is the leading tech platform enabling corporate legal teams to analyze and optimize their spend. We’re dedicated to helping firms get a handle on their legal spend, regardless of the size and scope of their enterprise, or the matters at hand. 

Using the power of big data and machine learning algorithms, our proprietary system helps corporate legal departments find the right talent, at the right value. We’ve saved our clients millions in negotiation and procurement every year, and we’re eager to get to work for you.

Contact us TODAY to find out how we can help you realize more value in your spend: http://bit.ly/37zaM7X

Like what you’re seeing?

Shoot us an email at [email protected], and let’s talk about how to get started.

LegalOps Highlight: News, Trends and Legal Technology Vol. 6

Posted on January 3, 2020 by - Business Process Management

The LegalOps Highlight is a bi-weekly blog series that features relevant news, market trends and legal technology updates from the legal ecosystem. The content is curated from legal and business trade publications, consulting and analyst firms, and Onit | SimpleLegal partners, customers and subject matter experts. Be sure to subscribe and follow Onit and #LegalOpsHighlight on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates!

Highlights


2020 Vision: A Look Into What In-House Counsel Need to Know for the New YearLaw.com: 2020 Vision: A Look Into What In-House Counsel Need to Know for the New Year
Corporate Counsel magazine reporters spoke to several general counsel about what they say will impact their work and the legal industry. From outside counsel merging with other law firms to the use of artificial intelligence to keep down legal department costs, this article outlines some of the trends in-house counsel may find themselves dealing with in the new year.


First 90 Days Game Plan To Building A Legal Operations FunctionAbove the Law: First 90 Days Game Plan To Building A Legal Operations Function
Olga V. Mack has interviewed Twitter’s Legal Operations director Colin McCarthy and this week they’re sharing a comprehensive take on what employing a legal operations function should look like. According to McCarthy, the main goals of this deployment should be good decision making, future-proof technology solutions, proper spend and scaling and all of this should be recorded for future analysis. These 90 days are critical to a successful legal ops function as they will determine whether your relationships with key stakeholders are solid, which inefficiencies can be eliminated and how to implement your plan under what timeframe.


Could a Legal Operations Role Benefit Your Organization? Here’s How to DecideLaw.com: Could a Legal Operations Role Benefit Your Organization? Here’s How to Decide
Legal operations has been rapidly cementing itself as a cornerstone role in legal departments across the world, but the decision of whether you want to dedicate the resources to that position is a tough one. In the last few years as corporate counsel have noticed their workflows becoming more demanding and requiring more business knowledge, the legal operations position has helped companies like Liberty Mutual, Google and The Gap meet demands with stringent budgets and extensive administrative hurdles. If you’re a general counsel and you feel like you’ve been bogged down by all of business-related tasks you need to tackle, employing a dedicated legal operations role might help you and your department get back to the legal work you’re more specialized in, while also driving efficiencies in critical business-focused areas.


Who’s Afraid Of Machine Learning?Above the Law: Who’s Afraid Of Machine Learning?
Many legal professionals are becoming increasingly nervous about AI and machine learning because of the unknown nature or inherent bias that surrounds them. However, machine learning in its current state is designed to do one ley thing: recognize patterns. These tools are driving serious efficiency in administrative tasks and can help legal professionals gain a deeper understanding of the matters they are assigned.


The Top 9 Legal Tech Investments of 2019Law.com: The Top 9 Legal Tech Investments of 2019
Onit was included in the top nine investments in Legal Tech in 2019, a year that marked significant capital infusion into the legal technology space. This article highlights the investments that were deemed significant enough to reshape the legal tech market. Onit was a recipient of one of the largest capital investments, at $200 million, in the list. That strategic investment is contributing to more robust features in our existing products like Enterprise Legal Management, as well as new product lines like Contract Lifecycle Management. It is also helping to grow the company through acquisition, starting with the addition of SimpleLegal as a subsidiary.


Lawyers Want Easier Technology. But Providers Aren't Sure What That MeansLaw.com: Lawyers Want ‘Easier’ Technology. But Providers Aren’t Sure What That Means
In technology (and especially legal technology), feedback is critical as developers are trying to make their user experiences more friendly for the professionals that rely on them. Everyone wants the tools they use to be intuitive, and bridging the gap between legalese and tech talk might be the key to developing better legal technology. Even though legal is a fast-paced world, legal tech companies would like to see lawyers dwell on their previous matters for just a little longer and give developers proper feedback to hone their tools for what is coming next.


5 Legal Technologies You Thought Were Dead But Aren’tAbove the Law: 5 Legal Technologies You Thought Were Dead But Aren’t
There are good reasons to be wary of adopting cutting edge technologies early before all the kinks are worked out, but at some point you just have to rip the bandage off. According to the ABA 2019 Legal Technology Survey Report, books, CDs, fax machines, BlackBerrys and even WordPerfect are still being used by lawyers all over the country for one reason or another. Even though there have been massive leaps in technology available to lawyers, sometimes the old methods are gold and it’s not worth the billable hour to teach new tricks.


Legal Departments Use 'Moneyball' Approach to Pick Lawyers and Fight Mega VerdictsLaw.com: Legal Departments Use ‘Moneyball’ Approach to Pick Lawyers and Fight Mega Verdicts
For anyone that hasn’t seen the film or are unfamiliar with the Oakland A’s of the early 2000s, the “moneyball” approach entails using predictive analytics to show what methods and tools are undervalued in order to reduce spend and stay ahead of the curve. More law organizations and corporate counsel are employing these predictive measures to get critical information that might completely change the way they choose to run their case. New predictive technologies are giving lawyers information about spend, strategy and personnel. Some lawyers believe these tools will be necessary for practicing law within the next 20 years.