Year: 2021

How Does A Contract Management System with AI Improve the Way Lawyers Work? Let’s Look at the Numbers [Infographic]

Posted on August 24, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

Contract lifecycle management systems allow 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 – which means it adds to business value.

When you add AI, the value of a contract lifecycle system increases drastically as technology continuously learns and improves to support in-house counsel.

The Pitfalls of Managing Contracts Manually

Many corporations rely on manual (or mostly manual) processes to handle contracts from inception to execution and beyond. Not surprisingly, these methods include cutting and pasting into templates, writing and sending emails, searching for documents and saving to multiple drives. The process is inefficient and poses risks such as a failure to enforce negotiated supplier terms, inadequate delivery to customers, errors and a reactive vs. proactive approach to contract management. These challenges increase drastically considering that the contract process extends across multiple departments, geographies and external participants.

Signs that Your Corporate Legal Department Needs a Contract Management System

How can you tell if you need a contract lifecycle management system? Start by taking a look at your overall contract management methodology. If these problems keep occurring, it’s time to explore new options:

  • Inability to manage changes – Businesses need to be up to speed on renewal dates, pricing changes, emerging legal requirements and other events that require discussions with customers or vendors specifically about the contractual relationship. The ability to manage contracts – particularly changes over time and the renewal process – can directly impact customer retention rates.
  • Information silos and manual processes – A business can impair contract management progress and quality if it can’t maintain everything in a centralized location, accessible with permissions to involved parties and with changes tracked in real-time.
  • Inconsistent legal language – Gaps in standardized language introduce risk and confusion. If participants can’t determine if contracts contain accurate language or what is different between them, lawyers might have to get involved in every single deal. This also increases the risk of being noncompliant or leaving revenue on the table.
  • Lack of insight into contract processes and variables – Agreements outline the terms of the value exchanged. When corporate legal doesn’t have insight into contract terms, obligations and value, it cannot ensure the business is getting the correct value for deals and money may be lost.

Contract Lifecycle Management Systems Quantified

Businesses that implement a seamless contract lifecycle management process compress their time to revenue, mitigate risks by having fewer contractual exceptions and increase customer satisfaction.

How do the numbers add up? We’ve collected the latest statistics in a new infographic to demonstrate the impact of CLM and AI.

Please include attribution to https://onitprostg.wpengine.com with this graphic.

The benefits of a contract management system with artificial intelligence infographic

Onit’s AI-powered CLM solution can change the way your corporate legal department does business. Schedule a demonstration or email us at [email protected] to learn more.

Automated NDA: Speed Up Non-Disclosure Management for In-House Counsel

Posted on August 19, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are the highest-volume contracts handled by businesses today, with our customers telling us that they process anywhere between 500 and 100,000 NDAs every year. Processing that volume of contracts, no matter how standardized or routine, quickly adds up in cost and creates a real risk of spreading your legal department employees too thin.

Onit is transforming automated NDA with the introduction of Automate NDA, an easy-to-implement, best practice solution that automates NDA management and cuts time spent on them by up to 70%. Automate NDA brings together the best aspects of Onit’s workflow and AI platforms, Apptitude and Precedent, to automate drafting, review, negotiation, execution and management of NDAs at a price that won’t break the bank. All of this happens in an accessible, simplified legal portal that enables self-service.

Hear about NDA Automate and how it helps corporate legal departments from Nick Whitehouse, the GM of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence. He discusses what it does, why it’s important and how it works in this podcast.

The Challenges of NDAs

The average cost to draft, review, negotiate and file a single NDA is between $114 and $456.1 Multiply that cost across 500 or 100,000 NDAs a year and the price tag skyrockets easily.

Despite this volume and expense, NDAs are still frequently considered to be low-value work, even though they’re often the most frequent touchpoint between the legal department and the wider organization. This is a low-value dynamic that serves as a great source of frustration and friction – and is usually a lose-lose situation for the legal department.

There’s a widespread misconception out there that NDAs are always straightforward. That is most definitely not the case, particularly in increasingly competitive environments. This increasing complexity, when added to the sheer volume of NDAs at most organizations, creates a perfect storm of pressure and time demands on those reviewing the NDAs.

Finally, the mental toll this type of work takes on attorneys deserves consideration. In 2018, the American Bar Association conducted a study of 15,000 attorneys and found that nearly 30% struggled with depression and burnout.

The study cited these culprits: tedious, boring work, long hours and overwork, and high-stress situations. Voluminous routine processes like NDAs contribute to all three.

A Step-by-Step Look at How Automate NDA Works

Automate NDA is a cost-effective solution that requires minimal effort to implement and speeds up the end-to-end NDA process by 70%.

The process starts with online submission. Anyone in your organization can visit the Automate NDA portal and request an NDA to be drafted or reviewed or ask for help.

Automate NDA Portal

When a request is submitted, Automate NDA automatically routes it through the appropriate workflow, be it generating your standard NDA and sending it for e-signature, or reviewing and redlining a third-party NDA.

In the example of a third-party NDA review, once you upload the NDA, Automate NDA will review and redline the contract based on the corporate legal department’s contract playbook and provide a link to the edited Word document. If there are major issues, Automate NDA will instead escalate the NDA to the legal team.

Automated NDA reviews and redlines contracts

The legal team can track all of this work from the Automate NDA dashboard.

Automate NDA dashboard

Interested in creating a streamlined, automated NDA experience? Schedule a demonstration today to learn more about Automate NDA.

1 Based on 1-4 hours of work per each NDA and the average rate per hour for an in-house attorney of $114 according to the 2019 Association of Corporate Counsel Global Legal Benchmarking Report.

How to Intentionally Design World-Class In House Legal Operations

Posted on August 17, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

The rise of in house legal operations is changing the way organizations approach and structure their legal function. As the discipline of legal operations continues to evolve, so does the conversation on what world-class operations should look like and how to intentionally design them to meet that status.

Last month, we sat down with Brad Rogers, Onit’s Vice President of Strategy and Growth and a former leader of operational excellence in Fortune 500 companies, to discuss what it takes to build world-class legal operations in today’s demanding legal environment. (You can find his full podcast here.)

In our first installment, we discussed the goals of an in house legal operations transformation journey and how to secure the funding to build the legal ops function your organization needs.

Now, we turn our attention to what that legal ops function should look like.

Legal ops should deliver productivity back to lawyers, significantly reduce and reallocate legal spend and future-proof the environment your lawyers are working in. But what would that legal ops function look like if it were intentionally designed?

Brad laid out three elements that are crucial to world-class legal ops: technology, support services and partnerships and business discipline.

In House Legal Operations Technology

Technology is a major factor in any legal ops transformation journey. We live at a peak time for innovation, with capabilities for legal professionals that are constantly evolving through advancements in areas like AI.

When you’re building your in house legal operations function, you should be thinking about your entire technology ecosystem – that means not just your foundational tools like matter management, e-billing and document management, but the surrounding technologies as well. You want to structure a solution set for your lawyers, not simply gather a collection of disparate tools for them to learn how to use.

A successful transformation journey requires a road map that connects all your capabilities to give you a better understanding of the nature and trends of your business. Once you understand that, you can start considering things like how AI would enhance your capabilities even further or where there are additional workflow efficiencies to be gained.

Support Services and Partnerships

One of the most beneficial capabilities a mature in house legal operations team can bring is the ability to leverage support services and strategic partnerships. When you’re first building out legal ops, however, this might look a little different.

You might start by approaching the lawyers and telling them to refer any nonlegal work they’re handling to legal ops. Even further, you can help them identify that work and cement your legal ops department as a valuable support team for legal. Going forward, legal ops should be involved in projects from the start and serve as proactive problem-solvers. Lawyers should be practicing law, not focusing on things like project management and business improvement. A strong legal ops team should also offer support for billing, which historically leads to significant lost time and inefficiency for legal departments.

The final aspect is managing the legal department’s internal partnerships with other departments, such as HR, risk compliance and security, and its external partnerships with vendors. Legal departments shouldn’t have to do everything by themselves. The point of legal ops is to let the lawyers focus on the law while ops handles the rest.

Business Discipline

One thing people often overlook when building world-class legal operations is the ability of in house legal operations to harness the power of data – both your internal data and data that exists outside the organization. Data analysis is key to understanding your business and trends in the market, allocating resources and making strategic plans for your organization.

Legal ops should be looking at all the available data and making informed decisions for the business. This can include outsourcing work, vendor management, strategic hiring and more. The goal is to get as much nonlegal work off the lawyers’ plates as possible to allow them to practice better law. Every legal department has hidden factories – pockets of inefficiency – that prevent them from being the most effective, disciplined legal function possible. Legal ops should ideally always be looking for those areas and figuring out the best way to eliminate or transform them.

For more legal ops insights, you can listen to the full podcast discussion with Brad here. You can also subscribe to the Onit podcast anywhere, including through Apple and Spotify or any service you use to listen to podcasts.

Discover the Latest Workflow Automation Apps for Accounting, Finance and Procurement

Posted on August 12, 2021 by - Business Process Management

Apps for accounting, finance and procurement professionals have spurred a significant digital transformation in recent years – especially those focused on workflow automation. Workflow automation Apps are making headway in these professions, streamlining tasks that were once purely manual and gathering and analyzing valuable data.

Members of our Onit Nation – Fortune 500 customers, industry partners and employees who build on Onit’s platforms – have identified process challenges in these departments. To address them, they did what comes naturally. They quickly made Apps for accounting, finance and procurement on Onit Apptitude that do everything from expense management to PO requests.

Apptitude is a workflow automation platform that allows users to easily create, modify and deploy Apps without special technical training or expertise. Any business user can access its visual, drag-and-drop interface to quickly build the Apps needed to address an organization’s biggest (and smallest) challenges. How fast does this happen? We’ve had customers complete builds within an hour.

Apps for Accounting, Finance and Procurement

As with legal, accounting and finance are professions that require precision. Errors can have significant consequences that can complicate business.

With these Apps for accounting, finance and procurement, the Onit Nation has found ways to streamline processes and improve accuracy by automating reporting, balance sheet reviews and more. They include:

  • Board Approval: An App that tracks and manages internal board of directors appointments and approval workflows
  • Balance Sheet Review: An App that runs a quarterly review of a company’s balance sheet for various businesses, allowing balance sheets to be circulated, reviewed and approved worldwide
  • Application for Expenditure: An App that handles the approval of expenditures, including tracking for costs and benefits over time
  • Fund Management: An App that oversees the asset transfer between receiving and contributing entities within a company and includes various steps that are approved through e-signature workflows
  • PO Request: An App that facilitates request and payment approval for purchase orders

The Onit App Catalog – Representing More Than 5,500 Apps

These Apps, and many others, are now collected in one place – our new App Catalog.

The App Catalog showcases the breadth of Apps built on Apptitude and represents a decade of innovation creating digital transformation one App at a time. The Apps cover a wide range of industries and practices, including accounting, finance and procurement, enterprise operations, general and administrative, human resources, IT, legal operations, marketing and IP and risk and compliance.

With the App Catalog, all of our customers can now draw from the innovation of others to find the inspiration they need to build the tools that will automate processes and solve their most pressing issues.

Peruse the App Catalog now to find even more inspiration for ways you can revolutionize your workflows and increase your efficiency. If you’d like to see these Apps in action, you can schedule a demonstration here.

Celebrating 10 Years of Onit: A Podcast With Our Four Co-Founders

Posted on August 10, 2021 by - Company News and Events

2021 marks 10 years of Onit! In honor of our 10th anniversary, we sat down with Onit’s co-founders, CEO Eric M. Elfman, COO Eric Smith, VP of Marketing Jill Black and VP of Products John Gilman. The quartet, who have known each other for more than 20 years, chatted about how Onit began, pivots and successes along the way and what customers can expect to see from Onit in the future.

 

How Onit Started

Onit was born out of two early ideas:

  1. Finding ways to read invoices and get more value from them than existing rules engines
  2. Exploring how project management and workflow could be used with legal technology software.

“We were using some early natural language processing and concluded that we couldn’t extract the value [from invoices] at that time. The tools were not really at a point where we could do that,” explains Smith in the podcast. “We moved from what was the straight value proposition around the billing into something that we thought was a little more interesting, and it was around how project management and workflow could be used with legal technology software.”

Discussions with newer general counsels at the time underscored a growing priority for process improvement.

“We started heading down a path that was somewhat similar to support workflow and with a real sense that this needs to be ad hoc,” shares Gilman. “The problem with the business process tools at the time was that they were not flexible at all. We baked in some notions that anybody can add anybody else.”

Ultimately, they created a low-code business process automation platform – Apptitude – that allowed Onit to quickly build solutions such as enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, legal holds and legal service requests.

The Onit Nation, which includes Fortune 500 customers, partners and Onit employees, has also built more than 5,500 Apps and solutions on Apptitude that handle process challenges across the entire enterprise.

As Gilman summarizes in the podcast, “Our customers and partners are building apps that we’ve never even thought of. It’s really exciting to see.”

Building from 20+ Years of Entrepreneurial Experience

As with any business, there was some trial and error over the past decade. However, the co-founders have dedicated themselves to not repeating mistakes that had happened with past startups. This includes Datacert, the enterprise legal management company founded by Elfman and Smith in 1998 where all four worked together.

“It felt like we made every first-time entrepreneurial mistake possible at Datacert. The exit was great for all of the investors, but we felt like we could do it better. That’s what we dedicated the last 10 years trying to do at a minimum – not repeat those old mistakes. We’ve made plenty of new mistakes, but we don’t want to make any of those old ones again,” describes Elfman.

Award-Winning Legal Technology

Onit launched at a tradeshow and secured approximately 2,000 beta users – one of several proud moments for the co-founders. According to Black, an inspiring moment came from the industry’s validation of Onit and its customers’ work.

“About five years ago, we submitted a pretty prestigious award on behalf of one of our customers and he won. Not only did he win that award, he actually won four awards that year for legal technology and innovation in this space. For me, that was the pinnacle because I thought not only are we helping advance the industry, but our customers are seeing the value in this and the industry is taking notice,” she recounts.

The industry recognition continues to this day, with Onit and its customers winning titles including ACC Value Champion, Legal Innovation Awards, Legal Procurement Awards, Corporate Counsel Best Legal Department of the Year, Transatlantic Legal Awards and more.

Ten Years of Onit (and Beyond)

Since its launch, the company has gained more than 10,550 Fortune 500 and law firm customers and has grown into the only two-platform company in the market. Apptitude focuses on workflows and business process automation, and Precedent uses AI to drive business intelligence. More than 450 employees call Onit home and the company has a global presence with offices in Texas, California, New Zealand, Ukraine, the UK and India.

During the past 12 months, Onit has launched three AI offerings – Precedent and ReviewAI, ExtractAI for pre- and post-signature contract management. It debuted InvoiceAI, its AI-enabled invoice review tool, to customers in May, with a broader launch happening later this year. It also acquired two companies (McCarthyFinch and AXDRAFT) and its rapid revenue growth has been recognized in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, the Inc. 5000, the Inc. Private Titans and the Growjo 10K.

“We are building something significant here,” Elfman explains in the podcast. “I think that transcends any of us as individuals.”

To learn more about Onit, its founding and what to expect in the future, listen to the podcast embedded above or find the Onit podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify or anywhere you listen.

If you’d like to see Onit’s technology in action, you can reserve a demonstration here or email [email protected].

Trending Legal Operations Podcasts

Posted on August 9, 2021 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Podcasts have become the listening content of choice for many people worldwide, providing engaging audio on the way to work, during daily workouts or as part of a morning routine. Podcasts enable their listeners to gain new insights, expand their existing knowledge and keep track of trends in our fast-evolving world. Legal is no exception. Many exciting Legal Tech podcasts have emerged in recent years. However, finding the perfect series for you without listening to every episode can be tricky.

But don’t worry — we’ve got you covered! Our industry experts have compiled a list of leading legal operations podcasts to help you learn and stay up to speed on the latest legal tech, operations and innovation news and developments.

LEGAL TECH MADE SIMPLE, SYKE

Dom Burch, VP of marketing at SYKE, is neither a lawyer nor a tech expert, which makes him ideally qualified to make legal tech simple. Join him as he interviews expert legal engineers, software developers, and personnel in law firms and large corporations implementing legal tech. He aims to provide listeners with diverse views and opinions by speaking with thought leaders and innovators across the legal tech spectrum.
LISTEN NOW

LEGALTECH ARCADE, ROB MACADAM

Legaltech Arcade is a series of long-form interviews hosted by Rob MacAdam. The podcast focuses on tech-enabled legal service delivery and the people and products that make it happen through in-depth discussions with legal tech founders and senior industry leaders. Topics of discussion include legal platforms, no-code automation, digital transaction management, creating digitally driven law firms, professional services 2.0 and computational contracts. If you want to know more about what goes into setting up a legal tech start-up and gain insight into the latest industry developments, then be sure to check out this podcast.
LISTEN NOW

FRINGE LEGAL, ABHIJAT SARASWAT

Aimed at law firm leaders and influencers, each Fringe Legal episode is a thoughtful discussion with a diverse range of voices about ideas impacting the evolution of the legal profession. Along the way, listeners will learn about the challenges to overcome, what’s worked in the past, and expert tips on what could make a difference.
LISTEN NOW

LEGALTECH WEEK, BOB AMBROGI

LegalTech week presents a weekly round-up and review of legal technology and innovation news hosted by lawyer and journalist Bob Ambrogi, with commentary from a revolving panel of industry experts. It releases every Friday, all in 15 minutes or less.
LISTEN NOW

THE LEGAL OPS PODCAST, ALEX ROSENRAUCH AND ELLIOT LEIBU

The Legal Ops Podcast is about all things legal operations, legal business, and legal technology. The hosts are Alex Rosenrauch and Elliot Leibu, legal ops professionals with experience and passion for this subject and deep connections in the industry. Every episode covers a new aspect of transformation, operationalization, and technology implementation, overlaid with the human elements of change management and organizational psychology. If you’re interested in the changing nature of legal services delivery and want to be a part of it, this podcast is for you.
LISTEN NOW

FÜHRENDE LEGAL OPERATIONS PODCASTS IM JAHR 2023 

Posted on August 9, 2021 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Niemand kann sie ignorieren; sie haben sich als Lebensretter während des Lockdowns erwiesen. Ob auf dem Weg zur Arbeit, während des täglichen Workouts oder als Teil der Morgenroutine – Podcasts sind für viele Menschen auf der ganzen Welt zum bevorzugten Hörinhalt geworden. Viele Podcasts sind nicht nur unterhaltsam, sondern ermöglichen es ihren Hörern auch, neue Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen, ihr vorhandenes Wissen zu erweitern und die Trends in unserer sich schnell entwickelnden Welt zu verfolgen – und das gilt auch für den Bereich Recht. 

In den letzten Jahren sind viele spannende Legal-Tech-Podcasts entstanden. Wir wissen, dass es schwierig sein kann, die richtige Serie zu finden, ohne in jede einzelne Folge hineinzuhören. Deshalb hat unser Team von Branchenexperten eine Liste führender Podcasts zum Thema Legal Operations für Sie zusammengestellt. Diese Legal Operations Podcasts werden Ihnen dabei helfen, über die neuesten Nachrichten und Entwicklungen in den Bereichen Legal Tech, Legal Operations und Innovation informiert zu sein und auf dem Laufenden zu bleiben. 

In dem Podcast „EY Law – Legal Operations“ dreht sich alles um die Zukunft von Rechtsabteilungen in Unternehmen. Erfahren Sie, wie Rechtsabteilungen sich effektiver organisieren und sich in einer zunehmend dynamischen und digitalen Umgebung erfolgreich positionieren können. 

Carina Smolik-Fischer, Produktmanagerin unsere Matter Management-Lösung, war zu Gast im EY Law Podcast und berichtet von ihrer langjährigen Erfahrung im Legal-Tech-Markt. 

Legal Technology Panel mit Bryter, Busylamp und Luminance – Folge 1 

Eine spannende Folge über die Entwicklung und Zukunft von Legal Operations.  

Legal Technology Panel mit Bryter, Busylamp und Luminance – Folge 2 

Hier wird unter anderem beleuchtet, welchen Mehrwert Rechtsabteilungen zur Wertschöpfung eines Unternehmens beitragen können und wie Legal Tech bei der Messung von rechtlichen Leistungskennzahlen (Legal KPIs) unterstützend wirkt. 

Dom Burch, VP of Marketing bei SYKE, ist weder Anwalt noch Techniker. Daher ist er perfekt qualifiziert, um Legal Tech einfach zu machen. Begleiten Sie ihn bei seinen Interviews mit Experten aus der Welt der Rechtsingenieure und Softwareentwickler sowie mit Anwaltskanzleien und großen Unternehmen, die Legal Tech einsetzen. Sein Ziel ist es, den Zuhörern durch Gespräche mit Vordenkern und Innovatoren aus dem gesamten Legal-Tech-Bereich ein breites Spektrum an Ansichten und Meinungen zu vermitteln. 

JETZT ANHÖREN 

LEGALTECH ARCADE, ROB MACADAM  

Legaltech Arcade ist eine von Rob MacAdam moderierte Reihe von Interviews in Langform. Der Podcast konzentriert sich auf die technologiegestützte Erbringung von Rechtsdienstleistungen und die Menschen und Produkte, die dies alles ermöglichen. Rob führt ausführliche Gespräche mit Gründern von Legal Tech Unternehmen und führenden Vertretern der Branche. Zu den Diskussionsthemen gehören juristische Plattformen, No-Code-Automatisierung, digitales Transaktionsmanagement, die Schaffung digitaler Kanzleien, professionelle Dienstleistungen 2.0 und computergestützte Verträge. Wenn Sie mehr über die Gründung eines Legal-Tech-Start-ups erfahren und Einblicke in die neuesten Entwicklungen der Branche gewinnen möchten, dann sollten Sie sich diesen Podcast unbedingt anhören! 

JETZT ANHÖREN 

Jede Folge richtet sich an Führungskräfte von Anwaltskanzleien und an einflussreiche Persönlichkeiten und ist eine durchdachte Diskussion mit einer Vielzahl von Stimmen über Ideen, die sich auf die Entwicklung des Rechtsberufs auswirken. Dabei erfahren die Zuhörer, welche Herausforderungen es zu bewältigen gilt, was in der Vergangenheit funktioniert hat und welche Expertentipps in Zukunft den Unterschied ausmachen könnten. 

JETZT ANHÖREN 

LEGALTECH WEEK, BOB AMBROGI  

Ein wöchentlicher Überblick über Neuigkeiten im Bereich Rechtstechnologie und Innovation. Moderiert von Rechtsanwalt und Journalist Bob Ambrogi, mit Kommentaren einer wechselnden Gruppe von Branchenexperten. Jeden Freitag, in 15 Minuten oder weniger. 

JETZT ANHÖREN 

Der Legal Operations Podcast befasst sich mit allen Themen rund um rechtliche Abläufe, Rechtsgeschäfte und Rechtstechnologie. Moderiert wird er von Alex Rosenrauch und Elliot Leibu, Fachleuten aus dem Bereich Legal Operations mit Erfahrung und Leidenschaft für dieses Thema und guten Verbindungen in die Branche. Jede Folge behandelt einen neuen Aspekt der Transformation, Operationalisierung und Technologieimplementierung, überlagert mit den menschlichen Elementen des Change Managements und der Organisationspsychologie. Wenn Sie sich für den Wandel in der Bereitstellung von Rechtsdienstleistungen interessieren und daran teilhaben wollen, ist dies der richtige Podcast für Sie. 

JETZT ANHÖREN 

Corporate Legal Market Trends for August 2021

Posted on August 5, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation

Welcome to the August edition of our monthly look into corporate legal market trends. In this edition, we share some thought-provoking articles covering innovative GCs, the digital transformation of BT’s legal operations and how AI and contract lifecycle management help legal departments run like a business. We hope you find some practical takeaways in the following articles.

1. Examples of Operational Excellence from Legal Teams Running the Department like a Business

Running corporate in-house legal departments like a business is quickly gaining traction in legal departments around the globe. The age-old complaint that lawyers are holding up critical processes is rapidly turning into a thing of the past. Technology solutions have significantly contributed to alleviating this problem, providing faster processes and newfound collaborative abilities at unforeseen levels. Of particular note: Lenovo’s contract management transformation, which happened thanks to a strong vision and the adoption of contract lifecycle management technology and AI.

According to the article:

Lenovo has recently digitised its contracting processes and is now able to measure how much time is spent on a contract, how many lawyers worked on it, and how much a template has been modified. “Data analytics has enabled insights we never had before,” says [Marcelo] Peviani [legal director at the centre of excellence for Lenovo].

Source: Financial Times

2. The Next Legal Market Trend to Put on Your Radar: Running the Post-Award Phase of Contract Management

According to a World Commerce & Contracting Association and Deloitte survey, contract professionals are shifting their focus to the post-signature phase of contract management. The results show a growing emphasis on the post-award stage of contract management. According to the survey, “less than 30% of organizations currently have centralized or center-led post-award contract management resources” and “only a little over 20% attempt to monitor or calculate the costs or overall benefits associated with contract management.” It also discovered that nearly 40% of the participants are looking to improve post-award processes, and more than one-third are striving to introduce more “robust approaches to obligation management.”

Source: World Commerce & Contracting Association

3. Hear BT Discuss Its Award-Winning Legal Operations Digital Transformation  

David Griffin, head of legal technology and change at BT, joined the Onit podcast recently to discuss his company’s award-winning legal operations transformation. He shared how the company led legal market trends by replacing manual and disconnected process and management tools. The change helped the department handle workload and matters across the teams from inception to closure.

Judges for the Legal Innovation Awards took note, sharing with Law.com that BT stood out “not only due to the speed of their roll-out of the platform but by taking an existing process and migrating it into a streamlined, efficient platform.”

BT won the Legal Innovation Award for “Future of Legal Services Innovation – In-House Legal Operations” and was named a finalist for the Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law Awards. You can hear David’s story here.

Source: Onit

4. Thinking outside of the Box Reaches New Level among In-House Lawyers

The Financial Times has featured 20 highly experienced GCs who are directly challenging traditional legal roles. By redefining themselves as strategic thinkers, they are making market-leading headway when it comes to sustainability and digital transformation. Companies are now operating in ways that require lawyers to use their skills and experience in new ways. The continuing proliferation of implementing legal technology gives these lawyers more time to focus on high-impact legal work.

Source: Financial Times

5. AI and Contract Lifecycle Management: What Should You Expect?

If you’re following legal market trends, you’ve probably already heard how contract management software can drastically streamline contract creation, review, execution and management. But now that AI is in the mix, how does that affect contract lifecycle management? A new visual guide tackles this topic to get you up to speed in no time. It explores questions such as:

  • Should you look for pre-trained AI?
  • What redlining capabilities should contract AI offer?
  • Can AI offer interactive checklists to accelerate review?
  • How can AI repaper contracts for regulatory, policy and commercial changes?
  • Can AI help you analyze legacy contract data for better contract management?

Source: Onit resources

Bonus Resources: The Latest on CLM and AI

Year after year, legal market trends have pointed to lawyers and legal departments finding ways to be more efficient while controlling costs. Adopting cutting-edge technology, thinking outside of the box and running the department like a business are important ways to achieve these objectives.

Combining contract lifecycle management tools with AI is a prime example of working toward those means. When paired, they offer streamlined processes, a decrease in friction for employees across the enterprise and deliver more business value. If you’d like to learn more about legal market trends for contract lifecycle management tools, check out some of our recent blog posts:

Bodhala Named One of New York’s Most Innovative Machine Learning Companies

Posted on August 4, 2021 by - Legal Operations

We’re excited to share that Futurology has recognized Bodhala on its list of New York’s Most Innovative Machine Learning Companies. Futurology’s list recognizes cutting-edge startups and established brands that are innovating the machine learning industry and excelling in innovation, growth, and societal impact. 

As we continue to grow our team, enhance our product, and scale the business, we’re proud to see our team’s hard work and innovation recognized. It has been an exciting summer for us here at Bodhala and we look forward to continuing building on our mission, delivering unparalleled service to our clients, and educating the industry on how data can transform the antiquated legal services market.

Interested in joining our team? Check out our open positions!

Ensure Accurate Legal Billing By Avoiding These Four Common Invoicing Problems

Posted on August 3, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

While having accurate legal billing is something all parties involved can agree on, it’s still a complicated process for large corporate legal departments. A single law firm bill may have hundreds of pages, clock in at millions of dollars and cover multiple matters, tasks and timekeepers. Outside counsel guidelines, billing code confusion and the sheer volume of bills further complicate invoice review.

As a result, charges can routinely fall in a gray area or violate outside counsel guidelines. They can slip past first-pass reviewers who are short on time and have multiple responsibilities. Even the most stringent automated billing rules may not flag some costs because of a wide variation in descriptions and billing tactics.

Take travel, for example. With lockdowns over the past year, accurate legal billing for travel-related costs should be a given. You logically expect that travel charges from law firms substantially decreased during that time. However, that wasn’t the case.

When Onit’s AI-enabled invoice review tool scoured historical invoices from a set of Fortune 500 customers, it discovered an average of six figures of savings in travel-related billed time and expenses submitted to customers. These are “gray area” charges that surpassed what had already been found by traditional billing rules and standard invoice review.

Common Invoice Errors That Make Accurate Legal Billing Challenging

Corporate legal departments want to know what services they’re paying for as part of their law firm partnerships. Otherwise, it’s difficult to make proper efficiency and cost control refinements.

We recently conducted an informal poll, asking corporate legal customers to name problems they encounter when reviewing invoices. Each of the following top-four improper e-billing and invoicing practices is a significant barrier to understanding and controlling legal spend.

  1. Vague or insufficient details in invoices

“For services rendered” or other vague descriptions are insufficient explanations of legal services. While each poor description may not seem like a pressing concern, the cumulative costs of this practice over several invoices reveal a much larger problem. Vague billing descriptions make understanding and controlling legal spend a nearly impossible task to undertake.

  1. Block billing

Block billing, or the practice of putting multiple work segments on multiple dates into one line item description, is raising red flags at corporate legal departments – especially when “going lean” is the name of the game. While it was a somewhat accepted standard for years, the dollars add up quickly and are difficult to catch. The practice also acts against conveying the value of law firm contributions since there is no transparency for the work they undertook.

How much of an impact can block billing have on spend? One legal operations leader reported a block billing charge of more than a million dollars – one that AI caught but only after it had made it past first reviewers.

  1. Improper coding of invoices

While it sounds like a simple task, you’d be surprised how often improper coding happens in a single day. Often the mistake is as simple as billers failing to select appropriate codes on dropdown menus. When work is attributed to the wrong billing code, it may trigger an additional review, taking extra time while also skewing legal spend analytics.

  1. Work being done by wrong staff class

How often have we done other people’s work and vice versa, whether above or below our pay grade? Not a real problem, right? Wrong. Sure, it happens, but it can add up quickly and work against accurate legal billing.

Certain types of work are better suited to a paralegal, legal assistant or intern than an attorney. Too often, though, those work efforts are being done by an attorney at a much higher rate. Or perhaps a task that would take a higher-billing partner five minutes to complete would take an associate much longer and so cost more. At the end of the day, corporate legal departments want the work performed by the appropriate level of staff.

Alleviating the Pain of Legal Invoice Review

Lean legal – doing more with less money and fewer resources while maintaining the same high quality – is the new paradigm at corporate legal departments. Technology plays a prominent role in achieving legal ops objectives with “less.” As hard as we try, law firm billing errors still happen, and corporate in-house legal teams will struggle to catch them. Well-chosen technologies – like AI and automated billing rules – bolster the opportunity for accurate legal billing.

If you’d like to read more about alleviating invoice review challenges, here are some resources: