Author: Onit

How AI and Enterprise Legal Management Find Hidden Legal Invoice Review Errors

Posted on January 13, 2022 by - Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise Legal Management

Legal invoice review and validation is a significant pain point for most companies and legal departments. In a recent survey, legal operations professionals cited their top three challenges as:

  1. Business process improvements (59.7%)
  2. Cost containment and savings (49.3%)
  3. Staying abreast of law department technology (35.8%)

All three of these items apply to legal invoice review, where outdated processes and technologies, combined with increasing workloads, more often than not lead to lost time, compliance risks, reputational risks, possible fraud, unnecessary payments and more.

Then there are the invoice charges that manage to fly under the radar. These are ones that slip by preset e-billing rules and human review, leading to the approval of invoices with potential erroneous charges like nonworking travel, block billing, vague descriptions and work done by improper staff class.

How Corporate Legal Can “Right-Size” Legal Invoice Review

Billing tasks don’t have to take up more of your time than identifying and mitigating risks to your company. AI, combined with enterprise legal management and e-billing rules, helps companies more accurately and efficiently process invoices.

Now, we’re introducing a high-level guide titled “How to Find ‘Between the Rules’ Invoice Errors” that discusses how AI, combined with ELM and billing rules, is revolutionizing legal invoice review.

Here are just a few of the highlights you’ll find in the Quick Start Guide.

  • The Limitations of Billing Rules: With paper invoices, in-house counsel never had time to review every line item. eBilling relieved a lot of strain by applying billing rules, which scour the invoices for keywords and parameters that might conflict with billing guidelines. However, because these rules cannot represent all potential billing language, they open the door for “between the rules” errors.
  • How AI-Powered Invoice Review Software Fills the Gap: Unlike traditional e-billing tools, AI-enabled invoice review solutions are constantly learning, searching for discrepancies and improving invoice review via machine learning. For example, an unauthorized travel charge may make it through review because its description doesn’t match the exact parameters of the billing rules’ language. AI and machine learning can pick up on language that may not be explicitly called out in billing rules.
  • What to Look For in an AI-Enabled Invoice Review Solution: All AI-enabled invoice review solutions are not created equal. When choosing a solution, you should look for specific features, including historical analysis, ELM integration, continuous learning, advanced analytics and reporting, advanced bill review services and reduced bill review time. The Quick Start Guide explains each of these features and what to look for.

Just how much of a difference can AI-assisted invoice review make? One historical review of a Fortune 500’s outside counsel spend found an extra 11-20% in potential savings. For example, when AI reviewed an average of $45 million in invoices for one year, it detected $900K of non-attorney billing, $1M in block billing and $100K of travel-related fees during the height of COVID.

AI-assisted invoice review also helps catch common errors fast, helps companies meet their ROI objectives more quickly, helps boost productivity and better insulates companies from fraud. It does so by combining smart rules, keeping experts in the loop and employing powerful analytics.

To learn more about finding those between the rules invoice errors, download the Quick Start Guide here.

For more information on contract lifecycle management, contract AI and more, contact Onit today, or you can request a demonstration.

Onit Acquires SecureDocs, Extending Contract Management to New and Rapidly Growing Corporate Legal Departments

Posted on January 11, 2022 by - Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management

SecureDocs - ContractWorks - ReadySignA little over two years ago, Onit launched its contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution, helping Fortune 500 companies streamline the complex processes of buy-side, sell-side and corporate contract administration. The solution quickly gained popularity with enterprises who found that they could shorten sales cycles, speed up revenue generation, improve risk mitigation and strengthen collaboration across departments.

Since the launch, Onit has continued on the path of innovation by introducing new CLM products, including:

  • ReviewAI, technology that uses AI to review and redline contracts in two minutes or less, resulting in a productivity increase of up to 52%.
  • Smart Checklists, which creates checklists made up of concrete, task-based actions that are generated from your company playbook.
  • ExtractAI, software that obtains usable data from executed, legacy and third-party paper contracts and turns it into actionable information.
  • Automate NDA, which removes manual work from high-volume and often low-value NDAs, resulting in faster agreement execution and a significant reduction in end-to-end processing time.

The Next Phase of CLM Expansion

Now, we’re excited to announce that we have expanded our CLM market reach with the acquisition of SecureDocs. SecureDocs augments Onit’s portfolio with a contract management solution ideally suited for companies that have new or rapidly scaling corporate legal departments.

SecureDocs, based in Santa Barbara, California, is a software company specializing in contract management software that can be set up in minutes (ContractWorks), a data room that streamlines the entire deal process (SecureDocs), and secure, legally binding electronic signatures (ReadySign). Its solutions have helped customers effectively manage more than 13 million contracts and documents across 96 countries.

Many midsize companies rely on spreadsheets, phone calls and emails to manage legal obligations. While these tools are readily available, they limit transparency and efficiency when it comes to contract management. ContractWorks from SecureDocs dramatically increases contract visibility, minimizes risk and ensures customers don’t miss renewal dates. Since it can be set up in minutes, it provides an effective and easy-to-deploy solution with a fast time-to-value.

SecureDocs and SimpleLegal

SecureDocs will integrate with SimpleLegal, Onit’s legal operations management software subsidiary.The companies share a similar approach to building simple, intuitive software. Together, they will provide solutions to streamline operations and offer greater efficiency for scaling legal departments.

As with all of Onit’s acquisitions, we are investing in SecureDocs, its employees and its products. We are excited to welcome the entire SecureDocs team to Onit and will continue to develop all of the company’s products.

Onit’s Growth and Expanded Market Reach

SecureDocs joins Onit at a time of exponential growth. In addition to SecureDocs, Onit has acquired four other companies in the past 15 months, including:

  • BusyLamp, a premier provider of legal spend and matter management software for European corporate legal departments.
  • Bodhala, a legal spend analytics, benchmarking, and market intelligence company.
  • AXDRAFT, a document automation provider.
  • McCarthyFinch, a legal AI innovator.

These acquisitions follow Onit’s first acquisition, SimpleLegal, which closed in May 2019.

To learn more about our acquisitions and products, customers are invited to reach out to their account managers or customer success managers.

The State of Law Department Operations, According to the Professionals Who Run Them

Posted on January 4, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation

Running the legal department like a business is the norm now. One of the most interesting surveys exploring this concept is the Blickstein Group’s Annual Law Department Operations Survey. Its 14th annual edition showcases the evolution of law department operations and shares insights from the operations professionals themselves as they rank their challenges, effectiveness and technologies.

Not surprisingly, one of the most significant themes is doing more with less. Lean legal continues to be a top priority in many corporate legal departments, as they work to drive efficiencies and control costs.

Let’s explore some of the most intriguing takeaways.

Top Law Department Operations Challenges

Law department operations professionals identified their three top challenges, which include business process improvements (59.7%), cost containment and savings/managing the budget (49.3%) and staying abreast of law department technology/managing and handling IT issues (35.8%).

Considering how LDOs spend their time, business process improvements – powered by automation – can play a crucial role in improving what they can accomplish. According to the report, the average survey participant devotes more than a quarter of their time to three areas:

  1. Cost savings, cost efficiency, cost management
  2. Outside counsel management
  3. Vendor management

(FYI: You can read about how ADM conquered vendor management challenges with their App. It  addressed three problems hindering efficiency: standardizing vendor approval,  automating engagement letter creation and execution, and streamlining the RFP process.)

For outside counsel management, most of the participants said they directly handle tracking legal spend, managing billing/audits and negotiating discounts and alternative billing arrangements. These directly link to what respondents said was their top key performance indicator: Actual spend vs. the law department’s total budget.

What Law Departments Are Most Effective At, According to LDOs

While there are always challenges, LDOs indicated that law departments are doing well on the operations front. When asked to rate their law department’s effectiveness, several areas took the lead. Eighty percent said their overall law department operations were “very effective” or “somewhat effective.” Sixty-five percent said the same for financial management and business client engagement and strategic partnering, and more than 60% responded likewise for legal technology.

On the flip side, 60.8% said they were either very ineffective or somewhat ineffective at document management, 48% said the same for alternative fee arrangements and 41.5% agreed that they lacked effectiveness around contract management.

Legal Technology Purchases for 2022

What impact did the pandemic have on digital transformation? According to the LDOs who answered the survey, it accelerated it. Twenty-six percent said it sped up digital transformation substantially, and another 46% agreed that it sped it up marginally.

With that in mind, what legal technologies are LDOs interested in evaluating or implementing this year?

 

34.5% Pre-execution contract management
34.5% Post-execution contract management
32.8% Document/contract assembly
29.8% Workflow/business process automation tools
29.8% Legal service intake/work intake
29.3% Matter management
28.1% Legal spend management

Legal operations are all about optimizing the law department’s ability to help grow the company. This requires a higher level of operational excellence, as evidenced by the embracing and reliance on innovation, increasing demand for automation of repetitive tasks and a workflow-centric approach. For legal departments still in their early stage of tech implementation, Onit’s Senior VP of Strategy and Growth, Brad Rogers, wrote a great article (in the survey) that offers valuable tips on creating digital transformation. Included are his “top five ideas” for companies pursuing such change.

You can read all the LDO survey results here.

Other resources that might interest you include:

 

COVID-19: Ten Lessons Learned by Law Firms and Clients

Posted on December 28, 2021 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Several years ago, the global Corona pandemic emerged. We all experienced different waves, had to be flexible, and changed our way of working as we knew it previously. We want to sum up: what have law firms and their clients learned from COVID–19 and what changes to their systems, working practices and organizational structure have they made and are retaining post–pandemic?

Rather than dwelling on the immediate past, we will focus on the positive outcomes for the future. We can also say that at this stage of the pandemic, much is still relevant – it is not over yet – with new variants and the possible results of easing the lockdown and the lack of 100% vaccine coverage – the legal profession will need to continuously deal with challenges and retain a positive perspective. Nobody planned for Covid-19 and knows what is coming next, but there will be something! If Covid-19 is like other “catastrophic” events, such as flood, fire, or other external event, many law firms and their clients had business continuity and resilience plans in place, some parts of which allowed them to respond quickly and positively. Others, however, did not and had to face major problems.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

So, what have law firms and clients learned, what came out of Covid-19, and what will the longer-term “business as usual” look like? We have spoken to many Legal Operations Managers and GC in corporate legal departments. We also have an excellent ongoing dialogue with many law firms. We have gained insight into what they did in the immediate lockdown scenario and what they do in the (hopefully) post-pandemic world.

  1. Remote Working: As we know, clients and their law firms had to immediately go into lockdown near the start of the pandemic and institute remote working for almost all their staff. One client organization had to set up remote working for 75,000 people and did it successfully. Many organizations, not just in the legal world, are rethinking their longer-term office requirements and whether their current capacity should apply to the future. No one is saying that the traditional office will disappear. Still, all our contacts believe there will be a significant re-evaluation of the accepted norm to provide a desk for every individual.
  2. Greater need for technology: Lockdown also required a swift move to technology that supported home/remote working – at a scale never envisaged. Some law firms and in-house departments had already implemented a degree of technology and support for people to work from home (WFH), but the pandemic meant that this had to be done very quickly with almost no notice. Immediately, Zoom, Teams, Skype, or whatever became required for any meeting and for work colleagues to maintain visual contact with their peers. Tools to enable collaboration and communication have become vital, leading to a massive take-up of document-sharing applications, electronic document signing, and instant messaging systems. Additionally, those responsible for IT must ensure that data and access security are not compromised! Other applications within legal departments manage work, including workflow and case management, complete contracts access and administration, eDiscovery, IP systems/brand protection, e-billing/spend management, law firm instructing (including RFPs), and matter progress tracking.
  3. Flexible business priorities: For clients, there was an immediate re-evaluation of their business priorities, and what seemed like a sensible plan at the beginning of 2020 was suddenly thrown into confusion. For example, one client realized that their customer call centers could not continue as they were and had to be home-based with all the supporting technology that went with that. Some organizations, such as airlines, faced an immediate financial crisis as thousands of flights got canceled, and the business went into survival mode. All clients have said that as a priority, they dropped all non-core tasks/processes and focused on what the business needed to survive.
  4. Agile workflows with internal clients: Certainly, one lesson learned from the pandemic has left many corporate legal departments realizing that they must be more agile in how they approach working for their internal “clients.” One GC has said that the in-house lawyer must be more self-critical and demonstrate how they add value to the business. This will involve being more flexible, preparing to adopt new roles as required, and showing how the legal team can influence the rest of the organization. Another GC said that the in-house team must focus on taking a more “risk management” approach and that mitigating risk for the business will be even more critical. Also, communicating back to the business on what they are doing is vital, as it shows how their work has a positive ROI (return on investment).
  5. Higher value requirement from law firms: There is an expectation from several clients we have spoken to that they want their external law firms to be more proactive and expressed disappointment that they were not anticipating their client’s needs. One client said that just sending a newsletter in response to the pandemic was not enough, and he expected more engagement from his outside law firms. Some clients were looking for much more from their firms – not only legal advice but clear added value, a more cost-driven approach, and to come up with ideas to challenge the status quo. They also expect any relationship meeting to be more meaningful, with better cost tracking and post-matter reviews being essential. At panel review time, these clients will seek a positive response from prospective external law firms.
  6. Greater need for knowledge exchange: Some law firms have already implemented knowledge management systems, but now all organizations realize that there must be more formal ways for sharing information within the law firm and potentially with the clients. Certainly, within law firms, the introduction of a high degree of remote working means there is little or no opportunity for easily sharing information or even asking the quick question that a chat around the water cooler or walking down the corridor to speak to a colleague can achieve – i.e., informal knowledge sharing. Now, this knowledge sharing must be more formal – calling for the development of knowledge management or “legal know-how” systems – and this means not just using the firm’s document management system but building data stores of indexed information that is easy to find and reflects the law firm’s collective experience.
  7. New management methods for legal staff: More than one in-house counsel believes there will have to be an innovative approach to managing and staffing legal work in the future. For example, more generalist work is in-house, leaving the specialist work to external sources. Rather than taking each matter and deciding on internal or external, clients can go even further and use e-billing technology to break a matter into phases, with some phases done internally and others done externally.
  8. Changed working models: While much legal work gets done by remote working and good technology and communication systems in place – some work done by the legal department and the law firm is less easy to do remotely, for example, HR or disciplinary issues. It is not easy to have specific conversations over a video link; they must be face-to-face. We believe law firms and clients must find a solution to this problem. However, working from home can have other benefits, like allowing for more flexible working hours. Some individuals may find it easier to work unsocial hours – maybe in the early morning or the evening and this can be useful if working with non-Europe based colleagues, for example, to cover the working time in (say) the USA or Asia.
  9. Mental and physical health of employees: One key feature that has come to the fore during the pandemic is that of health and well-being – both mental and physical – not just in the workplace but also in the home and broader society. Many organizations were quick to try and assist staff working in a new environment in various ways, for example, by giving grants for purchasing specialist chairs and equipment. Certainly, if staff continue to work from home in the future, even for only one or two days a week, maintain this kind of support. Although many organizations were already proactive in this area, more companies now provide access to CBT and other stress management services. They are more willing to discuss these issues openly and without stigma. However, there are now new debates about the vaccination status of staff returning to the office, with some organizations saying that unvaccinated staff may not be allowed to return. This issue will no doubt run on over the coming months.
  10. Dealing with work backlogs: Obviously, the pandemic impacted those law firms involved in the justice system from the start of the pandemic – for example, the UK suspended jury trials at the beginning of the first lockdown. Some other cases did continue as the courts introduced video conferencing and other technology. Even though jury trials have been resumed, with strong COVID-19 precautions in place, there is a massive backlog of cases in all the courts caused by the requirements of remote working and other restrictions placed on all parties involved.

IN SUMMARY

So, what has living and working through the pandemic in the past two years taught us? The pre-pandemic trend for some people to work from home became the “normal” way for those who could work. No doubt there will be a return to the office, but many people believe we will see a more hybrid way of working with WFH (at least part-time) becoming accepted. However, we believe that working from home will not be the universal standard as organizations have realized that a degree of office-based working is still needed – especially for the less experienced staff who require more personal mentoring and colleagues’ support in the real than the virtual world.

The pandemic accelerated developments in collaboration and communications technology. These applications will become more mainstream in our work and personal lives.

Finally, all organizations working in the legal profession know that changes are inevitable, and the pandemic has highlighted the need for a review and transformation of organizational structures, new ways of working, a re-prioritization of projects, and increasing flexibility and agility in the approach to delivering successful outcomes.

Written by Bryan King

Can Robots Replace Lawyers? Legal AI Experts Weigh In

Posted on December 28, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Here’s a question almost every in-house counsel and legal professional has considered: Can robots replace lawyers? After all, AI does everything from diagnosing medical conditions to driving cars. Isn’t it only a matter of time before AI practices law?

Well, it isn’t Terminator time just yet of robots replacing lawyers, according to experts. But … it will make your job a lot easier.

The past year has been an exciting one in terms of legal technology, particularly in the area of AI. As businesses have been required to constantly evolve in the face of shifting pandemic demands and the need to accommodate remote work, AI has taken center stage for contracting and other critical legal tasks.

We’ve compiled the latest educational resources for AI, featuring experts weighing in on everything from how it will affect lawyers, contracting and legal operations. Consider it your year-end AI wrap-up!

Can Robots Replace Lawyers? Let’s Talk AI and the Legal Profession.

  • How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Practice of Law: Nick Whitehouse, GM of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, sat down with Jared Correia, host of Above the Law’s Non-Eventcast podcast (available on Apple and Spotify), to discuss how AI impacts the legal world. The truth is that most lawyers are likely already using AI even if they don’t realize it. In fact, Nick argues, AI is making it an exciting time to be a lawyer.
  • Will AI Replace Lawyers & Other Myths: Legal AI Mythbusters: As with most buzzwords, there’s a whole host of misconceptions about AI’s capabilities. For example, can robots replace lawyers? Nick and Jean Yang, Vice President of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence, united for a webinar dispelling common AI misconceptions. Together, they help legal professionals decipher marketing-speak and determine what’s genuinely AI and what’s just software.
  • To AI or Not to AI: The Great Debate on Legal AI Tools: While AI certainly plays a significant role in helping with routine, time-consuming tasks, is legal AI always the right answer? Onit hosted a webinar with Consilio and Buying Legal Council, titled “To AI or Not to AI? The Big Debate,” to answer precisely that question. Two teams addressed a hypothetical work scenario, alternatively arguing that AI tools for lawyers or outsourcing to an ALSP were the answer. You can also watch the webinar to learn which team’s proposal won.
  • The Future of the Legal Profession, AI and Legal Work: The legal profession faced seemingly endless changes in 2020 and 2021. Understandably, many people are anxious to know what’s in store for the future. Onit asked leading economist Daniel Susskind to tackle precisely that question. Daniel offers insights on what changes the industry should expect in the future, what role technology and AI will play and much more.
  • Four Legal AI Trends Impacting Corporate Legal Departments: AI accomplishes more every day. From medicine to piloting jets to dancing, AI grabs a foothold across all industries, including law. Ari Kaplan, attorney, legal industry analyst, author, technologist and host of the Reinventing Professionals podcast, interviewed Nick about how AI impacts corporate legal departments. He shared the legal AI trends that defined the past year.

How AI Makes Contracting Easier

Onit is a leading provider of AI-powered legal technology solutions, including contract AI. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you transform your legal function in the new year.

What NOT To Do In 2022: Legal Tech Trends To Ignore in the New Year

Posted on December 21, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Company News and Events

As workloads and the need to contain costs increase, corporate legal departments continue to turn to legal technology – so much so that Gartner predicts legal technology budgets will increase threefold by 2025.

Technology innovation, especially in artificial intelligence (AI), has fundamentally transformed the way legal professionals do business and how organizations run their legal function. While it’s easy to get caught up in the hype of legal technology, it’s important to keep perspective. Not all legal industry tech trends are ones that should be followed.

How can you sort the helpful trends from the hype?

Three experts from Buying Legal, Consilio and Onit recently gathered to discuss just that. Together, they explored the current state of legal tech and AI, how corporate legal departments should function as we enter the new year and which current legal trends are better to avoid.

Read on to learn which legal tech trends you might want to pass on as we enter 2022.

The Current Pulse of Corporate Legal

As we get ready to wrap up 2021, it’s a good time to take stock of where we currently stand when it comes to legal tech and corporate legal operations.

While some have posited that AI has become over-hyped, our expert panel explains that that’s not entirely the case. Instead, AI tends to be misunderstood, with different people frequently meaning different things when they say AI. This can lead to misunderstandings and even disappointment when it comes to implementing AI.

The top legal areas where AI is currently seeing some of the most significant traction are invoice review, contract review and risk monitoring. Nonetheless, companies still take different approaches to overall legal tech implementation, ranging from all-in-one platforms to best-in-class point solutions to enterprise applications.

Regardless of how you’ve implemented AI and other legal technologies up till now, however, it’s important to remember going forward that legal no longer stands alone. To succeed, you need to involve your department in overall enterprise discussions and initiatives regarding technology.

Legal Tech Trends to Avoid in 2022

While interest in legal tech will only continue to grow in the coming year, not all legal technology trends should be followed. The webinar outlines several emerging trends to avoid in the new year, including:

  • DON’T jump on every new technology that comes out – New AI and other legal tech tools are coming out constantly. It can be tempting to buy the shiny object but think about what you’re trying to accomplish with technology before you buy.
  • DON’T make the mistake of thinking that huge AI systems will solve all your problems – When AI first came out, it made a massive splash with powerful tools like Watson. In reality, the AI you use at your organization will exist on a smaller scale and be targeted at solving discrete problems.
  • DON’T rush to widespread AI implementation – Consider the strategic places where AI will be most helpful and practical (for example, NDA automation). This approach gives you time to understand the technology and the value in a much quicker time frame.
  • DON’T think that all your data needs to be kept local – With the introduction of the GDPR and the proliferation of privacy regulations, there’s been a trend toward scaring people into thinking they need to keep all their data in-country for compliance reasons. In reality, this is just a backward path back to in-house servers when there are other ways to achieve compliance.
  • DON’T let cost concerns keep you from the technology you need – Yes, nearly all organizations are increasingly looking to cut costs. You shouldn’t, however, allow that trend keep you from innovating. Instead, you can justify to the business why an investment in technology now will pay off in the long run.

To hear more about the current state of legal tech, including which trends you should be adopting and which to avoid, you can listen to the entire webinar.

Contact Onit today to learn more about how our solutions can help you transform the way you do business in the new year.

How Legal Hold Products Help Your Company Preserve Electronically Stored Information

Posted on December 16, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation

At a time when the amount of worldwide electronic data approaches hundreds and hundreds of zettabytes, preserving data represents a sizeable challenge for many companies. Many turn to legal hold products to accomplish this.

Companies have a duty to demonstrate that they have exercised the proper care to preserve and collect digital evidence and ensure that the entire organization is not at risk. This duty arises at the point in time when litigation is reasonably anticipated, whether the organization is the initiator or the target of litigation.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 37(e) states that when “electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery,” the court may take certain actions. The actions may include sanctions or fines totaling millions of dollars for companies who fail to act.

A legal hold, or litigation hold, is a notification to a company or individuals that material or data regarding an active or anticipated legal proceeding shouldn’t be destroyed. However, it doesn’t guarantee that the material will be preserved. Actual preservation is the responsibility of the notified organization’s leadership and employees involved. Legal hold products can help alleviate the worry and help you sleep well knowing that all bases are covered.

Old Software, More Challenges

Using software that does not simplify the legal hold process is counterproductive and, unfortunately, more common than one may think. Some companies rely on outdated legal hold software or using software that isn’t even designed to handle legal holds. For example, consider programs such as Outlook and Excel. They’re valuable tools used daily in companies worldwide. But using them to manage legal holds would result in a highly manual process that is difficult to track and probably does not meet the necessary level of ESI preservation.

How a Legal Hold Product Preserves ESI

Keeping employees trained and aware of their responsibility in protecting and preserving data is a must. However, legal hold software should be an integral part of the equation. It lets you quickly issue legal hold notifications and manage custodian acknowledgments. Well-chosen legal hold software will also help you:

  • Easily track the status of legal holds to know where they stand
  • Collect and store custodian acknowledgments and questions
  • Send automated notifications and reminders to help track compliance
  • Preserve notices and custodian data in a secure location
  • Gain a complete audit trail of all legal hold activity

When the legal hold product is built on a business process automation platform, workflows can be easily configured and tasks automatically assigned to the appropriate in-house team members.

More Information on Legal Holds and Legal Hold Products

Companies must have a well-documented process for executing legal holds and exercising proper care to preserve and collect ESI. The financial and legal risks of doing anything less are vast and would likely fuel damaging repercussions across the entire organization.

If you want to learn more about legal holds and legal hold products, here are three resources.

You can also reach out to us to learn more about our legal hold software.

Having Contract Management Issues? Here’s How CLM and AI Can Help.

Posted on December 14, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management

Many sales, procurement and corporate legal departments struggle with contract management issues. The issues may seem mundane – too much manual work, a lack of visibility or slow responses – but together, the issues collectively (and quickly) slow down valuable revenue-generating efforts or can lead to regulatory breaches.

Comprehensive contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions can defeat contract management issues by automating and standardizing processes and decreasing risk and manual work. They streamline the entire contract lifecycle and provide ease of use for all parties. With the ability to have unlimited users and an intuitive, user-friendly interface, these solutions dramatically improve supplier and vendor relationships and overall customer satisfaction.

How Your CLM Defeats Contract Management Issues

What should you look for in a CLM solution to overcome contract management issues? Consider this list of necessities.

  • Automatically generate contracts – The CLM software should allow you to save time and reduce risk by automatically creating a contract with the appropriate clauses based on a robust rules engine and contract metadata.
  • Work where you want to work – Most lawyers rely on Microsoft Word for contracts. An MS Word integration maintains seamless version control and secure links to the CLM software.
  • Let stakeholders help themselves – With a self-service portal, partners and clients can quickly request, submit or create contracts. Contracts can be automatically assigned and tracked, increasing visibility and improving turnaround time.
  • Reduce risks with less work – Manage and measure tasks or milestones related to compliance via a dedicated dashboard and reporting. Likewise, automated risk mitigation in a CLM identifies clauses and terms which add risk to your agreement and scores your contract repository to assist you in both negotiations and renegotiations.
  • A quick time to value – A CLM solution on an advanced cloud platform means your CLM solution can be deployed in 30 days or less.

The Role of AI in Contract Lifecycle Management – And How it Helps You

In recent years, AI has taken businesses by storm, gaining recognition for its rapid evolution and considerable accomplishments. From driving cars to diagnosing illnesses, it continues to prove its value to all industries.

Contract management is no different. Sales, procurement and corporate legal departments have the opportunity to benefit from AI during the contract lifecycle, realizing increased efficiency from technology that not only understands their organization but learns and continually improves.

As you look for AI-based CLM tools, here is what you should expect in your chosen technology.

  • Out-of-the-box functionality from day one – Your CLM AI should work for you from day one by being pretrained and coming with thousands of existing clauses created by legal experts.
  • Faster review – Need a first-pass contract review in two minutes or less? Your CLM AI can do this, quashing some common contract management issues.
  • Easy edit tracking –Open a contract in Word or PDF to view AI redlines with track changes and commentary.
  • Checklists to streamline review – AI tracks and assigns alerts for reviewers with interactive, automated tasks within Microsoft Word.
  • Identify negotiation positions – Obtain suggested primary and fallback positions directly connected to your checklists with AI.
  • Empower users – Business professionals can get an AI-assisted review of standard contracts like NDAs through email or a self-service portal.
  • Review in batches – AI can extract data from multiple legal documents at once for due diligence, applying contract updates or importing legacy contracts. You can also automate the batch review of contracts for routine legal due diligence, making time for higher-value M&A tasks.
  • Accelerate repapering – AI will amend or redline contract details and key terms due to regulatory, policy or commercial changes or M&A activities.
  • Quick analysis and management – Your CLM AI will identify key legal clauses, terms and details in documents. It can also analyze legacy contract metadata rapidly to extract critical dates, terms and clauses to assist in the import.
  • Large-scale contract review – Audit compliance with AI during regulatory changes and export relevant details to .CSV reports and in-document notes.

The Results

How much of an impact can AI and CLM have on contract management issues? CLM solutions can help you save 9% annually, reduce the average sales cycle by 24% and reduce the average hours spent on contracts by 20% or more.

A study of how legal AI contract review software affects in-house lawyers’ productivity showed that new users were immediately 51.5% more productive and 34% more efficient. And with post-signature contract AI, you improve efficiency by increasing the amount of data analyzed while reviewing and exporting data in five seconds or less.

As an example, consider what CLM AI can do for non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). 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. However, applying AI and CLM best practices can automate NDA management and cut time spent on them by up to 70%. This blog post shows you how this works.

Reach out to us to learn more or schedule a demonstration of our contract lifecycle management and contract AI, including ReviewAI, ExtractAI and Automate NDA.

 

The Latest in Corporate Legal News, Including Legal Business Solutions, Gift Buying and More (December 2021 Edition)

Posted on December 9, 2021 by - Business Process Management

Welcome to the December digest of leading news and resources for in-house counsel and legal operations professionals. In this edition, you’ll read about what’s creating change in the business of law, building a scalable and future-proof contracting process, technology trends for outside counsel, the history of ELM and where to find gifts for the lawyers in your life.

1.    The Four Primary Drivers of Change in the Modern Business of Law

The legal industry has seen significant changes in recent years. Legal professionals are starting to think differently about the business of law, focusing on new models for driving value, efficiency and effectiveness. Change is happening faster than ever and on far more sophisticated levels for corporate legal departments and legal operations. In this article, Brad Rogers, who has more than 25 years of experience in operations excellence, discusses what’s fueling changes in the business of law and how that influences transformation.

Source: Corporate Counsel

2.    How to Future-Proof Surges in Contract Activity with Legal Business Solutions

Creating a contract system that handles legal work is challenging, as the ebbs and flows of legal work can be highly unpredictable. Inevitably, you’ll face periods where you see sudden surges of contract activity, whether due to regulatory changes, significant deals or something else. Are you prepared to handle the waves of work when they arise? Experts from VMware and the World Commerce and Contracting organization discuss how companies can best prepare for sudden workload surges.

Source: Onit Resource Library

3.    The Technologies Your Law Firms Are Prioritizing, According to New Research From the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA)

When it comes to legal business solutions, what technologies are law firms prioritizing? ILTA has released its 2021 Technology Survey, which features the responses of nearly 500 lawyers. It points out some of the overall trends, such as the move to simplify the legal desktop, accelerated digitization due to the work from home model and increased automation of areas like matter intake, conflicts and approval workflows.

Source: ILTA 2021 Technology Survey

4.    The History of the Enterprise Legal Management System

Did you know that a WANG VS word processing system kicked off the prototype for what is today’s enterprise legal management system (ELM)? ELM has evolved significantly since its first iteration more than 40 years ago, replacing paper-based systems with little oversight with sophisticated solutions that analyze legal spend, minimize risk and drive process efficiency. And this, in turn, helps corporate legal departments better support their businesses. This blog post breaks down the history of ELM and shares how some of the most innovative companies in the world are using it.

Source: Onit blog

5.    Holiday Shopping for a Lawyer? Here’s What the ABA Suggests for Gifts.

Holiday parties are in full swing now, meaning it’s time to consider what to get for the lawyers in your life (and yourself!). The ABA Journal has spared us some Google searches by compiling this list of gift ideas. Justice-themed socks? Don’t mind if I do.

Source: ABA Journal

Happy holidays! And remember, if you want to learn more about our legal business solutions, including enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, AI and more, schedule a demo today or email [email protected].

2021: Bodhala’s Year in Review

Posted on December 7, 2021 by - Legal Operations

2021…where do we begin?! This was a monumental year for our business. Awards were won, bigger and bigger deals were closed, new products were released — and we were acquired by a company that you may have heard of (more on all that later!).

While we’re still working remotely, we did get to come together in person on several occasions for meetings, workshops, and dinners — plus one rooftop party for the books. We got to physically meet the faces we see on Zoom every day, reconnect with colleagues we haven’t seen since our office shut down, and finally find out how tall some people really are.

Our people are the foundation of our business. Having all of our brilliant minds together has been nothing short of invigorating.

Now, let’s dive into some of the highlights from the last twelve months!

Acquired by Onit!

It’s no surprise that our biggest news of the year was being acquired by Onit. We officially joined the Onit family of companies as an independent subsidiary in September. 

Onit is the indisputable market leader in enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, and business process automation solutions — and we’re looking forward to continuing to usher in a new exciting phase of legaltech together in the years ahead.

With this exciting culmination of many years of hard work, we had to celebrate appropriately. We gathered with nearly all Bodhala employees, as well as many new teammates from Onit, in New York City for an amazing rooftop celebration. It was a great feeling to not only get our team back together after 18 months, but also to meet many of our new Onit family members. It was an apt celebration of success, as well as a strong kick-off to our next chapter!  

We Iterated & Improved

We continued to invest in our product, iterating where necessary and building where we saw the need. Our platform is the lifeblood of our business and we remain devoted to making our user experience better by the day. We’re proud to serve some of the largest companies in the world, helping them achieve their strategic spend priorities.

Thanks to the remote nature of our current work environment, we’ve expanded our talent pool, hiring new Bodhalians from not just around the country but around the world. We’ve grown our Client Success and Product/Data teams this past year, understanding the critical role these two functions play in serving our clients. 

Bodhala was founded to transform the legal industry and be the single source of truth for actionable insights on outside counsel spend. We’re proud to not only be a category creator but be the indisputable leader in this space. 

Released New QBR Program 

Corporate legal departments are increasingly acknowledging the importance of data but don’t exactly know how to get started — and we wanted to help.

We launched our Quarterly Business Review Program in October as an easy way for corporate legal departments to get their feet wet in legal data analytics. Our QBR program gives in-house teams the clarity on their legal spend that’s necessary to make more strategic decisions, impacting both their outside counsel spend and management.

All We Do is Win, Win, Win…

We’re both honored and humbled to see our hard work recognized. In 2021, Bodhala was named:

Overall Legal Analytics Solution of the Year by LegalTech Breakthrough Awards

101 Most Innovative New York Based Machine Learning Companies by Futurology

A New York City Company to Watch in 2021 by Built in NYC

Hot Off the Press

We can’t lie — we love the limelight. 

We’re proud to be a consistent thought leader for the industry, being featured in many mainstream and industry publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Nasdaq’s World Reimagined Podcast, Reuters, VC News Daily Podcast, PE Hub, and many more. You can check out all our press here.

Looking Back

2021 was a transformational year not only for our business but also for the entire legal tech industry. We could not be more excited to carry our momentum into 2022 and continue to drive this major wave of legal tech innovation. But we’re not finished yet! Big goals lie ahead in 2022 but we’re fortunate to have the best and the brightest on our side to help tackle our mission. 

We look forward to bringing you more exciting news in 2022!

Wishing you and yours a happy & healthy holiday season!

– Your friends at Bodhala