Author: Onit

A Legal Industry Expert Shares Secrets for a Successful Corporate Legal Department Metrics Program

Posted on September 22, 2020 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

How can corporate legal departments assess performance in an objective, tangible and quantified manner? According to Mary Jummati, managing director of Morae, the answer lies with setting up a metrics program. She dropped by our virtual podcast studio to discuss corporate legal department metrics, technology’s role and the best-kept secrets for a successful metrics program.

Mary helps improve organizational performance of legal operations through technology and has more than 25 years of experience in strategic planning, leadership, project and program management, software selection, enterprise software implementation and change management. She believes in serving the legal community in the most foundational way possible—by helping clients solve complex problems.

In short, she knows what she’s talking about.

In the podcast, Mary discusses how a formal corporate legal department metrics program:

  • Articulates business impact
  • Promotes understanding of the work performed within the corporate legal department
  • Helps inform data-driven decisions

Morae and Onit – A Winning Partnership

Morae is a valued Onit partner that brings a deep understanding of how attorneys work to Onit implementations – especially with a platform approach.  As Mary explains in the podcast, “The biggest thing our clients see when implementing Onit is the visibility into the reporting and metrics using the dashboard. It makes it easy to analyze and evaluate performance against budget and to see trends across your matter portfolios. The platform allows you to tell that story in a very meaningful way like never before.”

Take, for example, Pearson. The company partnered with Onit and Morae to create a transformational shared service center to support commercial transactions worldwide for more than 10,000 users. Powered by contract lifecycle management technology and Apptitude platform from Onit and Morae’s expertise, Pearson achieved a 30 percent improved contract turnaround time. As a result, the company earned the prestigious ACC Value Champion Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel. You can hear about their journey here.

Many thanks to Mary for joining our podcast.

To hear her podcast, visit here.

To hear more episodes of the Onit podcast, visit here.

More Data and New Legal Technology Will Force Lawyers to Expand their Digital Skillsets

Posted on September 22, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Data proficiency has become a “must-have” for law firms, as technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) continue to change the legal profession forever. Categorizing the sheer amount of data housed in legal databases, automating standard tasks such as due diligence and contract reviews are all much easier and more accurate with legal AI solutions.

It’s also important to understand how these advances in legal technology and increasing adoption will impact junior legal workers, whether it be the latest class of incoming lawyers fresh off the bar exam, or graduates outside of law school being recruited to man the new legal data infrastructure.

As Alex Smith of Reed Smith points out, not being equipped with skillsets in data analysis will soon be a barrier to getting legal jobs at all, as will the lack of core technical knowledge. This alone should be enough to convince today’s law students to seek technical training as part of their curriculum, but there’s more to it.

As Smith notes, the demand for graduates in STEM fields, as opposed to traditional law school graduates, will only increase as firms and legal divisions look to stay ahead of the curve and meet market demand. It won’t be unheard of for math, science and engineering graduates to be brought in to help develop and maintain legal databases and technology tools.

That being said, the junior legal class of today still has time to build up their digital proficiencies and better understand where the market is going. Part of this is understanding what legal advising means in this digital day and age. At the very least, anyone in a legal role will need to know the legal and privacy implications of technology.

You might look at this picture and assume it means far less junior-level positions will be in the mix due to automation, but that’s not the case at all. A recent report by consultancy firm AlphaBeta says only 15% of work conducted by legal professionals will be automated by 2030, much less than fields like mining or construction. The Law Society of England and Wales even points to an increase in hiring of junior legal staff members, largely as a means to parse through all the data being generated by digital tools.

Jean Yang, our VP of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, had a proof point earlier in her career that demonstrated the importance of automating tasks through technology. One of her assignments in her first year as a junior lawyer was repetitive, manual and time consuming, so as an experiment she asked a developer she knew to write some code to automatically complete parts of the tasks, which she then went back and manually reviewed.

This test turned a five-day task into a two-day task and left her ample time to consider the substantive issues in the case, and tackle things from a more strategic level. Having this time to work on client needs was beneficial for her growth, which is something junior legal team members are always hungry for.

It’s only a matter of time before law firms start to search for graduates who can help them merge technology and the law, both putting the pressure on law schools to train their students in a broader range of skills and opening opportunities for grads who are tech-savvy and adaptive. Keep in mind, this marriage of worlds goes the other way too, with STEM jobs increasingly needing soft skills like good judgment, decision making, deductive reasoning, critical thinking and problem solving that legal graduates have in spades. In short, it’s time to bridge law and STEM and take advantage of them, before the field gets too crowded.

Interested in learning more about legal automation? Hear how Pearson used automation to transform legal service delivery.

Onit to Present at General Counsel Strategy Summit as Part of Ongoing Lean Into LegalOps Series for Europe

Posted on September 17, 2020 by - Company News and Events

We’re excited to announce that Onit will be in the spotlight again, this time at General Counsel Strategy Summit brought to you by The Lawyer. Known for hosting powerful speakers delivering business-critical information, the three-day virtual conference for European general counsel and corporate legal departments provides keynote presentations, TED-style talks, panel debates and roundtable discussions that enable effective learning and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. This year, the event will focus on resilience and developing a purposeful strategy that is future-looking and adaptable for general counsel and their corporate legal departments.

Robert Johnson, managing director at Onit, will moderate a panel titled “Automating Processes to Connect Legal and the Business.” The session, which is part of Onit’s Lean into LegalOps Europe series, unites leading legal minds to discuss how general counsel can leverage technology to create savings beyond reducing outside counsel spend.

Presenters include:

  • Kate Danson, General Counsel, Johnson Matthey
  • Kevin van Tonder, Legal Operations Consultant and former General Counsel, Legal Shared Services at Schlumberger
  • Nadine Stuttle, Managing Director, Duff & Phelps

The speakers will specifically talk about how general counsel can put automation in place to empower legal teams to better serve and collaborate with the business. This is a timely topic now, as operating efficiently and reducing spend is a top priority for legal teams at the moment. (To hear from a company that has had great success in this area, watch our on-demand webinar named “Transforming Legal Service Delivery and Enabling Self-Service at Pearson.”)

The virtual conference begins on 20 September and runs through 2 October.

The session moderated by Onit will take place on day three of the Summit, from 9:50 to 10:30 a.m. BST on 2 October 2020.

General counsel and legal professionals can request a complimentary conference pass to attend, but please note that attendees must be a GC, AGC or director level in-house legal professional to attend.

About Lean Into LegalOps from Onit

Lean Into LegalOps is an online community that connects legal operations professionals worldwide to share experiences and advice in this time of dispersed operations. Since its launch in March, there have been more than 2,000 registrations for Lean Into LegalOps events and networking discussions. Previous presenters include BT and McDonald’s. The fall program, just announced, features legal operations leaders from DaVita, Mylan, Royal Caribbean and Gogo.

General counsel, inside counsel and legal operations professionals can join at no charge for both the United States and Europe.

Legaltech101

Our own Rob Johnson has a depth of experience with presentations. He hosts a video series on LinkedIn titled “Legaltech101.” In it, he talks through concepts such as what legal technology is and why integrations are essential, fields questions and occasionally shows explosions to make a point. One of our favourite episodes here at Onit is “What is ‘Workflow’?”, where his young children show how difficult it can be for general counsel and corporate legal to execute contracts.

If you have missed the series so far, don’t worry as they can all be found on YouTube.

We hope to see you at the General Counsel Strategy Summit. Find Rob and ask him your legal technology questions. You may end up in one of his videos.

The New Landscape of Process Automation

Posted on September 15, 2020 by - Business Process Management

Disruptive forces have a way of making companies reevaluate their business models.

At the beginning of 2020, many businesses were already dabbling in reevaluating their operations. Once the COVID pandemic hit, that reevaluation took on a new focus and priority. One question quickly dominated companies across all industries: How can I optimize my deliverables from both a process and a tool perspective to make them more efficient and better deliver them to my customers?

If the pandemic has taught businesses anything, it’s that they need a more fluid business operating model. Companies that adapted quickly survived, while those who didn’t – or couldn’t – suffered. This has been true across industries, whether we’re talking about automotive, banking, hospitality or anything else. Every industry has operating process models connected to traditional business systems that make up their value chain.

Today, rather than creating specific new workflows to address current realities, operating processes and workflows need to be put into an intelligent process automation platform that can adapt to whatever disruptions arise. An intelligent process automation platform offers the agility to solve even the most novel business problems that arise. For example, corporate legal can be empowered to collaborate within departments and across an entire enterprise to implement the business model you need to meet today’s challenges.

When implementing changes to your current business model, it’s essential to keep a customer-centric focus. Despite disruptions, you want to continue to deliver the maximum quality services and products to your customers. One critical way to make that happen is through business process automation. When the pandemic hit, many companies were able to optimize and automate processes on the IT side of things, but they struggled to do the same for the business side. AI-driven process management allows you to introduce efficiency and predictability that complement your existing business operations and adapt to whatever disruptions arise.

One of my colleagues at Forrester coined a term that is reshaping knowledge work: Enterprise Service Management (ESM). ESM brings efficiency, predictability, and automated workflows to everyday business operations across all departments of an organization, not just IT.

Take, for example, how our corporate legal customers use our workflow and intelligent process automation platform, Onit Apptitude. Apptitude enables the ability to track work to approve, facilitate, automate and drive operations. It supports collaborative services across departments, automates departmental handoffs, and provides businesses with more predictability to know when efficiency needs to be increased as demand surges, observe trends and improve processing efficiency in the future.

We recently published our Onit Apptitude Solutions Catalog, which gives real-world examples of how corporate legal customers embrace intelligent process automation and  ESM. One large company created an App to manage all of the necessary business processes, reviews and approvals to transfer assets between portfolio companies. It also generates the legal documents needed to memorialize the transactions. As a result, the efficiency the App generates makes it easier for the staff to handle higher volumes of these complex financial transactions in less time. Another global corporate legal department uses an Onit-based App as a policy endorsement drafting portal. Insurance underwriters can submit policy endorsement drafts for review and approval, saving time and improving response rates with self-service and automation.

To date, we have 5,500 Apps and 130 solutions built on Onit Apptitude and users on multiple continents using this technology.

Legal operations (also referred to as legal ops) is an important emerging domain and a critical piece in your digital value chain. To function in today’s demanding environment and navigate the uncertainties that continue to rise, organizations need to capitalize on a scalable workflow and intelligent process automation platform that supports not only legal but all of their digital enterprise functions. Your platform now becomes the link between digital and operations to deliver your brand promise. Organizations with any vertical can benefit from formalizing work, increasing access to systems, validating and tracking information, and coordinating knowledge workers across departments. This means automating business functions like legal operations now becomes a critical and connected component in your value chain that adapts to challenges and thrives in disruptive times.

Here are three ways to learn more about business process automation:

  • Sign up for this upcoming webinar, featuring Daniel Lee, Director Of Legal Operations – Technology & Analytics for DaVita. In it, he will discuss the power of a business process automation platform for enterprise legal management. (Thursday, September 17, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CDT)
  • Check out this blog post, which shares how legal operations professionals have solved business process challenges with Onit Apptitude.
  • Listen to this on-demand webinar, Transforming Legal Service Delivery And Enabling Self-Service At Pearson. Robert Mignanelli, SVP, Associate General Counsel, Global Product/Technology, Pearson plc, shares the company’s transformative journey to move from a highly bespoke legal services model into a more standardized and streamlined way of delivering support to the business.

Top 5 Contract Negotiation Strategies

Posted on September 10, 2020 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Negotiation and compromise are a part of our everyday lives; whether it’s at home or a business situation. Contract negotiation is a discussion between parties with the desire to reconcile or resolve conflicting priorities in a written legal document. This can be a challenging task, especially when considering the risk or benefit of being too passive or aggressive in your discussions and how that might impact the bottom line.

Whether you’re an amateur or veteran, here are some strategies to keep in mind when negotiating your next contract:

  1. Set the Scope of Your Negotiation

It is important to be involved in setting the agenda of the negotiation. This could involve the method, forum, location, time, topics and the overall terms. By taking an active role, you can set topics of discussion that can protect and advance your interests.

  1. Understand the Counterparty

It is important to research your negotiating counterpart and consider what issues are important to them before you enter the conversation. Having more information and background allows you to predict what factors will be important and what they’ll likely ask for, so you can be prepared to respond accordingly.

  1. Identify Your Best and Worst Case Scenario

Make sure you have a clear idea of what you want from the agreement. Consider which parts of your contract are the most important to you or your company and identify what is your best or worst-case scenario. For example, ask yourself: which contract terms are non-negotiable for me? Which contract terms would be acceptable to compromise on? Highlight these legal issues in the agreement and work your way through the discussion one issue at a time. This exercise will help you prioritize your interests by keeping your eyes on the prize and avoid getting distracted by issues less important to you.

  1. Find Your Middle Ground

Prior to entering contract negotiations, you should set ambitious goals that you believe the other side will not agree to. This creates opportunities for concessions, showing the other side that you can compromise. For example, typically any first offer will be high and not realistic, so the party will expect that you will provide a counteroffer; this process may happen a few times before you find the acceptable middle ground. This exercise will allow you to make concessions that will not ultimately jeopardize your position and give you space to barter on issues of greater importance to you.

  1. Use Collaborative Language

In order to have productive contract negotiation discussions, you should see the counterparty as a collaborator rather than a villain. It’s a good idea to strike a collaborative tone and always attempt to end discussions on a positive note to maintain a professional relationship. For example, ask questions when reviewing the contract like “What’s the purpose behind this?”, “Could you explain what your intention was here?”, and “What about this alternative?” Showing your proactive efforts to work toward a constructive solution will help close the deal sooner.

Reviewing and drafting contracts take up to 70% of an in-house legal department’s time. With ever-increasing pressure to do more with less, improving contract efficiency through automation represents a significant opportunity to improve business performance. Learn how artificial intelligence can help you automate and manage a contract’s lifecycle.

Welcome to the Fall Series of Lean Into LegalOps, Featuring Peer-Led Discussions with Global Companies

Posted on September 10, 2020 by - Company News and Events

We at Onit are excited to announce our fall series of Lean Into LegalOps, where we feature legal innovators from DaVita, Johnson Matthey, Gogo, Royal Caribbean and more. Lean Into LegalOps unites legal operations professionals worldwide and online to share experiences in this time of dispersed operations. The community is supported throughout the season by peer-led webinars, roundtable discussions and check-in calls.

Since its launch in March, Lean Into LegalOps has welcomed more than 2,000 registrants and featured insight from McDonald’s, BT and Colgate-Palmolive. General counsel, inside counsel and legal operations professionals can join at no charge in both the United States and Europe.

As Christine DiDomizio, legal operations lead at Jaguar Land Rover North America and a Lean Into LegalOps contributor, describes it: “Onit technologies helped us adjust to the process of going 100% remote back in March. Now, Onit’s Lean Into LegalOps supports customers and the rest of the legal community looking to connect and learn from each other. I’m excited to see the program continue beyond the initial pandemic emergency and provide more opportunities for legal operations professionals.”

Discussions with Legal Operations Innovators

The fall series of Lean Into LegalOps offers presentations such as:

  • The Power of a Platform – Daniel Lee, director of legal operations for DaVita, will share how the corporate legal department uses a business process automation platform to configure workflows and consolidate data and reports. (September 17, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. CDT, register here.)
  • Automating Processes to Connect Legal and the Business – General counsel and legal operations presenters from Johnson Matthey, Duff & Phelps and more will focus on using technology to drive savings. (October 2, 9:50 a.m.–10:30 a.m. BST, request a complimentary conference pass to attend.)
  • Checking in on Travel & Hospitality Legal Departments – Speakers from Royal Caribbean, Gogo and more will explore the impact of recent events and how they will inform their approach to legal issues. (October 7, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CDT, get notification of open registration here.)
  • Checking in on Travel & Hospitality Legal Departments – Leaders from industries hit hardest by societal changes will explore how recent events have impacted their legal departments, what changes they anticipate and how lessons from this crisis will inform their approach to legal issues in the future. Kevin Clem, chief commercial officer at HBR Consulting, will moderate the discussion, and speakers will include legal professionals from Royal Caribbean and Gogo. (October 7, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CDT, get notification of open registration here.)
  • Legal Operations Reporting Done Right – Legal operations leaders at Mylan, a global pharmaceutical company, discuss creating meaningful reports for different audiences across the enterprise. (October 22, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. CDT, get notification of open registration here.)
  • Virtual Legal Resourcing Debate with Buying Legal Council – This lively session will feature three teams debating scenarios to their hypothetical general counsel, who has asked for options to reduce outside counsel expenses. (November 18, 10:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m. CST, get notification of open registration here.)

Lean Into LegalOps also hosts check-in calls every other week, where members connect informally to discuss topics like diversity, streamlining cross-departmental workflows and cost savings.

Click here to learn more about the program and register for events.

To view previous Lean Into LegalOps presentations, visit here.

 

Turn Your eBilling Data into Strategic Planning Gold

Posted on September 10, 2020 by - Legal Operations

eBilling systems are expensive. And while necessary, they can entangle legal departments in a web of data that is difficult to unpack – and even harder to leverage for analysis and optimization. 

From insurance to financial services and private equity, Bodhala has seen corporate legal departments invest millions of dollars in eBillers with the intention to not only simplify paying their bills, but also to support data-driven decision making. Unfortunately those investments are often hampered by serious issues, including gaps in legal billing data (e.g. classification conflicts on firms, practice areas and matter-types) and the subsequent inability to cluster matters and tasks accurately. 

If you use an eBilling system, here are some familiar laments:

  • A top private equity firm could not rely on their eBiller for clean data to support strategic decisions
  • A Fortune 20 company’s eBiller actually set them behind on departmental goals due to a sheer lack of efficiency and reliable reports
  • A major bank spent four years and over $3 million to implement a data visualization tool on top of their eBiller, but have yet to see any ROI

These pain points are not the result of not having the “right” eBiller. Data issues are at the core of every eBiller. To maximize your eBilling investment, it’s vital to have an analytics layer that leverages actionable insights.

Legal-specific analytics solutions, like Bodhala, can work in conjunction with your eBiller to exponentially increase the value of your investment. Instead of spending countless hours buried in layers of spreadsheets, legal analytics tools can surface your spend narrative in a matter of seconds — enabling your team to quickly deliver value on mission-critical work.

Forward-thinking legal departments have realized that eBillers and legal analytics tools are not one and the same. Here are just some of the benefits of using legal analytics software in unison with your eBiller: 

  1. Data Accuracy Do you really trust your eBilling data? When it comes to data, most legal departments trust legal spend analytics far more than eBillers. That said, many legal analytics tools simply ingest the bad data directly from an eBiller, resulting in the same issues. It’s critical that your legal analytics tool cleanse, transform and organize your data on ingest. Without apples-to-apples comparisons, it’s impossible to get the strategic insight necessary for better decisions.
  2. Strategic DecisionseBillers show costs by invoice. Analytics solutions free you from the invoice, allowing you to realign your thinking around matter-types, practice areas and law firms. By leveling up your view, you have visibility into the things that truly impact strategic decisions, enable better firm management on everything from rates to quality.
  3. ROIeBillers are a significant investment, which makes the frustration about getting accurate data even more vexing. 90% of Bodhala clients use our platform in conjunction with their eBiller in order to increase time-to-value, optimize spend and realize ROI – all things they were unable to do with their eBiller alone.

As companies grapple to get a hold of their legal spend and budget ahead of a new fiscal year, the need for data and actionable insights has never been more urgent. Analytics tools, like Bodhala, can enhance your eBilling investments and turn your data into strategic planning gold.

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

Checklist: Importance of Contract Lifecycle Management

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

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

This is especially the case for contract management.

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

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

What’s the new evolution of contract management?

A contract lifecycle management solution.

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

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

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

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

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

Heads The Lawyer Wins, Tails the Lawyer Wins

Posted on September 5, 2020 by - Legal Operations

Earlier this week Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, joined the “Eye on the Industry” podcast hosted by Jon Cooper, CEO of Industrial Exchange, to discuss Big Law’s Lebron James problem. Because of the opacity of the market, law firms are able to price lawyers as if everybody is LeBron, but data can change this.

“There’s an old saying in the law – if you flip a coin – heads the lawyer wins, tails the lawyer wins.” 

Take a listen to learn more!

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

Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, Discusses Legal Billing Opacity on Nasdaq Trade Talks

Posted on September 4, 2020 by - Legal Operations

This week Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, sat down with Nasdaq Trade Talks host, Jill Malandrino, to talk about the opacity of the legal services market. Covering everything from the role data plays in legal spend optimization to how Covid-19 is affecting the legal landscape, it’s a great listen.

“We believe in the very important relationships and collaborations between our clients and their outside law firms, but we also believe that there’s a market that must exist so therefore those services can be valued and optimized.”

– Raj Goyle, Bodhala CEO & Co-Founder

Check it out!