Category: Artificial Intelligence

To AI or Not to AI: The Great Debate on Legal AI Tools

Posted on June 29, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Digital representation of a speaker in a suit with a podium, symbolizing innovation in legal operations and technology.

From invoicing to contract review, you’ve probably heard how much legal AI tools can help you with routine, time-consuming tasks.

Is legal AI always the right answer, though? On June 9th, Onit hosted a webinar with Consilio and Buying Legal Council to answer precisely that question. Titled “To AI or Not to AI? The Big Debate Part II,” the webinar presented this challenge to two different teams:

There is no budget for additional headcount this year, even though your legal department is faced with the daunting task of repapering a massive number of contracts due to LIBOR, data privacy and other regulatory changes. Not to mention, you still have mounds of legal invoices to review. At the same time, strategic and risk management demands are higher than ever. What should be done? The GC has asked you to present a solution.

Team one, led by Onit, argued that AI tools for lawyers were the answer. Team two, led by Consilio, focused on outsourcing the work to an alternative legal service provider (ALSP).

Team Legal AI Tools

Team one’s main objective was to leverage AI to accomplish goals and improve operations. They argued that implementing legal AI tools internally would allow them to maintain control over their technology and use it to its greatest advantage.

The job of a general counsel at a multi-billion dollar global company is to increase the quality, consistency and velocity of every matter they touch while providing the team with resources that drive efficiencies throughout the enterprise. The question is which investments – whether humans or AI – will ultimately yield the returns you need down the road.

Team one aimed for standardization via legal AI tools to provide knowledge and data that would allow the organization to operate effectively, efficiently and consistently. They also dispelled lingering myths that legal AI tools are complicated to configure and implement. With Precedent, Onit’s AI platform, team one could configure their AI solutions within 15 minutes with no specific technical knowledge or training.

Team one noted, however, that the human/AI choice doesn’t have to be binary. Humans will always be a critical part of practicing law. But even superhuman employees need some help – specifically, they need legal AI. When you hire the best and the brightest and then allow them to use legal AI tools, you optimize your opportunities for success and retain your top talent. Institutional knowledge plus the processing power of AI is the winning combination.

Team ALSP

Team two presented a very different argument – that AI tools for lawyers are not always the answer because you’ll always need people. While legal AI tools have seen great advances, it’s not a sufficient replacement for humans. They also argued that it costs too much to train, takes too long to implement and demands too many resources for training.

Therefore, Team two advocated for outsourcing to ALSPs, rather than implementing legal AI in-house. ALSPs, they argued, save significant costs while offering faster start-up times, higher quality and more transparency.

In Team two’s experience, standing up a technology solution at a global company takes at least six months from the negotiation stage through implementation. If you’re lucky, you have your complete AI solution up and running in a year, which isn’t helpful for addressing your current, pressing needs. While implementing AI might certainly have long-term benefits, that wasn’t the challenge at hand. They believed going the AI route would delay ROI and sidetrack employees from their high-value work to focus on training the AI.

ALSPs, on the other hand, they argued, offer flexibility. An ALSP can serve as either a stop-gap or a more permanent part of a long-term, flexible model. You get instant access to top talent and expertise without investing in hiring or stretching your resources. Going the ALSP route still gives you access to legal AI tools – you just don’t have to train it yourself or invest in it. Those responsibilities fall to the ALSP.

Who Won The Great Debate Over Legal AI Tools?

Both teams presented worthy arguments pro and con legal AI tools for lawyers, but there can be only one winner. Listen to the debate to hear both sides’ full arguments and see which group the audience voted to win.

Many thanks to Consilio, an Elite partner in the Onit Strategic Alliances Program, and Buying Legal Council for participating in our second great debate!

This is the second debate event Onit has held. Explore our first debate, in which three teams argued different approaches to reduce outside counsel expenses. See the on-demand recording or read more about it.

Quick Start Guide: AI-Powered CLM Tool for Corporate Legal, Procurement and Sales

Posted on June 15, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Illustration of a robot balancing against business professionals on a scale, symbolizing the impact of AI on legal operations and workflow automation.

Corporate legal departments are increasingly relying on AI and other technologies like a CLM tool and automation to reduce costs, boost efficiency and better collaborate with other business units on contracts.

While many organizations have started to focus on how contract AI benefits the corporate legal department, the right CLM system offers advantages beyond legal to other contract stakeholders in your organization like sales and procurement. To explain how AI-powered CLM benefits all these different groups, we recently put together our handy Quick Start Guide: Contract AI: How it Pays Off for Corporate Legal, Sales and Procurement.

Here are just a few of the AI and CLM benefits covered in the Quick Start Guide.

Better Productivity and Insight for Legal with a CLM Tool and AI

A CLM tool powered by AI improves productivity by handling much of the scut work related to pre-signature contract review. AI manages the first-pass review, makes recommendations and delivers a risk profile. One study showed that new users of legal AI contract review software were immediately 51.5% more productive and 34% more efficient. When you multiply those gains across all the lawyers in an average midsized organization (55, according to this survey by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium), it’s the equivalent of adding 28 lawyers to your team without actually increasing headcount.

AI-powered CLM tools are also transforming the legal ops role by standardizing and automating legal processes and creating a single point of truth for contract data. Contract AI empowers legal ops professionals to have better visibility into deals, keep drafting and negotiations on track, reduce risk and improve governance, accelerate turnaround time, cut costs and more.

Shorter Sales Cycles

Legal doesn’t have to serve as a black box for sales departments, where requests go in and responses come back with zero insight into progress or process. AI-powered CLM tools allow sales departments to break free from using disparate systems and instead operate in a single repository and workflow for all their contracts.

Inefficiency and lack of transparency are two of the biggest roadblocks for sales departments, and contract AI removes them. This allows sales professionals to close deals faster, automate contract requests, have real-time insights on active contracts, have access to the information they need when they need it, and engage in newfound levels of self-service.

Better Spend Management for Procurement

Much like it does for sales, the right AI-powered CLM tool serves as a single point of truth for all procurement activities across an enterprise. Procurement can’t function without contracts, and contract AI allows procurement to be flexible enough to tackle all the contract-related tasks essential to the procurement function.

Among other things, AI-powered CLM systems empower procurement professionals to improve business outcomes, decrease risk, manage spend against budget, have insight into contract negotiations and engage in self-service for routine contracts like NDAs.

For more insight into how AI and CLM are revolutionizing day-to-day business for legal, sales and procurement, you can download the complete Quick Start Guide for an AI-powered CLM tool here.

Legal Industry News: Current News and Trends in Legal Department Operations, June 2021

Posted on June 8, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Light bulb with digital icons representing innovation and technology, symbolizing legal operations and business process management solutions.

Welcome to Onit’s June industry run-down, where we share with you some of the most pertinent and timely articles on legal department operations news. We hope this roundup of legal industry trends provides some useful takeaways.

In today’s digest, we share a recap of CLOC’s annual State of the Industry Survey and its recent virtual Global Institute, words of advice for corporate legal transformation, how AI finds even more billing guidelines violations and more.

#1 AI in the Legal Sector by the Numbers

More and more corporate legal departments are turning to AI every day to handle manual tasks, boost efficiency and gain insights for informed decision-making. You’ve likely already incorporated AI into some aspect of your day-to-day practice. After all, we’ve all heard the claims about how much it transforms everyday tasks. But just how much of a difference does AI really make?

This blog post breaks down the numbers and outlines some of the most significant gains to be gained through AI in the legal sector, including:

  • A 24% reduction in the average sales cycle and a 9% annual cost reduction by using an AI-powered CLM solution
  • A 51.5% increase in user productivity and the ability to redline a contract in under 2 minutes with legal AI software for contract review
  • The ability to review 6,000 contracts at once and access over 500 contract data points with AI for contract extraction
  • A 5-10% reduction in outside counsel spend with an AI-powered ELM solution

(Source: Onit blog)

#2 CLOC Sets Benchmarks for Legal Department Operations

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) recently released the 2021 State of the Industry Survey report, the organization’s annual review of trends to watch in the legal ops space. This year’s survey, conducted in collaboration with the Association of Corporate Counsel, garnered responses from 200 organizations (including 48 Fortune 500 companies) across more than 22 industries in 31 states and 21 countries.

The 2021 report highlights how priorities have shifted through the uncertainty of 2020, with legal ops growing, legal spend increasing and more work coming in-house. Some of the most notable survey results include:

  • 39% of respondents said they brought more work in-house in 2021, compared to only 28% the year before
  • Nearly all respondents reported using the same number or more ALSPs than the year before
  • 40% of respondents increased their number of dedicated, full-time legal ops employees
  • 61% of respondents identified implementing a Diversity and Inclusion program as a top priority for 2021

You can read the entire survey report here.

(Source: CLOC)

#3 Workflow Automation, Return to Office Top “Big Picture” Plans for Legal Department Operations

On the final day of CLOC’s recent virtual Global Institute, one legal department operations panel took an in-depth look at why organizations need a well-defined plan for implementing new technology and preparing to handle business in a post-pandemic world.

Legal ops professionals will play a huge role in that planning and implementation. They’re pivotal in big-picture technology adoption because they’re often the most on top of innovation and the latest trends in the legal tech market. Legal ops will also be integral to making sure the rest of the legal department and the business as a whole actually adopt the new technologies they find.

(Source: Legaltech News)

#4 Legal Department Operations Leaders Share Their Best Strategies for Transformation

Change is a constant in our world, especially in the last year and a half. While workloads continue to increase in-house, the need to work quickly and effectively remains a common goal. But how can legal operations professionals spur change – especially technological change  – in corporate legal?

Corporate legal department operations experts from Mastercard, McKesson, Microsoft and GlaxoSmithKline sat down at the CLOC Global Institute to explain their best approaches, including:

  • Understanding the reasons for resistance
  • Communicating the vision of change and what that means
  • Conveying the importance of transformation on a personal level to team members
  • Understanding what resources are necessary to enact change, including people, tools and priorities

Bonus: What’s driving transformation in legal? Operations expert Brad Rogers digs into the topic, breaks down what is accelerating the need for change in corporate legal. Scroll to the bottom of this blog post to hear the podcast. You can also find the Onit podcast on Apple, Google Play, Spotify or other podcast platforms.

(Source: Corporate Counsel)

#5 How to Find Up to 11% More Non-Compliant Charges in Legal Invoices After Billing Rules and Standard Review

Growing workloads and other priorities limit the time in-house counsel can devote to reviewing outside counsel bills spanning hundreds of pages and thousands of line items. Enterprise legal management, matter management, e-billing, billing code standards and automated billing rules reduce the burden of invoice review. However, AI offers the opportunity for even more technological innovation.

On May 26, Onit announced the debut of InvoiceAI, an AI offering for first-pass legal invoice review and analytics that’s now available to customers. InvoiceAI handles first-pass legal invoice review to identify errors better and increase the consistency of application of billing guidelines and spend management best practices.

On average, InvoiceAI has identified 6-11% of unactioned errors in historical invoices, above and beyond what had already been identified by standard invoice review. Even in a year when travel was significantly restricted, InvoiceAI uncovered an average of $100,000 worth of savings on travel-related time and expenses that had been improperly submitted to customers.

For a free AI analysis of 90 days of historical billing data, Onit customers can reach out to their account managers and other interested parties can email [email protected].

(Source: LawSites Blog)

Get the inside track on legal department operations trends, the very best events and helpful content from the legal community by joining Lean Into LegalOpstoday. The program unites the legal community, providing them with a forum to share and learn from one another and get the latest news and trends in legal operations and technology.

CLM AI: Does Your Contract Software Redline Contracts for You?

Posted on June 1, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Person editing a document with a red pencil, highlighting text, alongside a computer keyboard, emphasizing legal operations and workflow management.

When you ask today’s busy lawyers what they most need from legal AI, the answer is tools that help them be more productive like CLM AI contract redlining software.

While much of life might have gone on pause in the last year, contracts didn’t. In fact, lawyers have been handling more contracts than ever. For most companies, hiring more staff just to handle contracts isn’t a viable option. How, then, can lawyers speed up the contracting process and boost their productivity? The answer is having the right technology and features, like the features you can find in the right legal AI contract lifecycle management solution.

Take, for example, redlining contracts.

There are a lot of products and software that claim to help increase the efficiency of your contract review, but does your current contract AI redline your contracts for you? It should.

Contract Redlining Software to Help Protect Your Company From Risk

In a typical legal team, junior lawyers can be tasked with first-pass contract review, with the goal of flagging any issues that appear problematic or go against company standards. For example, if a third-party contract has a questionable clause, the junior attorney will usually circle the clause in red pen or mark it digitally and send it up the chain to senior lawyers for review. The senior lawyers would then review the clause and determine whether it’s something the company is willing to accept.

It doesn’t always go that smoothly, though.

Today’s busy lawyers are handling multiple tasks at once, while also juggling the demands of an increased workload and remote collaboration, meaning that errors can happen. If that clause is on page 45 of a 50-page contract and the lawyer has been reviewing it for several hours, it might not always get the attention it deserves due to fatigue or other priorities.

AI legal document review supports the contract review process and reduces the chance of human error. The contract redlining process is critical to protecting company interests. It’s also a fairly standard process, though it has historically been inefficient and time-consuming. All these factors make redlining a prime candidate for CLM AI.

What if there is a way to automate that first-pass review, better flag potential issues and get the whole job done in less than two minutes?

The Benefits of Redlining by CLM AI

Tapping into legal contract AI with automated redlining software is an incredible advantage when it comes to keeping up with increasing contract demands. It also creates a legitimate solution for reducing attorneys’ low-value, busy work.

Contract AI redlining isn’t only a tool that’s useful for lawyers – it’s also a great way to allow other business units, like sales or procurement, to engage in self-service. These other departments touch the company’s contracts all the time, but they typically have to wait in line to have their contracts reviewed by legal when they come in.

With ReviewAI contract management, business users can run an AI-powered redline in less than two minutes, spot potential issues right away, determine if there are problems to solve and then automatically escalate critical issues to legal as necessary. The redlining provided by CLM AI essentially allows business users to self-service the review of common contracts such as NDAs.

As with any contract AI, automating the redlining process isn’t replacing lawyers, it’s helping them be better at their jobs. It even performs a critical training function for junior lawyers and new legal team members. Company playbooks are based on decades of institutional knowledge. As junior lawyers see the AI data extraction results the software produces, they learn the playbook, essentially learning from the company’s best and brightest.

ReviewAI contract management from Onit redlines and automates your contract review, applying your playbook to find the things humans might miss and looking for any crucial terms that are missing. CLM AI takes less than two minutes, speeds up contract review by up to 70% and increases productivity by more than 50%.

Schedule an Onit demo today to learn more.

Meet InvoiceAI: Onit’s New Artificial Intelligence Offering for Legal Invoice Review

Posted on May 26, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Abstract digital design featuring blue and purple circuit patterns and waveforms, symbolizing legal technology and business process management innovations.

Legal invoice review is a necessary process for corporate legal departments and also notoriously complex and time-consuming – even with business rules applied. Nevertheless, legal departments spend countless dollars every year for in-house counsel and other professionals to manually inspect invoices, whether flagged or not. That’s time wasted on administrative tasks that in-house professionals can reallocate to higher-value work and strategies.

That’s all about to change.

Today, Onit announced the debut of InvoiceAI for its customers. The artificial intelligence offering for first-pass legal invoice review and analytics decreases the burden of invoice review while providing insights into spend analytics.

An Intelligent Review

The sheer volume of legal invoices has pummeled Fortune 500 corporate legal departments for years, challenging corporate counsels’ ability to understand and control legal spend and build productive partnerships with law firms.

Even with flagged invoices, corporate counsel can face a large number of line items on each invoice to reconcile and miss noted issues or errors. Enforcing outside counsel guidelines is complicated even further with issues like vague or incomplete invoices, improper block billing, incorrect coding and more.

InvoiceAI builds off Onit’s existing billing rules engine, enhancing the invoice review process by incorporating machine learning and natural language processing to more accurately and efficiently identify invoice issues that need further review. Our machine learning models identify potentially problematic billing issues like administrative tasks or travel and integrate with existing eBilling, legal spend management and enterprise legal management technologies. What you get is an intelligent review that learns more as you process more invoices, plus all the advantages of our configurable rules engine – the best of both worlds when it comes to understanding legal spend.

AI-Powered Invoice Review Leads to Significant Cost Savings

While InvoiceAI’s models continue their training, the offering is already used to analyze past invoices and identify potentially non-compliant charges under company billing guidelines and legal spend management best practices.

A select group of Onit Fortune 100 customers ran InvoiceAI through historical bills with significant results. InvoiceAI uncovered on average of 6-11% unactioned errors for invoices submitted in 2020, above and beyond the savings that Onit’s rules-based invoice review tools had already found.

For example, even though 2020 was a notably slow year for travel, InvoiceAI identified travel charges in the high six-figure range that should not have been billed.

On top of better invoice review, you also get powerful analytics. The results generated by InvoiceAI can serve as a learning tool for outside counsel, giving them a clear report on the core commercial expectations of the companies they represent. The reports are also beneficial for demonstrating immediate savings in outside spend to internal stakeholders.

The Future of Legal Invoice Review, Ready Now for Customers

InvoiceAI is available to Onit customers now and will be generally available to the public in the fall.

AI-enabled invoice review from SimpleLegal, Onit’s subsidiary, will launch this summer, with availability open now for select existing corporate legal customers.

If you’re currently an Onit or SimpleLegal customer and you want a complimentary AI analysis of the last 90 days of your billings, contact your account manager today.

If you’re not currently a customer but want to learn more about how InvoiceAI can improve your legal invoice review and legal spend management, contact [email protected] today.

AI in the Legal Sector by the Numbers

Posted on May 13, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Colorful abstract background featuring overlapping numbers, symbolizing data and analytics, relevant to legal operations and business process management.

Legal AI software has commanded the attention of corporate legal departments worldwide, thanks to its ability to offload manual work, increase efficiency and provide more insight into day-to-day tasks and strategic endeavors. As a result, more and more corporate legal departments are investing in AI and starting to discover its benefits.

By now, in-house counsel have been inundated with countless claims about how AI can increase productivity and efficiency, cut costs and boost revenues, and generally make work better. But, if you’re anything like us, numbers matter. They go beyond hyperbole and illustrate how effective legal AI software can be.

Here are data points to illustrate the difference AI is making across other businesses – and especially in the legal sector.

The Overall Use of AI

In November 2020, McKinsey & Company released a comprehensive report on The State of AI in 2020, and the results showed a commitment to AI across industries. Half of the 2,400 participants responding to the survey indicated that their organizations had adopted AI for at least one internal function or business unit. Not surprisingly, businesses in the telecom and other hi-tech sectors reported the highest rates of AI adoption.

As for the business functions seeing the most AI traction, service operations, product and service development, and marketing and sales topped the list. Over two-thirds of the respondents who said they incorporated AI into these functions also credited that adoption for increasing revenues.

Notably, 22% of the respondents said that they could attribute over 5% of their enterprise’s earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to the use of AI. An additional 48% attributed at least some EBIT to using AI.

Legal AI Software Numbers

The overall enterprise-wide benefits of AI seen in organizations worldwide are certainly playing out in the legal arena. AI has now been applied to many routine but critical functions in the legal sector, with impressive results.

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)

Contracts are one of the largest areas where legal organizations can benefit from AI.

According to Gartner, by 2023,legal AI software will bring 30% more efficiency to organizations that deploy CLM solutions, with 90% of multinational global enterprises and 50% of regional midsize organizations investing in CLM solutions by that year.

Onit has discovered comparable results with its own CLM solution (which is powered by business process automation and AI-powered business intelligence platforms), finding that corporate legal departments can expect to see the following savings:

  • A 24% reduction in the average sales cycle
  • A 20% reduction in the average hours spent on contracts
  • A 9% annual average cost savings

With legal AI software for contract review, data shows that in-house attorneys and legal operations professionals can expect to:

  • Increase contract review and approval speed by 60-70%
  • Improve user productivity by 51.5% on average
  • Redline contracts in less than 2 minutes

Of course, contract lifecycle management doesn’t end when your contract is signed. Each signed contract contains valuable data that can be extracted to improve your contracting processes going forward and allow you to make better, more informed business decisions. AI for contract extraction can help corporate legal:

  • Review 6,000 contracts at once
  • View over 500 contract data points
  • Export contract data in 5 seconds

Legal AI Software for Enterprise Legal Management (ELM)

AI performance extends beyond contracts to managing legal spend. For example, Onit’s ELM solution will help in-house counsel save 5-10% on outside counsel spend. Those savings increase when AI is applied to the first-pass invoice review. We’ll have more data illustrating this point coming soon with our upcoming announcement for InvoiceAI for enterprise legal management.

To learn more about how Onit’s AI solutions are changing the way legal professionals do business, contact us today or email [email protected].

ReviewAI Tools Revolutionized with ReviewAI Smart Checklists

Posted on May 11, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

White speech bubble with a checkmark icon on a light blue background, symbolizing validation and efficiency in legal operations and business process management.

It’s no secret that in-house lawyers have too much to do and too little time to do it, making contract review tools a necessity, not a luxury. So, how can contract AI help in-house lawyers? They often have a long list of what they want and need from AI and technology that includes:

  • Eliminating painful, repetitive and non-complex work
  • Freeing up time to focus on strategy and high-value work
  • Increasing the quality of contract review
  • Working faster and handling higher volumes of work

With these priorities in mind, Onit launched contract AI tool ReviewAI seven months ago. ReviewAI does the repetitive work that lawyers want to streamline so they can concentrate on more strategic contributions. It reviews, redlines and edits all types of contracts in less than two minutes, including NDAs, MSAs, SOWs, purchase agreements, employment agreements and more. In addition, its Microsoft Word Add-In enables lawyers to work the way they are accustomed to working.

Now, Onit has announced a substantial enhancement to ReviewAI – Smart Checklists. It’s contract AI that goes beyond alerts and does the work.

Keep reading to learn more, view a demo here or you can hear Jean Yang, Vice President of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, explain it in the latest episode of our Onit podcast.

Contract AI That Goes Beyond Alerts – It Does the Work

Smart Checklists, offered as part of the ReviewAI Word Add-In, evolves contract review tools by turning playbook checks into intelligent and collaborative tasks. It tracks what’s important, what to do next and what is done – all in an intuitive solution that requires no training.

How does it work? Open a contract, and ReviewAI has Smart Checklists ready to go.

As a result of this contract AI tool, lawyers save upward of 52% of their time on contracts, while legal teams improve consistency, lower contract risks and better support the business.

Making ReviewAI Tools Smarter

Lawyers have always worked off of some sort of checklist during contract reviews. The problem is that the lists often only exist on a piece of paper or in someone’s head. They’re static.

ReviewAI Smart Checklists uses AI to create checklists made up of concrete, task-based actions that are generated from your company playbook. Rather than going through the tedious undertaking of applying that playbook yourself, ReviewAI digitizes it for you automatically. If you need to break your contract review into multiple sessions, ReviewAI and its Smart Checklists remember where you left off and make it easy to keep track of where you are, what’s been done and what you still need to do.

How to Get Started with ReviewAI Smart Checklists

Onit’s ReviewAI Smart Checklists, a revolutionary approach for contract review tools, is available immediately.

To learn more, you can:

Legal Industry News: Current News and Trends for Legal Operations Resources, May 2021

Posted on May 6, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

Person typing on a laptop with legal icons and workflow graphics, representing legal operations and business process management solutions by Onit.

Welcome to our May run-down of legal operations resources, where we share with you some of the most pertinent and timely articles for industry news. We hope this roundup provides some valuable takeaways.

In today’s lineup, we feature insights about how platform technology is transforming legal operations, the benefits of CLM and AI for the Lenovo legal department and new CLOC leadership.

#1

How Platform Technologies Enable Enterprise Collaboration For Corporate Legal Departments

Legal departments no longer function as black boxes within organizations. Today’s legal department regularly engages in cross-collaboration with all departments across the organization, typically with a high level of transparency. Along with the increase in collaboration has come a greater expectation that legal departments will heighten the level of service they provide and demonstrate the value they bring to the business.

Platform technologies are making it possible for legal departments to meet these expectations. Many organizations have replaced stand-alone software and solutions with a platform approach that allows companies to streamline processes across the organization and empowers legal departments to better connect with other departments. The article provides an in-depth discussion of the benefits of platform technology and essential tips on how to pick the right platform.

 (Source: The Impact Lawyers)

 #2

What’s Fueling Transformation in Corporate Legal? A Leading Operations Expert Explains.

The legal industry is primed for transformation, not unlike that seen in healthcare two decades ago, according to Brad Rogers, SVP of Strategy and Growth for Onit and former Chief Operations Officer and Chief of Staff for Advocacy and Oversight at a Fortune Global 100 company. Leaders in law are now thinking differently about how to drive efficiency, effectiveness and value. The transition – which was happening well before remote working – is accelerating, with new operating models that are built on what he sees as the four major drivers of change in the industry. You can hear Brad discuss these factors in this podcast.

(Source: Onit podcast)

#3

CLOC, One of the Leading Legal Operations Resources, Welcomes a New President 

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) announced a shift in leadership, with Mike Haven assuming the role of President on May 1. Haven has been a board member of CLOC since March 2019.

According to Haven, “I will continue to build on our commitment to support the entire legal ecosystem and foster a more diverse, inclusive, efficient and innovative culture.”

Haven is currently the Head of Legal Operations and Associate General Counsel for Intel, with prior law and legal ops experience that includes roles at K&L Gates LLP, NetApp and Gap Inc. He has long been active in the CLOC community, advocating for unity in the legal industry to overcome obstacles to progress.

As a reminder, the CLOC Global Institute starts on May 10. You can sign up now to join discussions on everything from the state of the industry to advancing the strategic direction of a corporate legal department and beyond.

(Source: CLOC)

#4

The Future of Contracting: CLM Automation with AI at Lenovo

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) software and AI continue to transform legal operations by allowing for faster and more efficient contracting processes – something that can benefit every company out there. The combination of CLM and AI also allows organizations to enhance risk and spend management, improve revenue and profit margins and increase visibility into counterparty relationships.

Companies that are looking to reap the benefits of digital transportation can learn from those who have successfully undertaken the transformation journey before them. In a recent webinar for the World Commerce and Contracting Association, the Lenovo Legal Department provides an important touchstone for legal operations resources by describing how they did just that, laying out the crucial factors that led to success and the ability to improve efficiency by 30% with contract AI.

(Source: Onit)

#5

Law Firm (Mostly) Goes Meeting-Free to Address Fatigue

It’s no secret that nearly everyone across the legal industry is suffering from at least some level of burnout after the past year. But what can we do about it?

For Dentons, one idea has been to place a pause on meetings for a week to allow employees to either take time off or play catch-up. The no-meetings week, which occurred the last week of April, applies to standing meetings but not to project and client deadlines. It’s not the first time the firm has tried this approach – they had a similar no-meetings week in December 2020. While the larger question remains as to whether the move is enough to combat a year of pandemic-related stress, the pause is an excellent recognition of the past year’s unique demands.

(Source: ABA Journal)

Get the inside track on legal operations resources and trends, the very best events and helpful content from the legal community by joining Lean Into LegalOps today. The program provides members of the legal community with a forum to share and learn from one another via webinars, debates and weekly catch-up calls. Visit this page to join.

Three Examples of In-House Legal Operations Excellence

Posted on May 4, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Graphic design featuring various icons related to legal operations, business process management, and technology, including documents, computers, globes, and checklists, representing Onit's focus on legal technology and workflow automation solutions.

It’s no secret that in-house legal operations faced a 2020 that was anything but business as usual. As the pandemic stretched on for far longer than anyone expected, companies found new ways to do business, accommodating employees who were now working from home and implementing technology solutions that would streamline processes and replace manual tasks and in-person activities.

In-house legal operations professionals took the lead at many companies to figure out how to see organizations through the pandemic. In some cases, this meant overhauling processes and procedures that had been in place for years or even decades. Simply put, legal operations teams became the masters of the new normal.

Following are three examples of how legal operations flipped conversations from uncertainty to success during challenging times.

1. Building a Technology Roadmap for Legal Success

Even the world’s most well-established corporations faced unprecedented challenges and found new ways to surpass them.

When the pandemic hit, fast-food giant McDonald’s made responding to it and helping employees adapt top priorities. The McDonald’s in-house legal operations department placed other company goals aside if they didn’t immediately contribute to its crisis response. Their first step was to survey the organization’s various business and legal teams to identify their technology needs and wish lists. From there, legal operations created an aspirational roadmap for getting the most effective technology into the hands of the company’s global teams.

Three overriding needs emerged from the survey:

  1. A rebalancing of workloads
  2. A reduction in workloads
  3. A means for self-service

Using sophisticated platform technology, the legal operations team created systems to address each of these needs – ones that were flexible enough to quickly respond if needs shifted or changed. At the end of the day, a platform approach allowed McDonald’s to build the workflow and collaboration solutions needed to respond to the COVID crisis and keep the company moving forward.

To listen to the McDonald’s story, visit here.

2. Embracing Enterprise Legal Management

Handling domestic business was hard enough for most companies during the pandemic. But corporations with an international presence faced additional unique challenges – especially if they didn’t have the right technologies.

Jaguar Land Rover North America (JLRNA) is a perfect example. As a multinational corporation, JLRNA routinely has to respond to international legal service requests. Unfortunately, though, they lacked the technology to do it efficiently during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.

JLRNA’s in-house legal operations team acted quickly to implement a sophisticated enterprise legal management solution that was customizable, allowing them to track and manage all the different areas of the company in the ways they needed to. Within the enterprise legal management system, they also created a document repository for storing contracts and capturing contract data and a system for submitting legal service requests. By replacing rudimentary matter management processes with an ELM solution, JLRNA legal operations provided the company with a seamless transition to a new way of doing business that could adapt.

You can hear JLRNA share their journey in this podcast.

3. Adapting Existing Solutions to Meet New Problems

Much of the focus in discussing how organizations navigated recent challenges has been on the adoption of new technologies. For some in-house legal operations, though, the answer was to leverage tools and solutions that had already been implemented. That was the case for publishing company Pearson.

Pearson had already implemented a comprehensive contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution to help contain costs. In 2020, that CLM solution served as the foundation for Pearson’s legal department to create the Transaction Services Center (TSC), an effective means for handling high-volume, low-risk standard agreements. This freed up internal counsel to focus on more complex agreements and activities that helped support the business. Having a comprehensive CLM solution enabled Pearson to better handle legal service requests, review and approve contracts, and respond to legal advisory requests, at the same time achieving savings, increasing efficiency and gaining unprecedented visibility into contract portfolios and internal workloads. The results were so impressive, Pearson won the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Value Champions Award.

You can hear Pearson’s story here.

No one can predict for sure when the pandemic and its effects on business will end. Until it does, in-house legal operations professionals will continue to play a crucial role in guiding their organizations to success. The stories above are just a few perfect examples of how ingenuity and technology make that possible.

You can read more about corporate legal departments transformations in this eBook:

Lean Into LegalOps: The Ultimate Guide to Legal Operations in the New Normal and Advice from Transformative Corporate Legal Departments.

With the Rising Use of AI In Legal Services, What Should In-House Counsel Look For?

Posted on April 28, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Robot hand balancing scales of justice with icons representing legal technology, law, and legal operations.

The increased use of AI in legal services is indisputable. Analysts predict that corporate legal departments will see technology budget increases as significant as three times by 2025 and an ongoing push to automate legal work for productivity. With its ability to bring immediate results out-of-the-box and learn and improve over time, AI offers the ideal technological solution to boost efficiency and save time for high-performing legal departments. In fact, this study found that AI for contract review can increase productivity by 51.5%.

However, not everything that claims to be AI these days is actually AI, and not all AI solutions are created equal. AI can significantly boost efficiency, streamline workflows, and save costs – if you invest in the right AI solutions.

Given the tremendous benefits of AI technologies, it’s helpful to understand the features that set the best AI tools apart from the competition. When you’re looking to purchase AI solutions and transform your legal department, you should consider whether they offer the following characteristics and features.

Time to Value

When you invest in new technology like AI, you want to start reaping the benefits as soon as possible. Therefore, when looking at AI options, you want to find solutions that allow you to quickly begin realizing value after you implement them.

Several factors can decrease the amount of time it takes to realize value from an AI solution. The software should be quick and easy to implement and roll out across all your users. Your AI should also ideally be pre-trained, meaning it’s ready to go straight out of the box, rather than requiring additional time to train it. The faster your users can capitalize on all the benefits of your AI solution, the faster it will translate into value for your organization.

Pricing Structure

Technology vendors take a wide range of approaches to pricing their products, and how they price them can significantly impact their value and usability for your enterprise. As the use of AI in legal services increases, the last thing you want to do is agree to a pricing structure based on the number of users.

When the price of your AI solution is not based on user numbers, you have the option of using the technology to work across all business units in your organization without having to worry about incurring extra costs when additional collaboration would be valuable. The ideal solution will have no limit on the number of users who can interact with the system for the initial price of your investment.

User Experience

Like any technology, AI is only valuable if your users can use it effectively. Any solution you choose should be easy to understand and execute without excessive training or a steep learning curve. Look into whether the product you’re considering has a proven implementation department.

The right tools will also have a good track record in the customer satisfaction department. It’s worthwhile to look into the vendor or product’s Net Promoter Score (NPS). An NPS is based on customers’ ratings of their likelihood of recommending a company, product, or service on a scale of 0 to 10 – so the higher the NPS, the better.

Underlying Platform

Any AI solution you purchase will have to operate on some underlying platform to function. At a minimum, that platform should be a trusted product that has the capacity necessary to meet all your needs and the ability to scale as those needs change.

Even better is not having to rely on external platforms for your chosen AI solution to work. The ideal tools will run on a reliable platform supplied and maintained by the same vendor as the AI solutions themselves. This will allow you to deploy products and updates quickly. Also, look for no-code platforms that will enable you to build your own apps with little or no technical experience.

Immediate Usability

A solution is only helpful if your users actually use it. It’s also most helpful if they can start using it right away. Long implementation delays or the need to invest significant time in learning to use a product can outweigh the benefits that product might eventually offer.

You should look for out-of-the-box products that require minimal configuration before they can be used in order to get the full use of AI in legal services. Such products are ready to go almost immediately, meaning you can quickly start using them to address the problems that drove you to seek out AI in the first place. At the same time, however, they can also be customized to meet the most simple or customized workflows within your organization.

Partner Network

While the vendor of your chosen AI solution certainly matters, so do your vendor’s partnerships. You want a technology provider that partners with other top-notch providers and professionals who can address your needs outside of those related to the specific AI technology you’re buying.

You want your AI product vendor to have alliances with experienced implementation service providers to ensure that your chosen solution succeeds across your entire enterprise. Beyond implementation, your provider should also be part of a robust ecosystem of partners who can address your needs as they arise, from the most routine business needs to the most novel demands that might arise. Having the right partnerships also means that your vendor can leverage those partnerships to design the most optimal solutions to address a particular problem.

The Use of AI in Legal Services – Investing in the Right AI

The excitement about AI is understandable – today’s technologies can accomplish tasks that seemed impossible even just a few years ago. Wanting to incorporate those advancements into your organization to improve the ways you do business is a great impulse.

You need to be sure, however, that you’re getting products that are effective and not just hype. Even more importantly, they must be tailored to your organization’s needs if you want to see actual benefits from them. Not every AI solution is suitable for every organization, and not every AI provider will give you the support you need for your products to succeed.

By considering the factors outlined above before you purchase any solution, you’ll put your organization on the right path to genuinely benefiting from AI. It’s worth the time to do your research and think before you buy.