Category: Business Process Management

Leading Legal Ops Priority: Diversity and Inclusion in Law Firms

Posted on March 8, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events, Digital Transformation

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) have taken center stage at corporations in recent years. Making D&I a priority isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also good business sense. It’s been consistently shown that greater diversity leads to stronger work quality and helps businesses remain competitive.

Nonetheless, the idea of corporate legal departments pushing for diversity among their full-time employees and in their outside law firms is still relatively new. Only 11.5% of GCs at Fortune 1000 companies in 2020 were racial or ethnic minorities, a 2% decrease from the prior year.

Efforts in this area are improving, however. Pursuing D&I initiatives in law firms is one of the top trends for corporate legal operations in 2022. Advancing D&I requires legal ops professionals to look at their internal staff and practices and make an honest assessment of the outside vendors they work with to determine where they can help spur change.

Internal Diversity and Inclusion in Law Firms

Today, many legal departments and law firms are looking to increase headcount by attracting and retaining a diverse talent pool. Legal operations professionals are a crucial part of this movement and are prioritizing diversity and inclusion (D&I) programs as companies start the process of emerging from the pandemic.

Improving D&I involves both process and data, according to Bloomberg’s 2021 Legal Operations Survey. Legal operations staff have discovered three key processes that can help enhance D&I among their ranks: internal diversity training, increasing remote work opportunities and changing recruiting patterns. On the data front, the same survey showed that 71% of legal ops teams plan to track diversity metrics going forward to push D&I even further.

Another frequently overlooked area is the pipeline from law school to law firm promotion structures to in-house legal department employment. Many would argue that disparities in the legal profession begin with law school admissions. Though overall law school admission rates have been down for all groups since 2014, the number of Black and Hispanic applicants has declined more than the number of white applicants in recent years. Focusing on D&I in recruiting can help address these disparities before they worsen.

Focusing D&I Efforts Outside

While the efforts highlighted above will go a long way toward creating a more diverse workplace, what else can legal ops do to promote diversity and inclusion (D&l)?

One crucial action is for legal departments and legal ops professionals to hold their external vendors to the same D&I standards they’ve set for themselves. Chances are, your legal ops team already uses a number of metrics to formally evaluate vendor performance before making vendor hiring decisions, and D&I should be one of those metrics.

The focus on outside vendor D&I should start as early as possible. The RFP process is a great starting point for considering whether your vendors and potential vendors share your commitment to D&I before you’ve brought them on board. Another great way to assess your vendors in the area of D&I is to have them complete the ABA Model Diversity Survey as part of the vetting and hiring process.

A Cultural Shift

Creating a diverse workforce requires efforts on multiple fronts. Legal departments concerned with D&I need to be looking in every corner to find additional opportunities to eliminate disparities. As calls for corporate legal departments to drive D&I are becoming more and more common, in-house lawyers and legal ops professionals need to pay more attention to the diversity of their own internal ranks and the staffing of their outside counsel and other vendors.

Going forward, legal operations professionals will continue prioritizing D&I programs, and in-house legal departments will increasingly be seen as a driver to improve diversity issues in the greater legal industry through outside counsel hiring. Organizations such as the ABA and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association are encouraging corporate legal departments to ensure their teams are reflecting diversity, but the real heavy lifting rests on the shoulders of the lawyers and legal operations departments.

To read more about D&I, as well as the other top trends for legal ops, download “Six Leading Corporate Legal Operations Trends for 2022.”

Corporate Legal News Updates for Corporate Counsel (March 2022 Edition)

Posted on March 3, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Welcome to the March issue of leading news and resources for in-house counsel and legal operations professionals. In this edition, you’ll read about the return of in-person Legalweek NY, GC’s and CLO’s increased involvement in technology and business decisions, the future of human-in-the-loop technologies and a new legal tech-buying directory from industry expert Bob Ambrogi.

1. The GC’s Role in Tech Decisions

We all know that general counsel are increasingly helping their companies make technology-related decisions, but just how prevalent is this new role? According to the recent General Counsel Report from FTI Consulting, which surveyed 30 top in-house lawyers, 97% reported playing a role in their organization’s technology ecosystem, with 87% saying they were “heavily involved” in tech planning and purchases. Nonetheless, only 33% of respondents believed that lawyers have adequate knowledge of technology. This leaves significant room for technology education, which will be crucial as lawyers will only be expected to be more involved with new technology for law firms going forward.

Source: Law.com

2. “Human-in-the-Loop” Solutions Will Comprise 30% of New Legal Tech Automation Offerings by 2025

AI has taken the legal industry by storm, but human lawyers aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Gartner recently predicted that, by 2025, 30% of new legal automation solutions will combine technology and human input – also known as “human-in-the-loop” offerings. This hybrid approach to technology blends staff and software, with high-level technical expertise coming from the technology supplier rather than an in-house team. As the volume of legal work has grown faster than legal headcounts in most organizations, the human-in-the-loop model frees in-house lawyers from having to devote already-limited time and resources to developing domain expertise.

Source: Gartner

3. Here’s What’s On the Mind of Chief Legal Officers (Survey)

The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and Exterro recently released the 2022 Chief Legal Officers Survey, with results from 861 chief legal officers and general counsel representing organizations across 20 industries and 38 countries. The survey found that CLOs are increasingly playing a vital role in business and taking on more responsibilities. Legal ops pros are pivotal right now, and investment is accelerating accordingly, with 70% of CLOs listing legal ops as an area of focus for their department’s top strategic initiatives. Finally, delivering value to customers was cited as a top priority, so, not surprisingly,  contract management is the top tech area in which CLOs plan to invest going forward. CLM helps companies accelerate revenue, streamline processes and manage legal obligations – which can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

Source: Association of Corporate Counsel

4. Industry Leaders Launch Information Hub for Legal Tech Buyers

Robert (Bob) Ambrogi has been a leading voice in the legal tech industry for nearly two decades. His latest venture, along with his son Ben Ambrogi, a media specialist and producer, is the release of the LawNext Legal Technology Directory. The directory is designed to provide readers with the information they need to make legal tech buying decisions, including intel on product features, pricing, independent reviews and more. “Our goal is to continue to develop this into a comprehensive directory of products, reviews, learning resources, and more, where buyers can find trusted information to guide their purchases, and where vendors can help their products be discovered and distinguished,” Bob explained.

Source: Law.com

5. Connect With Onit at Legalweek NY!

Legalweek returns in person this year! From March 9-11, Onit will be joining the legal tech community in New York to engage with our customers, share our products and discuss the growth of our company in the last two years. Our Legalweek session, Building Stronger Connections to the Enterprise (Thursday, March 10, from 1:30 – 2:30 pm ET), will feature panelists from Hearst, Corteva and MassMutual sharing their vision for why it’s imperative for legal to “connect” to the broader enterprise and how they’re implementing processes and technology to make these connections. On Wednesday, March 9, we’re co-hosting a happy hour with PwC, and on Thursday, March 10, we’re co-hosting an exclusive dinner for in-house legal leaders with Consilio. The Onit family of companies will be at the Cyber Café on the 3rd floor of the Hilton, offering demos of Onit products built on our workflow and AI platforms and offering fun giveaways. Of course, you can always schedule time in our private demo room away from the exhibit hall floor to take a deeper dive into how Onit products can help your legal department better manage legal work, costs and risks. Register for any or all of these activities now. We hope to see you in NY!

Source: Onit

We look forward to bringing you more news and insights as the new year progresses. As always, 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].

In House Legal Software: Aligning Growing Legal Tech Budgets with Roadmaps

Posted on February 24, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Legal Management

There’s no question that in house legal software has significantly changed the way law departments conduct the business of law. From the predecessors of enterprise legal management more than 40 years ago to today’s AI-driven contract lifecycle management systems, technology has done its part to drive efficiency, promote transparency and capture valuable analytics.

Yet, legal operations professionals have confessed that their law departments have sometimes struggled in this area. In Gartner’s 2021 Legal Planning & Budgeting report, legal operations participants cited “technology solutions and level of adoption” as one of the top-four weaknesses revealed during COVID-19. The report notes the following two challenges as “knowledge management and coordination” and “effectively balancing routine and unplanned workloads.”

A lot has changed in the short time between then and now. More and more corporate legal departments have evolved their legal operations and pivoted to embrace or update in house legal software.

The proof is in legal technology budgets, which are growing. Gartner predicts that legal technology budgets will increase threefold by 2025.

In House Legal Software Adoption – Technology Roadmaps On the Rise

How will corporate legal departments allocate these bigger legal technology budgets?

Almost 90% of surveyed general counsel and CLOs in organizations earning $1B or more cited efficiency as the number one factor in deciding when to purchase technology (far outweighing cost reduction, which was cited by only 8%). This is great news for busy legal professionals, who, according to this survey, often find themselves handling more than five distinct business areas.

But, most legal operations teams are focused on a bigger picture. They’re proactive about their in house legal software implementations and planning out thoughtful, long-term technology roadmaps.

The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) was created to help legal operations professionals and other core corporate legal industry players optimize the legal service delivery models required to support the needs of legal departments of all sizes. One of CLOC’s 12 core competencies addresses technology and specifically addresses technology roadmaps:

“Create a clear technology vision that spans all the needs of your organization. Automate manual processes, digitize physical tasks and improve speed and quality through the strategic deployment of technology solutions.”

CLOC further describes this process by suggesting legal operations create and implement long-term technology roadmaps, evaluate new vendors, assess emerging technology capabilities, determine where to buy and when to buy and structure partnerships with corporate IT teams.

Aligning Budgets with Legal Technology Roadmaps

Rolling out a technology roadmap for in house legal software is the best way to figure out where your organization wants to go in terms of technology and how your budget can align with those goals. Technology roadmaps can account for budgets of all sizes, making it easier for legal operations professionals to stay on top of technology implementation even as budgets for technology continue to grow.

Fifty-four percent of respondents in Deloitte’s 2021 State of Legal Operations Survey said they now have “a defined and actionable legal systems roadmap.” That number is up from just 39% in 2020. This shows that companies understand that knowing where you want to go and how you’re going to get there is the only way to improve and grow systematically and intentionally.

Among the most popular technologies making up those roadmaps, according to CLOC, are solutions that automate and streamline critical workflows, reduce risk, and enhance data collection and transparency, including tools for e-signature, e-billing/matter management, contract management and document management.

With the sheer number of in house legal software options available on the market today, choosing the right one can feel overwhelming. The upside of all this innovation, though, is that you can find the right technology solution for nearly any budget. One helpful approach is to find an experienced partner who can help you identify recurring pain points and wish lists and turn those into a technology roadmap that can realistically be implemented to help your organization.

You can also lean on resources the explore the capabilities of technology and how they support law departments:

To read more about building legal technology roadmaps and other trends defining legal operations today, download our latest white paper: Six Leading Corporate Legal Operations Trends for 2022.

The Top Six Leading Corporate Legal Operations Trends for 2022

Posted on February 17, 2022 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management

The pandemic changed everything about our world seemingly in the blink of an eye—corporate legal operations included. However, with change comes opportunity: to unlock novel technology solutions and discover cutting-edge ways of catapulting efficiency and catalyzing transformation for enterprise-wide excellence.

Consider these six corporate legal operations trends, compiled from the latest metrics and data, to tackle your ever-evolving law department challenges.

1. Turning Budgets into Roadmaps

Corporate legal departments are projected to triple their legal technology budgets by 2025, according to Gartner’s 2021 Legal Planning & Budgeting report. Additionally, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s (CLOC) 2021 State of the Industry Report revealed that technology implementation is increasing, a triumph in efficiency for legal operations professionals who often tend to handle as many as five different business areas.

Not surprisingly, efficiency is the principal motivator encouraging general counsel (GC) and chief legal officers (CLOs) in $1B+ organizations to purchase new tech. With legal operations teams seeking to streamline and automate workflows, these purchases prove more than the sum of their parts. They are an integral part of “a defined and actionable legal systems roadmap,” the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) 2021 Legal Technology Report for In-House Counsel says. In fact, 32 percent of respondents in Deloitte’s 2021 State of Legal Operations Survey believe that procuring state-of-the-art e-signature, e-billing and contact management tools have supplied them with the ability to “provide actionable KPIs and reporting without significant manual effort,” maximizing time, energy and expenses saved.

2. Championing Diversity and Inclusion

Not only do diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives contribute to more robust work quality and skyrocket a competitive edge, they simply encapsulate the right thing to do. Still, despite an American Bar Association (ABA) ‘s Model Diversity Survey determining a marked leap in diversity among in-house counsel senior leadership, only 11.5% of GCs at Fortune 1000 companies were ethnic or racial minorities.

There is good news, though: post-pandemic, the number-one priority that legal operations professionals cite is implementing a D&I program.

Bloomberg’s 2021 Legal Operations Survey concluded that diversity is bolstered by both tracking metrics and introducing new processes, such as internal diversity training, more remote work opportunities and forward-thinking recruiting patterns. Also imperative? Holding vendors, namely law firms, responsible for the same standards of diversity and inclusion.

Three trailblazing companies that have elevated D&I are Intel, Uber and Novartis AG. Corporate legal departments can start by asking their current law firms to complete the ABA Model Diversity Survey and combining that data with D&I information from RFPs in a centralized legal solution.

3. Bridging Cybersecurity and Compliance Gaps

With data breaches on the inevitable rise and the average cost of a breach $4.24 million, it’s no wonder that 57% of the respondents in an ACC survey noted the urgency of having a “comprehensive data management strategy to ensure compliance, defensibility and security.”

Legal operations are an essential puzzle piece in comprehensive cybersecurity. Law.com stresses that organizations collaborate with IT to conduct data security and privacy measure audits focusing on consumer protection. The American Bar Association revealed that only 43% of those surveyed use encryption, and only 39% execute multi-factor authentication. Because remote work protocols dramatically augment technical vulnerabilities and cost over $1M more per breach, investing in a secure multi-factor authentication tool is fundamental for risk management.

4. Capturing the Power of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer merely a visionary trick in sci-fi flicks: its tech has helped lawyers and legal operations professionals analyze data patterns and generate business insights.

AI has proven especially vital in legal contract review software by reviewing thousands of contracts simultaneously, migrating legacy contracts and exporting data in under five seconds. Studies show that its functional aptitude for performing first-pass reviews makes even the newest users more than 51% productive and 34% efficient.

Those percentages provide a compelling argument for AI when extrapolated across a legal department. Whereas an average company has 55 lawyers who review a total of 9,526 contracts annually, AI can propel the same legal team to process 4,906 more each year. That’s analogous to hiring 28 additional lawyers!

Another bonus? Saving in-house counsel countless hours while circumventing the 9.2% average value “leakage.”

5. Realizing the Win-Win of AFAs

Alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) have often been branded with a bad reputation. That’s likely due to many legal departments fearing they may pay more with an AFA than an hourly fee. However, the tide is slowly changing as the average amount of AFA revenue across AmLaw 200 firms has consistently increased since 2018.

However, AFAs –which offer benefits for spend management over traditional billable hours—can be incredibly advantageous for clients, legal operations teams and law firms. They provide more control over spend, more reliable billing and a greater capacity for companies to remain on budget.

Generally, the more flexible an AFA, the more appealing it is. Utilizing spend management software to analyze current AFAs and compare vendor rates can help make enterprise-changing decisions.

6. Navigating Data-Driven Vendor Processes

According to a survey of GCs, vendor management is their top priority. This is even though CLOC’s State of the Industry Report revealed only 27% of legal department respondents formally reviewed law firm performance. In such an absence of vendor evaluation guidelines, how can return on investment (ROI) be determined?

This is where legal technology software shines. By assisting legal operations teams in orchestrating a formal vendor performance review process, it can also track vendor metrics, billing compliance, accruals and spend totals, shifting to a data-driven strategy and the most cost-effective business resolutions.

Whether it’s accelerating staff, budget or technology, each of these legal operations trends shares one element: in today’s rapidly metamorphosing world, they are becoming more critical by the day. Embracing change and advancing unrivaled growth with enterprise legal management software, contract management and transformational vendor and diversity programs will revolutionize legal operations in 2022—and long into the future.

Read more about these top legal operations trends by downloading our latest white paper.

Legal E-Billing Systems vs. General E-Billing: Why You Need a Specialized Tool

Posted on February 3, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Legal Management

There are a lot of options out there when it comes to legal e-billing systems and software. If your IT teams are pushing back on the idea of purchasing a specialized legal e-billing tool, you’re not alone. Many corporate legal departments run into the same problem – being shoehorned into general billing software instead of e-billing and enterprise legal management (ELM) software designed for legal users.

The difference matters.

Because they’re designed specifically with the needs of legal users in mind, legal e-billing systems like ELM and AI-enabled invoice review offer a whole host of benefits for corporate legal departments of all sizes.

In this blog post, Jackson Mayes, vice president of ELM sales for Onit, and Robin Snasdell, managing director of Consilio, discuss the differences. Consilio is a member of Onit’s Strategic Alliances program.

The Downside of General E-Billing

When choosing billing tools, it might be tempting to think that a general e-billing system will be good enough to meet your needs. However, there are a few things to consider with this approach.

Most generalized e-billing systems incorporate some rules and support workflows to guide billing decisions. Still, those rules and workflows are not specific to a corporate legal department’s needs.

General e-billing systems have several shortfalls for corporate legal users. Among other things, these tools:

  • Don’t support electronic timekeeper rates from outside counsel
  • Can’t prevent law firms from billing to matters without approval
  • Can’t receive invoices in the industry-standard Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) format or compare LEDES invoices against company billing guidelines
  • Don’t permit you to write off or reject individual invoice line items
  • Don’t allow you to compare your spend against your budget
  • Don’t support the automatic allocation of invoices to specified cost centers or codes, and
  • Don’t allow you to report on spend by relevant factors such as time, activity, matter, firm and more.

Accurate and efficient legal invoicing requires all of these functionalities, and the inability to perform them can be detrimental to your company’s revenue streams.

The Benefits of Legal E-Billing Systems

Specific legal e-billing systems, which are a part of Onit’s legal management software, address all these shortfalls, and then some.

Legal e-billing systems support the submission, review and approval of timekeeper rates, which accelerates invoice review and reduces the chance of invalid rates being approved, leading to overpayment. Law firms can only submit invoices when they’ve been assigned to a matter by your department, which gives you better financial control and further reduces the chance that invalid invoices will be submitted.

Inbound invoices are automatically allocated to the appropriate matter, reducing the risk of incorrectly allocating spend. As invoices are received, they can be automatically compared against budgets for matters, vendors or matter phases to highlight variances. If you need to adjust or reject an individual line item, you can do so via automated or manual review, saving time and streamlining invoice review across your department.

Legal e-billing systems are also designed to work with invoices prepared in LEDES. They can quickly analyze fee and expense data included in law firm invoices, automatically comparing every invoice line against your outside billing guidelines and capturing the LEDES invoice data into a database for robust reporting on spend. The ability to work with LEDES invoices accelerates invoice review and ensures compliance with billing policies.

Simply put, legal e-billing systems work with the nuances of invoicing in the legal field. Chances are, you wouldn’t consider using non-legal technology for the most critical aspects of your business, like matter management or legal spend management. Billing and invoicing should be no different.

Onit is a leading provider of solutions designed specifically for legal e-billing, including Onit ELM and InvoiceAI. Schedule a demo today to implement the right legal e-billing system for your specific needs or email [email protected].

Consilio is a global leader in eDiscovery, document review, risk management, and legal consulting services. Through its Consilio Complete suite of capabilities, the company supports multinational law firms and corporations using innovative software, cost-effective managed services, and deep legal and regulatory industry expertise. For more information, please visit us at consilio.com.

Current Legal News for Corporate Counsel (February 2022 Edition)

Posted on February 1, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management

Once more, we offer current legal news for corporate legal departments. This month’s edition includes a chipmunk lawyer, what the global legal market has in common with Apple, rethinking the title “in-house counsel,” associate pay raises and how better contract management can increase revenue.

1. The Global Legal Market On Track to Join the Trillionaire’s Club

Is the value of the global legal market joining the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet? These companies have famously broken the billion-dollar mark, cresting into the trillions in market value. A new report places the current global legal market at almost $900 billion and predicts a 4.4% compound annual growth rate through 2028 – meaning it will hit more than a trillion dollars by that time. Artificial Lawyer looks into why legal is snowballing and what it can mean for legal technology.

Source: Artificial Lawyer

2. Introducing the Chipmunk Lawyer

First, we got the lawyer cat, when an attorney had an incredibly adorable (and hard to remove) furry filter during a virtual hearing. We now have another video conferencing mishap in current legal news. This time, a faulty microphone converted a lawyer’s voice into a frequency and speed that Alvin, Simon and Theodore would appreciate. Fortunately, Judge Roy Ferguson – who also presided during the lawyer cat case – quickly identified the glitch and helped fix it.

Source: Above The Law

3. Is It Time to Ditch the Term “In-House Counsel”?

What are you called if you are an attorney working in a corporate legal department? Some may jump to “in-house counsel.” It’s long been an industry term. But corporate counsel may want to reset it. A CLO sparks a spirited debate about the title on LinkedIn. Spoiler alert: He isn’t a fan. Others in the same profession jumped into the conversation, talking about its pros and cons and offering alternative titles like “house counsel,” “internal counsel” and “crisis and strategy counsel.”

Source: Corporate Counsel

4. More Associate Pay Hikes for Law Firms, According to Current Legal News Outlets

International law firm Milbank announced an increase of up to $20,000 in pay for associates, creating a new salary range of $215,000 to $385,000. Many other firms, including Baker McKenzie, DLA Piper and Goodwin are following suit, according to the ABA Journal (who also relied on Above The Law, Law.com and Reuters). This follows a similar pattern from last year as law firms focus on staying competitive and retaining top talent. Corporate legal departments may feel conflicted about the raise since higher salaries can contribute to higher law firm bills. This blog post has a few pointers for those looking for tips to contain legal spend.

Source: ABA Journal

5. How Improved Contract Management Increases Revenue 9%

Improving how your company manages the lifecycle of contracts can bring impressive bottom-line benefits. The World Commerce & Contracting organization estimates that enhanced contract development and management can increase profitability to the tune of 9% of a company’s annual revenue. Here’s how technology like AI and automation replaces manual processes to create stronger contract management.

Source: Onit

We hope you enjoyed this digest of current legal news for corporate counsel. If you’re interested in learning more about how corporate legal departments use technologies like enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, AI and more, schedule an Onit demo today or email [email protected].

The Latest in Corporate Counsel and Legal Technology News (January 2022 Edition)

Posted on January 20, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Legal Management

Welcome to the January digest of leading legal technology news and resources for in-house counsel and legal operations professionals. In this edition, you’ll read about the issues shaping legal and legal technology as we enter the new year, including an expected increase in legal disputes, the legal technology that’s helping GCs succeed and the possibility that the elusive sabbatical may come to the in-house world.

1. Almost a Third of Global Companies Expect Disputes To Increase In 2022, Study Finds

According to a recent report from global law firm Baker McKenzie, almost one-third of the world’s companies expect to see an increase in disputes in 2022. Not surprisingly, issues related to COVID-19 and cybersecurity – two of the most significant challenges in the past year – are expected to be the biggest threats. Specifically, 57% of respondents said cybersecurity disputes were most concerning for their companies, while 48% saw the pandemic as creating the greatest exposure to potential legal disputes. As we move forward in the coming year, companies should be braced for an uptick in court filings.

Source: The Global Legal Post

2. The Software That Lets GCs Showcase Their Value

In recent years, legal technology has played a significant role in helping in-house counsel juggle the competing demands of getting more done for their companies while keeping costs to a minimum. Jared Correia recently sat down with guests (including Matt DenOuden, SVP of Global Sales for Onit) in the latest episode of his Above the Law’s Non-Eventcast podcast to discuss just that. The episode focuses on how in-house counsel can best leverage matter management and legal spend management software to help lower overhead and improve operations. You can listen to the full podcast on Apple and Spotify.

Source: Above The Law

3. The Latest Perk for In-House Lawyers: Sabbaticals

Here’s an interesting trend for those keeping up on legal technology news: Time off! We all know a lawyer or two who could use a break, especially after the past couple of years. The good news is that more might soon get one. Sabbaticals have not often been included in in-house counsel compensation packages. However, a record number of attorneys left the workforce in 2021, mainly due to burnout, increased personal demands, a need for more flexibility and other concerns prompted by the pandemic. This has some corporations rethinking their stance on sabbaticals. Many recruiters are positing that employers might start using sabbaticals as a means of attempting to retain top talent in a competitive legal market.

Source: Law.com

4. The Top Legal Technology News Stories of 2021

There’s no question that 2021 was a year of ups, downs and everything in between for legal technology news. Here, technology evangelist and lawyer Nicole Black lays out the top five legal tech news stories that dominated headlines last year for the ABA Journal. The stories include the evolution of remote work, the uptick in cybersecurity risks, the significant increase in resignations in the legal industry at the associate level, the prevalence of mergers, acquisitions and consolidations in the legal tech space (including Onit’s acquisitions of Bodhala and BusyLamp), and significant legal tech IPOs that occurred in 2021.

Source: ABA Journal

(PS: Onit recently announced its latest acquisition, SecureDocs, which brings contract management to SMB customers. You can read more about it here.)

5.  Legalweek Conference Shifts to March

COVID-19 continues to disrupt conference season. This time, Omicron concerns have pushed  Legalweek. One of the leading conferences for legal technology news and advances is moving from the last week of January to March 8-11. If you’re registered, you don’t have to change a thing except  your hotel reservations. The conference, which legal thought leader Bob Ambrogi estimates to be in its 40th year, welcomes thousands of lawyers, in-house counsel, legal operations leaders and legal IT professionals each year.

Source: LawSites

We look forward to bringing you more news and insights as the new year progresses. As always, 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].

How to Identify the Best Enterprise Legal Management Software For Your Law Department

Posted on January 18, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

In today’s fast-paced and quickly evolving business environment, corporate counsel and legal department professionals want to work faster, smarter and more efficiently. One of the ideal ways to do this is by automating manual processes, minimizing risk and gaining greater insight into matters and spend with enterprise legal management software.

How can you find the best enterprise legal management solution for your law department? If you’re interested in implementing the ideal ELM software to increase efficiency and help get a handle on legal spend, the following resources can help.

Enterprise Legal Management Resources

  • The History of the Enterprise Legal Management System and How Today’s Innovators Use It: ELM systems have evolved significantly since their first iteration more than 40 years ago. Before ELM solutions, paper ruled every aspect of legal operations. Now, with digitization, automation and AI, ELM systems transform legal operations, analyze spend, minimize company risk and drive process efficiency – all while helping corporate legal departments better support their businesses. Read more to learn how ELM software became critical to today’s corporate legal departments and how innovative GCs, in-house counsel and legal operations professionals are now using it.
  • Six Features of the Best Matter Management Software: Matter management software puts critical matter, financial and performance data at the fingertips of corporate counsel and legal operations. But what features should a corporate legal department prioritize to gain the best return on investment? This post outlines the top six features to look for in matter management software.
  • How to Prepare Your Team for an Enterprise Legal Management Software Implementation: An ELM implementation brings all-new operational efficiency levels to corporate legal departments. In fact, some estimate that the best enterprise legal management software can help save up to 10% on outside counsel spend. It’s critical, though, not to lose sight of the people component of ELM implementations. This blog post sets out the best practices to ensure that you have all your crucial players on board to make your implementation a success.
  • What to Look For in Enterprise Legal Management Software: ELM software turbo boosts legal operations and brings new levels of operational efficiency to corporate legal departments. A comprehensive solution that combines e-billing, matter management and legal service request intake into a single, streamlined platform provides a game-changing way to analyze legal spend, minimize company risk and drive process efficiency. However, all these benefits are only possible if you find the best enterprise legal management software to support your law department and its unique needs. This blog post breaks down what you should be looking for and why.

Legal Spend Management Resources

  • Legal Billing Review: How to Right-Size Invoice Charges: When it comes to legal billing, corporate legal departments often have a baseline expectation: Charge my company the correct amount. However, what sounds like a simple premise (and should be easy to meet) comes with serious challenges. The ELM helps alleviate some of those challenges, but companies still need the right approach to invoice review to ensure they’re not overcharged. Matt DenOuden, Onit’s SVP of Global Sales, sits down with Chubb and Sterling Analytics executives to explore the ideal approach that adds efficiency and expertise to invoice review while still honoring a company’s relationship with its law firms.
  • Ensure Accurate Legal Billing By Avoiding These Four Common Invoicing Problems: While having accurate legal billing is something all parties involved can agree on, it’s still a complicated process for large corporate legal departments. A single law firm bill may have hundreds of pages, clock in at millions of dollars and cover multiple matters, tasks and timekeepers. Outside counsel guidelines, billing code confusion and the sheer volume of bills further complicate invoice review. This blog post discusses some of the most common errors that make accurate legal billing challenging.
  • The Latest Advancement For AI in Spend Analytics: Legal invoice review is rarely a top-ten task for corporate legal departments, meaning it’s the ideal process for AI in spend analytics to improve. This post explains how AI, combined with the best enterprise legal management software, analyzes historical and real-time legal invoices to find errors “between the billing rules.”

Finally, if you’re in the mood for a fun ELM video, we have just the thing for you.

Implementing the best enterprise legal management software for your business can go a long way toward increasing efficiency and eliminating the most common pain points associated with legal spend management. Onit ELM is here to help. Reach out to us today to schedule a demonstration or learn more at [email protected].

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:

 

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.