Category: Company News and Events

The Women, Influence & Power Summit: Furthering Diversity in the Legal Community

Posted on October 9, 2020 by - Company News and Events

General counsel want diversity from their law firms – and they’ll prioritize business based on that.

More than 170 general counsel and corporate legal executives from companies such as Google Fiber, Lyft and Heineken USA signed an open letter stating this in 2019. An excerpt reads:

“We expect the outside law firms we retain to reflect the diversity of the legal community and the companies and the customers we serve.” 

The statement validated the work of law firms focused on providing actionable results in support of diversity. It also served as a warning to those law firms slow to respond.

In December of 2019, the Vault/Minority Corporate Counsel Association Law Firm Diversity Survey results found that:

“Law firm populations are slowly becoming more diverse, although demographic changes have been slow to trickle upward, and firms continue to struggle with retention of diverse attorneys, particularly people of color. More women serve as partners and law firm leaders than in the past, although they have yet to achieve gender parity, and women of color enjoy fewer of these successes than their white colleagues.”

Diversity is a top priority for corporate legal, both for their departments and their outside counsel. The commitment started well before 2019 and will continue going forward as the legal community collaborates to build more diverse law firms and corporate legal departments.

Women, Influence & Power in Law

The annual summit Women, Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) has continually propelled awareness, interest and action to support diversity. For more than a decade, the conference has united prominent women in law to drive meaningful conversations and actionable solutions surrounding diversity, equality, and inclusion within the legal community. This year’s virtual gathering, scheduled for October 26-30, will be no exception, with keynotes from luminaries Tina Chen, President and CEO of the “Time’s Up” Legal Defense Fund and former chief of staff to Michelle Obama and Paula Boggs, founder of Boggs Media, LLC and executive vice president, general counsel and secretary, law and corporate affairs at Starbucks Corporation from 2002 to 2012.

Onit is proud to sponsor and participate in this year’s event.

Stasha Jain, vice president of legal and compliance for Onit, will host a roundtable session titled “Beyond Artificial Intelligence: The Future Of In House Legal Teams” on October 27 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. EST. Stasha has practiced law for more than 15 years, with in-house counsel experience at Onit, ZS Associates, Inc. and Hewitt Associates. The session will take a candid look at how in-house teams will transform in the near future and how technology can influence that change.

WIPL is free for in-house counsel and open to legal professionals who support diversity in the legal community. Visit here to register.

While you’re at the event, be sure to “stop by” to say hello to Onit via the Exhibitor Directory. If you join us for a demo, we’ll buy you lunch – or rather, a DoorDash gift card that you can use to treat yourself at your favorite restaurant. Even better: In addition to the gift card, those that watch a demo will have a chance to win a unique virtual foodie experience. We’re waiting until the conference to share more details. But trust us – this is worth it!

Continue the Diversity Discussion

Onit’s Lean Into LegalOps program hosts roundtable discussions every other week for legal operations professionals. One recurring topic will be diversity. If you’d like to join these roundtable calls and continue the diversity discussion, sign up for Lean Into LegalOps and you’ll get notifications of new events.

Houston Business Journal Names Onit to the Fast 100 and Inaugural Middle Market 50

Posted on October 6, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Once more, Onit is excited to announce that it has been recognized for its rapid revenue growth – this time (or rather, these two times) by the Houston Business Journal.

Onit grew its revenue by 271.51% from 2017-2019, earning a spot on the Houston Business Journal’s Fast 100 and Middle Market 50. This wouldn’t be possible without our outstanding customers as well as our employees’ dedication to innovation and excellent customer experiences.

We landed at #9 on the Fast 100 list, which ranks the fastest-growing companies in the Greater Houston area. This is the fourth year Onit has appeared on this list.

For the inaugural Middle Market 50 awards, Onit ranked #3. The list highlights the fastest-growing, top-50 for-profit public and private midmarket companies based in Houston.

The Houston Business Journal interviewed CEO Eric M. Elfman about the company’s rapid growth, which he attributed to many things including:

2020 Awards for Onit

This has been an active year for Onit awards. We’ve won more than 10 so far this year in addition to the Fast 100 and Middle Market 50. Many of these awards are linked to the company’s cumulative growth and increased revenue over multiple years. Inc. included Onit on its Inc. 5000 (#737) and 250 Fastest Growing Companies in Texas (#70) as well as its Private Titans list, which names the 1,000 largest iconic private companies in America. The Financial Times placed Onit as #153 on its 500 Fastest-Growing Companies in the Americas award and Growjo ranked it as #16 on its 10K Fastest-Growing Companies in Texas.

Again, thank you to our customers and employees who made this recognition possible.

Onit Unites with Legal Operations Leaders for Two Presentations at the HPC Global Summit

Posted on October 1, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Are you interested in networking with some of the most intriguing legal operations leaders? Next week, you’ll have a chance to at the High Performance Counsel Global Summit. The virtual event, scheduled for October 6-8, serves as one of the leading forums for general counsel and chief legal officers in the modern legal industry.

This year, the event showcases legal operations leaders from companies including AccuWeather, Fujitsu, Federal Express and HSBC.

Onit will be participating in two sessions.

First, Robert Johnson, managing director of Onit, will moderate a panel titled “What are the Legal Ops & Analytics Imperatives for GCs and CLOs Moving Forward?” Panelists for the session, including Natalie Salunke, head of legal for RVU and Robert Mignanelli, SVP & COO, legal and associate general counsel technology and operations for Pearson, will address the following questions:

  • As the marketplace gets crowded with technology offerings, what’s the endgame for GCs?
  • What are the real priorities?
  • What would be truly game-changing for today’s leadership?
  • Are vendors listening and responding? What more could they be doing for greater alignment?
  • Is data a blessing or a curse? Is it driving real efficiency or just more reporting?

The session starts on October 7 at 1:45 p.m. EST.

Bonus: To hear how Pearson improved contract turnaround time with a transformational shared service center for more than 10,000 users, visit here. The company has already won three awards for this project, including the prestigious Association of Corporate Counsel Value Champions Award.

The second Onit session begins on October 8 at 1:00 p.m. EST. Graeme Scott, client delivery manager at Onit, will discuss “Flexibility on Solutions, Predictability on Cost.” He’ll explore managed services and how legal operations leaders can gain access to expertise that is often difficult for in-house legal to obtain. He will also dive into how managed services partnerships help software adapt to changing needs and continuously improve.

Click here to get tickets to the virtual HPC Global Summit.

We also encourage you to learn more about Onit’s Lean into LegalOps Europe program. The initiative, which connects legal operations professionals for unique learning opportunities, has partnered with The Lawyer’s Virtual GC Strategy Summit to present a panel discussion on automating processes to connect legal and the business (October 2 at 9:50 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. BST). The session is open to GCs, AGCs or director level in-house legal professionals and you can request a complimentary pass here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morae and Onit – A Winning Partnership

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

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

Many thanks to Mary for joining our podcast.

To hear her podcast, visit here.

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

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

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

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

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

Presenters include:

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

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

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

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

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

About Lean Into LegalOps from Onit

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

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

Legaltech101

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussions with Legal Operations Innovators

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

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

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

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

To view previous Lean Into LegalOps presentations, visit here.

 

Onit Achieves Another Win for 2020 on Houston Chronicle’s Top 100 Private Companies List

Posted on August 18, 2020 by - Company News and Events

We are thrilled to announce that Onit has landed a new award as a Houston Chronicle Top 100 Private Company. Onit came in at #55 on the 2020 list. The Chronicle compiled it based on 2019 revenues of the biggest privately held companies headquartered in  Houston, Texas.

Onit continues to grow at a quick pace and has secured several other awards this year, including:

The recognition extends to achievements as well. Onit was named as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape Reports for Enterprise Legal Management and Matter Management and OnCon designated it as a Top 25 Legal Vendor in 2020.

More importantly, Onit customers have won acclaim for their vision and accomplishments. Pearson PLC, a global learning company, recently won an Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) 2020 Value Champion award. The company created a transformational shared service center to support commercial transactions worldwide for more than 10,000 users. Powered by an integrated solution from Onit and its partner Morae Global Corporation, Pearson achieved a 35% cost reduction and 30% improved contract turnaround time.  The company, along with Onit and Morae, has also landed on the shortlist of the Legal Innovation Awards 2020 in the category of “Future of Legal Services Innovation – In-House Legal Operations.”

We’ll have more awards information coming very soon, so check back at this blog to learn more.

Onit Leaders to Discuss Automation for Financial Services and Insurance Legal Operations

Posted on August 11, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Onit’s Hans Bengard, enterprise sales director, and Paige Edwards, director of customer experience, will present tomorrow at the Consero Legal Operations For Financial Services & Insurance Virtual KnowledgeBridge™.

The event, scheduled from 1-3 p.m. ET on August 12, connects leading legal leaders from companies such as American Express, AIG and CIBC as they discuss legal operations management priorities and enhancements.

The session featuring Bengard and Edwards, titled Automating Legal and Compliance Processes: How, When, Why,” will center on automating legal and compliance processes and best practices gathered over years of work with Fortune 500 corporate legal departments. The session will cover:

  • Identifying processes to automate and executing a plan
  • Building a business case around implementing automation
  • Managing the change around user behavior
  • Tracking and using process data to make decisions

The session begins at 1:40 p.m. ET tomorrow.

The Consero Legal Operations for Financial Services and Insurance Virtual KnowledgeBridge offers engaging discussions between corporate legal department leaders from large corporations. Other sessions for the three-hour virtual event include:

  • Issues for legal operations leaders to work through in the new business normal
  • Technologies and processes to improve legal department efficiencies
  • Enhancing legal operations

If you’d like to learn more, here are some useful links.

Onit Releases Newest, Cutting-Edge Version of the Apptitude Process Automation Platform

Posted on August 6, 2020 by - Company News and Events

Great things are happening at Onit! We’re excited to announce the new version of our workflow and process automation platform, Apptitude. Packed with unprecedented new muscle, Onit built this latest version of Apptitude to bridge the gap between technical and business users and designed it to simplify the creation of new workflows. Apptitude’s new visual interface, Process Builder, allows all users to build and manage business logic and workflows using a drag-and-drop interface.

“One of our primary goals with this release is to support our community of App builders and accelerate new workflow creation and execution across the enterprise,” explained John Gilman, vice president of product strategy at Onit. “Using the new visual drag-and-drop workflow builder, technical and business analysts are empowered to build Apps faster and more efficiently, enabling better connections and collaboration with key stakeholders and knowledge workers. The reaction I got from customers is that Process Builder is a game-changer. The App Builder can instantly visualize the process, and the sponsor can demonstrate in real-time the work of the project team to internal stakeholders.”

Onit Process Builder

Process Builder provides a visual interface for building workflows. Builders configure business logic by dragging and dropping actions and groups of actions exactly where they need to go. Building new workflows is intuitive and only takes minutes for experienced builders to learn. More importantly, Process Builder works with existing Apptitude configurations, and no migration or changes are required to get started. The new release also makes it easy to “show your work” to other stakeholders in an agile build process so that internal customers can quickly and easily give their input. This helps shorten the time to value in Onit implementations, which often take weeks – not months.

The Onit Nation

The latest version of Apptitude has best practices from 400+ global companies that have built workflow solutions for more than a decade. Customers, employees and Onit’s technology and consulting partners have configured more than 5,500 Apps, comprised of 160 bespoke legal-focused workflow solutions with deployment in 120 countries. Onit has certified nearly 300 employees, partners and customers in more than 80 training sessions with 686 certification levels granted.

Here’s how to learn more about Onit Apptitude:

CLOC Survey Pinpoints Worldwide Trends for Legal Operations Professionals

Posted on July 28, 2020 by - Company News and Events, Enterprise Legal Management

Legal operations professionals value the experience of their peers. They turn to each other to share best practices, overcome challenges, and enhance the performance of their corporate legal departments.

Now, they can access the collective feedback from legal ops professionals representing 140 companies in 30 industries and 17 countries, thanks to the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). The powerhouse industry organization – which the founders affectionately called “the book club” – has released its Third Annual State of the Industry Survey.

The State of Legal Operations

According to the survey participants, corporate legal departments experienced growth in demand for legal services and continued to focus on various means to control costs. Many grew their legal operations teams and continued to invest in technology.

The survey found that 52% of companies kept the ratio of work between in-house and external firms the same, but this differed by size. Sixty-seven percent of large companies reported their ratio remained the same, while only 49% of medium and 30% of small companies said the same. Forty-one percent of small companies reported moving more work in-house and 30% reported outsourcing more legal work. Thirty-one percent of medium companies moved more work in- house and 20% outsourced more legal work.

Costs have shot up, with the survey finding that 61 cents of every dollar spent on legal costs was spent on external legal costs – a 15-cent increase from 2018.

Return on Investment

The survey also revealed that corporate legal departments had achieved even higher ROIs from increasing technology resources. The implementation of technology has helped reduce the number of staff each legal operations FTE is supporting by 7 compared to 2019, enabling teams to provide more granular support to all practice areas.

Leading Legal Ops Technology  

What’s the most commonly implemented technology for corporate legal departments? According to the survey results, eBilling systems take the lead at 76%. The use of e-Signature technologies increased by 27% and document management increased by 12% this year compared to last year.

Rating Maturity Levels and Stating Priorities  

CLOC asked survey participants to rate their legal departments’ overall level of experience with technology from “emerging” to “leading.” This year’s survey indicates that 17% of respondents feel their technology is in the “leading” stage, while 34% feel theirs is somewhere between “developing” and “leading.” The remaining 49% believe their technology is in the developing or lesser stages.

When asked about priorities, legal ops professionals had a tie for the top 2020 priority. Implementing new technology solutions came in at 71%, the same as automating legal processes. Low priorities included implementing an intern program (82%) and increasing legal ops headcount (66%).

The future looks exceptionally bright for this field, and we should continue to see even greater reliance on legal operations. Legal operations professionals continue to evolve, segment and specialize to meet business demands. Innovation and technology are expected to not only contribute but spearhead this evolution.