Category: Enterprise Legal Management

The Lean, Mean Legal Department Part II: Technology to the Rescue

Posted on August 13, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Cost control and cost management have, and continue to be, among the biggest challenges of legal departments around the globe. How have legal departments been handling this? By increasing the workload of existing resources, bringing on more in-house lawyers, and implementing more technology. Increasing the workload? Something employees definitely don’t want to hear. Hiring more in-house lawyers? That’s not really making things “leaner,” is it? That leaves us with technology. Let’s investigate this option a little more by first referring to HBR Consulting’s 2018 Law Department Survey:

“Law departments also continue in their efforts to streamline operations, not only to control costs but also continue to increase efficiency. Legal technology continues to be a focus of many departments and plan implementation of next generation technologies to increase productivity. Law departments continue to be interested in data-related technologies, with 28 percent indicating they plan to implement artificial intelligence technology in the next one to two years, and 26 percent planning to implement legal spend analytics. These were topped, however, by contract management solutions, which 29 percent plan to implement in the next one to two years. These new legal technologies help automate manual workflows and create visibility into workload and spending, allowing organizations to improve operating efficiency and facilitate decision making.”

E-billing, matter management, legal holds and contract management top the list of most implemented legal technology, but there are many others. Interestingly, the top two areas where customers are moving out of their existing deficient systems are e-billing and matter management. This points to an even greater demand for those cutting-edge companies who provide the crème de la crème of legal technology solutions.

Why has it taken so long for some legal departments to see the light and get on board with technology? Understandably, a lean budget is often cited as one of the major reasons for not implementing legal technology. Resistance to change is another common reason. But one of the other major reasons is a reluctance to integrate new technology with existing systems. Here’s a little secret: resistance to change is really the only thing that should be holding up progress – the other issues of budget and integration have changed considerably in favor of organizations seeking new technology. There are technology solutions out there for practically every budget, and integrations are much more seamless than in the past. Gaining the support of leadership is a big step toward solving the resistance to change. Stop dreading the phrase, “do more with less.” Instead, we challenge you to thrive on it and explore the technology solutions out there that will truly help you do more with less.

Read our white paper, “Doing More with Less: How Technology is Optimizing Legal.”

The Lean, Mean Legal Department Part I: Setting the Stage with CLOC

Posted on July 31, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
– Bill Gates

When I was serving in the Marine Corps, we were obsessed with becoming the quintessential lean, mean, fighting machine. It wasn’t the lifestyle for everyone, but it was our passion and we took it very seriously. But think about it: can’t lean, mean, fighting machine be applied to the corporate world? In fact, it’s not a stretch by any means. The Art of War has been required reading for top executives for decades. And everyone is striving to be fitter these days, and leaner. The ‘mean’ and ‘fighting’ part? Our definition here is to aggressively pursue a strategy of driving efficiencies and optimizing the legal department’s ability to grow the company.

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 needed to support the needs of legal departments of all sizes. CLOC’s 12 core competencies represent areas of focus that every legal operations department must manage to have a disciplined, efficient, and effective legal operations function. These competencies serve as a benchmark to compare a legal operations department’s growth to others in the industry and break down legal operations departments into foundational, advanced and mature in order to improve and grow systemically.

One of the 12 competencies is Technology and Process Support. This is defined as:

“Create a long-term legal operations technology roadmap including tools such as e-billing/matter management, contract management, content management, IP management, business process management, e-signature, board management, compliance management, legal hold, subsidiary management, etc.”

CLOC’s other 11 competencies are equally important to legal operations, but we will be focusing on Technology and Process Support, and how it plays into becoming a lean, mean legal department. This blog series will focus on strategies to achieve these seemingly elusive, but not out-of-reach, objectives.

Read our white paper, Doing More with Less: How Technology is Optimizing Legal Operations.

Getting the Right Data From Big Data: Improve Legal Operations and Management

Posted on June 3, 2019 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Data, in its raw form, can be a source of true facts; the interpretation and presentation of data allow people to put their agenda across.

Over the years, legal teams will have built up a significant amount of data (through case management systems, document management systems, e-billing solutions, risk registers, law firm reports, emails, legal advice, etc.), which is an extremely valuable but often underrated asset. Not only can legal data support strategic planning and trend analysis, but it is also an invaluable tool for:

  • Managing external law firms.
  • Managing internal resources.
  • Understanding and supporting your business.
  • Managing legal risk.
  • Managing legal department finances.

Furthermore, the data forms a key part of the company’s knowledge management, which remains available irrespective of changes in the workforce.

The challenge is what you do with this information, how you keep it clean, and how you pull it together and present it. Some of the critical things to consider are:

TAKEHOLDERS NEEDING THE DATA

You will likely have many stakeholders wanting reports from the legal data, each wanting to use it for a different purpose. These may include:

  • General Counsel will want to use the data to set the strategic direction of the legal function.
  • Team leaders will probably use volumetric data to show and manage resource demands and promote their teams.
  • Team administrators will look to make sure their team data is accurate and up to date.
  • Procurement will need to support legal spend within the organization.
  • Finance / Tax will be able to ensure (amongst other things) that provisions are adequate, and that VAT is correctly applied/recovered.
  • Risk will need to better understand the changes in the risk profile and to support any reporting to regulatory bodies.

PRESENTING LEGAL DATA

Presenting the information clearly and concisely that gets the message across is a challenge, as different stakeholders will often want the same data presented in different formats. Producing a range of reports is both time-consuming and a drain on resources. Online dashboards can make it easier for different stakeholders to slice the data to suit their needs. While each option has its benefits and challenges, you will likely want to work with both reports and dashboards.

Keeping the data clean is essential so that reports and dashboards show accurate and consistent data. Despite best efforts, manual input will inevitably lead to mistakes because of typos or missed fields. A system like Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp eBilling.space automates invoice review, so data is input consistently. Data validation rules, reporting, and task reminders help legal operations managers maintain data cleanliness. Many Onit clients use data gap reports to highlight and complete missing data. Doing this regularly ensures it is a small, everyday task rather than becoming an unwieldy data clean-up project.

USING THE DATA

Legal department data can help you to:

1. Manage your strategy. This may include areas such as:

  • Understanding and prioritizing the organization’s legal demand and spend.
  • Changes in the team’s performance by using KPIs.
  • What cost savings have been / can be, such as;
    • Outsourcing vs. doing it in-house.
    • Removing non-essential tasks.
  • Understanding your legal team’s risk profile and internal controls by using KPIs.

2. Manage your external law firms through:

  • Greater transparency of activity and spend, which, in turn, will help future discussions with firms, especially during panel reviews.
  • Monitoring law firm performance which will help law firm reviews.
  • Ensuring prompt payment of bills which may support faster-paying discounts discussions with firms.

3. Manage internal resources:

  • Easily identifying peaks and troughs in work, allowing for better resource planning and allocation (Product design/review, property management, supplier contract renewal, key stages in litigation, regulatory projects, etc.).
  • Understanding the impact of previous business initiatives will help prepare the department for future initiatives.

4. Understand and support your business. For example:

  • Awareness of change in the volume of a particular type of work will help ensure you:
    • Have the proper legal support available (either in-house or through external firms).
    • Develop training needs for your business contacts and the lawyers.
  • Visibility of the contracts that will support risk management, especially if there is a change in the legal or regulatory landscape or an economic downturn.
  • Support product development by learning from previous iterations.

5. Manage legal risk

  • Change in volumes of a particular type of work or within a business area will help identify emerging risks. These could include:
    • Frequent changes to standard terms and conditions could indicate that your documents are not keeping up with changes in the market.
    • Local changes to standard terms and conditions could indicate a lack of awareness or understanding of the documentation.
  • Can help identify new training needs.

6. Manage legal department finances.

  • Greater clarity on how much it costs per matter (internal vs. external).
  • Avoid paying for duplicate advice.
  • Drive costs down with external firms.

There are many business benefits to integrating your systems and making sense of the legal data that resides within them. Work out your goals and which of the above areas aligns with helping you achieve those core goals, then work backward to identify the data points that will help you have the visibility or measurements you need. Finally, you can create the reports and dashboards you and your stakeholders need.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.Space today and see our RFP functionality for yourself.

Onit Acquires SimpleLegal to Modernize Global Legal Operations

Posted on May 13, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events, Enterprise Legal Management

Onit is excited to formally announce the acquisition of SimpleLegal, a leading US-based provider of spend, matter and vendor management software. This combination of Onit and SimpleLegal follows a formative investment in Onit by K1 Investment Management (K1) earlier this year.

This combination of Onit and SimpleLegal will represent the most comprehensive and modern global SaaS solution for the legal operations professional in in the market today and bring together the strengths and market positions of each company, ensuring legal operations professionals have an expansive product offering to run their legal department and business. Together, both companies will continue to deliver innovative software that drives best practices and offer deep domain expertise to serve both small organizations and large and complex enterprises, regardless of department size or geography. The combined company will continue to support each respective solution.

Onit, in combination with SimpleLegal, intends to create a comprehensive one-stop shop addressing most needs of a legal operations team. Each company will continue to operate independently with continuing roadmaps and investment. All support and services will continue as before, and all management teams will remain intact.

Founded in 2013, SimpleLegal is widely recognized as a ‘game changer’ in its own right in the legal technology market. With a “simple” solution delivering fast time-to-value, customers have an easily accessed legal technology on-ramp. In the last five years, SimpleLegal has processed more than $1.8B annually and managed nearly 500,000 matters globally all the while supporting 170+ currencies.

Click here to read the entire press release and listen to podcasts from Onit’s CEO Eric Elfman and SimpleLegal’s CEO Nathan Wenzel.

Kickstart Your Enterprise Legal Management with 8 Crucial Features

Posted on April 11, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

“The best way to become essential for the companies that buy your products is to help them grow their business (i.e., to produce meaningful ROI) in unique ways. That is what solving customer problems is all about, and it’s as neat an encapsulation of the difference between enterprise and consumer software as we can offer.”
― Blair Reeves

When shopping around for an enterprise legal management solution, you need to ensure that the prospective system can be built around the way your teams work. After all, you’re trying to streamline your operations and avoid the old standards of relying on email and spreadsheets to get the job done. In today’s fast-paced legal settings, lawyers need to be able to work faster, smarter and more efficiently, and the best way to do it is by automating legal department processes.

Traditionally, enterprise legal management vendors have taken a database-centric approach in designing their solutions. However, and this cannot be over-emphasized, your competitive legal department needs a system of engagement – a system that supports the highly collaborative nature of your legal work. This in turn reinforces your business goals and ultimately, your bottom line.

There are quite a few benefits of a cutting-edge enterprise legal management solution, such as cost savings, flexibility, robust reporting capability, etc. But equally as important are the numerous crucial processes that enterprise legal management can help your team with. After all, you’re trying to find ways to improve your processes. At this point you’re probably wondering, “Okay, we know the basic stuff. What are the features we should be looking for?” We’re glad you asked, and here are eight of our favorite fundamental features:

  1. Highly configurable to your legal department’s needs, and seamless integration with systems such as accounts payable, document management, IP management and other back-end systems
  2. Comprehensive visibility into all invoices at every stage — including submission, review, and approval
  3. Reporting and dashboard views to analyze invoices, evaluate performance against budget, and see trends across your matter portfolio
  4. Workflow capabilities match your business requirements and are simple to change, alter or adjust. Different work types, such as matters related to employment, litigation, or mergers, can have their own unique workflows
  5. A single platform for collaboration that captures notes, documents, attachments and email communications in one secure location
  6. A complete audit trail of all matter activity
  7. The ability to keep track of all your authorized timekeepers and rates in one location. Adjustments can be made quickly and easily with a few clicks
  8. Industry standard security and bank-grade encryption ensures your data remains confidential

The very best enterprise legal management solution represents a new paradigm that is transforming the e-billing and matter management landscape and drastically improving delivery of legal services. Process-driven solutions integrate workflow and collaboration unlike other legacy providers. The best solutions allow you to dig in and define the legal business processes that are critical to your organization and deliver more bang for the buck; as well as your bottom line.

Changing Your In-House Legal Time Management

Posted on April 11, 2019 by - Enterprise Legal Management

How special the last two years have been. With the pandemic and remote working, companies around the globe were suddenly faced with multilayered challenges. Effective time management and avoiding unnecessary administrative tasks have become more important than ever. In the following article, Anastasia Hufen, Legal Counsel at Helaba, a German commercial bank, describes first-hand how the introduction of our Legal Spend Management solution supports her in overcoming these challenges on a daily basis.

I just made my first steps working with Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp eBilling.Space as a lawyer in a middle-sized German bank, and – happy to confirm – the tool is great! My favorite features that support my personal time management are the hands-on and easy implementation process, compatibility with my existing devices and tools, resiliency in change management, and advantages concerning spend management of in-house affairs. Besides this? The result is a fancy legal spend management tool that helps a dynamic, cost-conscious business area work more efficiently with external legal advisors. But allow me to pinpoint in a bit more detail:

First, the technical side: Being a stand-alone application, the tool has an easy implementation comparable to the apps you are familiar with on your mobile devices; once the configuration process by the provider is completed, it is just up to you to log in and start working. Consequently, this results in a high acceptance by users like me that share the view that digitalization’s job is to make my real life easier (and not vice versa). In my experience, the configuration process at BusyLamp is as simple as you can imagine: You supply the lists of contacts to be on-boarded along with the billing rules you wish to apply, and in turn, BusyLamp delivers your tool. By the way, it is up to you to decide on the level of customization and integration with other tools: It is either a ready-made or fully tailored solution for implementation of your legal e-billing process, starting with the engagement of an external advisor and ending with payment by the accounting department. Any and all processing may be reflected, including any and all necessary limitations and requirements. So the basic challenge here is to ensure you know your processes and what kind of tool you need.

Second, once ready to go live, you’re in the driver’s seat and taking your business relationships to the next level of professionalism and transparency. This is because you’re working directly with your private practice counterpart in the system based on the billing rules and the guidelines defined by you beforehand. My recent experience shows that one outcome of the improved client-law firm relationship is the acute objectivity: As you stay informed about the costs – throughout your process, at any time, and as detailed as you wish – the effect is undeniable collaboration and transparency in terms of contacts, connections, interactions, and costs. Plus, the advantages of organized e-billing records cannot be overrated. Using the tool means that there are no unnecessary negotiations throughout the matter’s lifetime unless you wish to make exceptions in individual cases for whatever reasons. The system gives you fully automated billing processing where your only task is to provide the correct settings and control the potential rule breakers. It provides competition, fairness, and transparency, saving you time.

And, finally – and especially for those who (like me) take fun very seriously – it’s a fancy solution, looks and feels good, and is fun to work with. Therefore, overall: BusyLamp eBilling.Space is my insider tip for your effective time management.

See it for yourself! Request your personal demo today.

How Technology Helps Legal Departments in Financial Services Manage Their Unique Challenges

Posted on February 20, 2019 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Legal Operations teams generally design, plan, and implement their legal team’s strategic initiatives to support the business. They must balance managing risk and regulatory changes with operational efficiencies while keeping costs in check. Access to data in a structured form allows the team to provide valuable and powerful advice, guidance, and support to their legal function. Given the unique position of an in-house legal function, they often hold a wide range of information about the business they support, which gives them an unparalleled view of their organization. While most in-house legal teams will broadly use the data for similar reasons, the rise in legal and regulatory changes impacting financial institutions has increased their demand for meaningful data. Some of the leading legal and regulatory changes include the Senior Manager and Certification Regime (SMCR), “ring-fencing,” Dodd-Frank, European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), to name but a few.

The introduction in 2018 of the Senior Manager and Certification Regime (SMCR) by the Financial Conduct Authority has put the additional onus on specific key individuals and material risk-takers within UK financial institutions to evidence their decisions. Maintaining structured data that can be analyzed and measured will help provide evidence for some critical decisions. These decisions might include law firm panel appointments, outsourcing / insourcing business activities, and management of legal risks.

Those Financial institutions with clear visibility of the derivatives and related instruments they have entered will have benefited in understanding any re-papering needed for “ring-fencing.” The data may also enable them to meet the new collateral obligations under EMIR. Understanding the legal spend to support these legal and regulatory changes will allow the in-house function to better prepare and budget for future changes.

Under recent Banking reforms, financial institutions must maintain “living wills” to try and ensure they fail safely. This activity requires the maintenance of critical contracts/documentation in a central location. As many of these will have passed through the legal function at some stage, a well-structured database with crucial contract details will help remove obsolete documents and add new ones.

With the increases in cyber security, the legal function will, over time, be able to identify better which external law firms have handled data for the organization and ensure robust measures to safeguard that the law firms are applying data.

The data can support trend analysis which will help the legal function understand and support significant changes in demands for products and services and any resultant risks. A substantial change in demand may be seasonal (such as the end of a tax year or when certain subsidies get paid), market or social-media-driven (such as mis-selling issues), or economic/geopolitical (such as changes in interest rates, exchange rates, commodity prices as well political uncertainty). Any of these can alter the legal risk profile of the business and change the demand for legal resources. Being aware of pressure points will help the legal function adapt.

Legal departments in financial services face unique regulatory challenges. Technology provides a central source of truth to manage these requirements. The resulting data output ensures legal operations can support the legal function quickly and accurately while predicting risk and change.

Learn more about BusyLamp from Onit, our end-to-end legal spend management solution built for European corporate legal departments. 

Onit Launches Enterprise Legal Management Customer Conversion Program

Posted on January 29, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Excitement is in the air as Onit preps for Legaltech New York, but we also have another great news item. We just launched a customer conversion program that allows customers to easily and predictably transfer to the Onit legal e-billing and matter management platform. Tailored towards Fortune 500 legal teams using legacy enterprise legal management products, solutions or software, the program gives customers an alternative to their existing tool that is either being sunsetted or not supported in future versions of other vendor product roadmaps. Law departments nearing the end of their enterprise legal management contracts are also eligible to participate. Conversion program deliverables include a well-defined project scope, discounted pricing, a sample project plan (complete with a timeline estimate) and fixed budgetary estimates of both implementation and license fees.

For more details about the conversion program and to start a needs assessment, email [email protected].

Read the press release.

Doing More with Less: How Technology is Optimizing Legal Operations

Posted on January 22, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Many folks in legal departments feel, and rightfully so, that the new paradigm is to do more with less money and fewer resources – otherwise known as lean legal. In the overall scheme of legal operations in achieving its objectives with “less,” technology has increasingly played a prominent role. Driving efficiencies and controlling costs in the legal department are being borne, to a significant degree, by well-chosen technology solutions, and legal operations managers who understand this and are taking action. The major school of thought currently is to run legal operations like a business – and to achieve that goal technology has been playing a key role.

Technology is optimizing legal operations in several key areas. Workflow and automation of processes deserve a spot at the top of the list. Automating routine tasks can shave hours off any busy schedule. Collaboration in 2019 via technology gives a whole new meaning to “work together,” and is forging the future of legal operations in ways we could never have imagined. Data analytics is increasingly important, as analytics can demonstrate the value of technology in the department. Looking at the CLOC Legal Operation’s 12 Core Competencies, the Mature Level is what legal departments should be striving for. Whether legal operations staff are familiar with the competencies or not, technology has been there (for those using it), quietly helping them to reach that magic level.

So if technology is so good at helping us in legal operations, what were the barriers to using it in the first place? A lean budget is often cited as one of the major reasons. Resistance to change also places on the list. But one of the other major reasons is integrating new technology with existing systems. Nowadays, resistance to change is really the only thing that should be holding up progress – the other issues of budget and integration have changed considerably in favor of organizations seeking new technology. There are technology solutions out there for practically every budget and integrations have never been easier. And for the “hard of hearing,” there is no longer a good reason not to be taking advantage of cutting-edge technology. Above all, doing more with less in the lean legal department has never been easier and affordable.

The Long Road to Business Process Automation and Apptitude Part II: More Early Predecessors

Posted on January 16, 2019 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

“Daedalus…had the power to construct statues endowed with motion and to compel gold to feel human sensations.”
– Callistratus, Descriptions, 4th century A.D.

In part one of this series we discussed some early attempts at automation, some more successful than others. Surprisingly, we can push the history of automation back even further to about 762 B.C. in ancient Greece. In Homer’s Illiad, he discusses the workshop of Hephaestus and the automatons that worked for him. These automatons were basically mechanical robots that served different purposes. For example, his tripodes khryseoi (golden tripods) were wheeled tripods that would wheel themselves in and out of the halls of the gods during the great feasts as they were needed. There were at least seven other named automatons used to carry out various tasks and missions. Although these automatons lived only in the realm of myth (as far as we know), the fact that automation was already being pondered in the 8th century BC is amazing in itself.

Pushing forward many centuries we find more solid evidence of real automation which laid the groundwork for modern business process automation and our process automation platform, Apptitude. In the 12th century AD, Ismail Al-Jazari created his famous Castle Clock. This clock was renowned in its day for its magnificence and accuracy in telling time, but its foreshadowing of automation is undeniable. Replicas of this clock can be found throughout the world today, including the United States. Through trial and error, Al-Jazari used gears, chains, wood, metal, a float chamber, flow regulator, and water to make the huge clock work. Every hour, doors would open automatically to reveal a figurine, and two gold falcon automata would drop balls into vases waiting below. Automata were a highlight of this wonder. Three times a day, five robotic, mechanical musicians would automatically perform musical pieces when activated by a water-driven camshaft. They would be activated by a system of pulleys, water trough and a water-powered “scoop” wheel. The clock also featured several displays, including the lunar and solar orbits and the zodiac. A crescent moon-shaped disc would move across the frieze indicating minutes.

Al-Jazari’s Castle Clock
Al-Jazari’s Castle Clock

In 1804 an inventor in France had developed several types of looms; including one with a treadle for power and another for weaving fishing nets. But Joseph Jacquard’s most famous invention was an automatic mechanical loom that used pasteboard cards with punched holes to control the process of weaving complex patterns. Prior to this invention, weaving intricate, figured designs was a slow and very laborious process. It required two operators: the skilled weaver and the draw boy to operate the loom. Jacquard felt there had to be a way to simplify the process for weaving complex patterns, and that a mechanism could be developed to make this happen. After much experimentation and trial and error, Jacquard succeeded in making the first programmable loom. Many hundreds or even thousands of these cards would be strung together, each card representing one row of the woven design. Jacquard’s invention was a landmark in computing history and not a fly-by-night fad by any means, since punched cards for computing were in use until the 1980s.


Jacquard’s Loom, showing coded punched cards

Onit would like to pay homage to these and all inventors whose ideas were guiding lights and blazed the path to the modern process automation. Every business process automation platform, including Apptitude, truly has a deep heritage going back many centuries.