Category: Enterprise Legal Management

The Key to Better Timekeeper Rate Reviews? Comprehensive Benchmark Data

Posted on March 8, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Timekeeper rate approvals are a constant headache for legal operations departments. With departments dealing with several different firms at the same time, going through the timekeeper rate approval process will likely happen daily — and take up too much time and too many resources.

Does this timekeeper rate approval cycle seem familiar to your Legal ops department? An invoice comes into the department flagged at a brand-new timekeeper rate proposed by the law firm. This change could be from a new legal team member joining from outside counsel, a promotion (a 2nd-year to a 3rd-year associate, for example), or an annual rate increase.

From there come the questions: What is this timekeeper rate compared to others in the firm? How does this rate for timekeepers compare to similar firms that you do business with? How does this rate compare to the market? You need to uncover old data, consult secondary benchmark reports on the market, and reach out to colleagues at your company or your network to see if the new proposed rate makes sense.

Gathering the data you need for timekeeper rate approval analysis can take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and, unfortunately, can still be suspect (depending on the reliability of anecdotal network evidence and the quality of internal and external reports). And there is more work to do after data collection. The analysis to answer the “is this timekeeper rate appropriate?” question requires another few hours of time and brainpower dedicated to analyzing exhaustively collected, collated, and possibly paid-for timekeeper rate data that may or may not be completely accurate.

It all adds up to make the rate approval process for law firm timekeepers unreliable and exhausting (at best) for the legal ops department. In an era where Legal must take its rightful place as a material driver of the organization, the timekeeper rate approval process drains valuable resources and time away from projects that could grow the business.

Yet, keeping a watchful eye on timekeeper rates is integral for Legal. Simply okaying every rate approval can quickly cause expenses to spiral out of control in both the short and long term. Conversely, a long, drawn-out timekeeper rate approval process can slow the entire Legal department to a crawl.

However, there is a way out of this conundrum. Using AI-enabled technology at the point of decision allows for a better, more efficient, data-driven way to do timekeeper rate reviews.

Using Comprehensive Benchmark Data to Drive Timekeeper Rate Reviews

Onit’s new Spend Management + Bodhala Integration (available in July 2023) provides comprehensive benchmark data that unlocks efficient and accurate timekeeper rate reviews for legal operations teams. With the integration, Legal can make quick, accurate decisions on timekeeper rates without relying on expensive, out-of-date, time-consuming secondary rate analysis.

Onit users receive regularly updated and pre-analyzed timekeeper rate approval data (consisting of over 10,000 factors) on the same screen as their approval button. This allows for instant analysis and rate adjustment, approval, or rejection based on three powerful points of data comparison:

  • Information gathered within the specific firm
  • Information gathered across all the firms on your panel
  • Information gathered across the Bodhala industry database for that area of law — pulled from an immense repository encompassing over $47.6B in legal billings, over 200,000 timekeepers, and 8,900 law firms.

This suite of comprehensive benchmark data delivers a transformational moment for legal departments with their timekeeper rate reviews. The integration:

  • Enables a faster process, cutting down timekeeper rate approvals from the “hours to days” timeframe to one that takes “minutes to hours.” This allows higher-level legal ops professionals to shift their focus from analysis of timekeeper rates to projects that help Legal materially grow the organization and secure its rightful place as a revenue driver.
  • Empowers better, more confident rate approval decisions. With 10,000 data factors and keen insights from the industry and other firms, Legal can feel secure in their approval decisions, gain the metrics needed to back up rejections, and justify the department’s spend to the rest of the organization. That sense of security is enormously valuable.
  • Delivers better rates and savings across the organization both in the short-term and the long-term. Insights gained through the comprehensive benchmark data allow organizations to make better rate approval decisions, develop good timekeeper rate review habits, and see what spend is working (and what is not). Additionally, Legal can avoid spending extra funds on expensive secondary market rate benchmarking reports.

The benefits do not stop there. Insights gained through the Onit Spend Management + Bodhala integration helps power competitive analytics; it is easy for Legal to make firm-level comparisons (for example, on the average rate for timekeeper by level) and see if there are opportunities to renegotiate with firms or redistribute the work to other firms as needed. Onit’s “firm report cards” give a quick back-of-the baseball card look at each firm’s cost effectiveness, helping to make better directional decisions. After finalizing and renegotiating timekeeper rates, the integration can also drive better matter benchmarking throughout the organization.

Getting Started with Efficient Timekeeper Rate Reviews

In an environment where Legal must make every element of its processes as efficient as possible, optimizing timekeeper rate reviews is essential. The comprehensive benchmarking data delivered by Onit’s Spend Management + Bodhala integration provides the advanced edge Legal needs to work more efficiently, make more confident rate approval decisions, and deliver short- and long-term savings to the organization.

Interested in learning how Onit Spend Management can make the difference for your timekeeper rate reviews? Schedule a demo here.

The Next Steps for DEI in Legal: A Conversation with JusticeBid

Posted on January 25, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Omar Sweiss, founder and CEO of JusticeBid, and Matt DenOuden, Onit’s Senior Vice President of Sales, recently shared an in-depth discussion regarding the need for diversity innovation in legal operations – and how moving the needle requires both personal courage and playing as a team. Here are their insights (view the webinar in its entirety here).

When it comes to establishing a diverse and inclusive workplace where every voice is represented, acknowledged, heard, and valued, change is no longer an option – it is essential. This ideology spurred mission-driven attorney, entrepreneur, and CEO Omar Sweiss to pioneer JusticeBid, a minority-owned diversity analytics and outside counsel selection provider transforming how companies embed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into their business operations through data intelligence and transparency tools.

Born in Jordan and living in Chicago since the age of three, Sweiss noticed the marginalization of the south and west sides of the city early on. Later, as an MBA candidate, “I wanted to build businesses and bring them up with me,” he told Onit SVP of Sales Matt DenOuden.

It was then that Sweiss, already a passionate champion of DEI, enrolled in law school – and was stunned by the lack of diversity in Legal. Thus, JusticeBid’s groundbreaking analytics platform and RFP/e-auction SaaS technology to source legal services were born.

With a new year upon us, what are the next steps for corporate legal departments in embracing diversity innovation? The answers lie in “giving data points at the right place and time to drive DEI decision-making,” Sweiss said.

Diversity as a team sport

While interest in DEI initiatives has grown in the past decade, both Sweiss and DenOuden agreed: Much evolution remains required.

“In terms of diversity, many more corporate law departments have become like foot soldiers on the front lines, having conversations to effectuate change,” Sweiss noted. They have good intentions, intending to harness data to leverage vendors and overall operations. However, on occasion, this can lead to what Sweiss calls “eye-opening but troubling conversations” regarding companies requesting data solely to meet DEI requirements.

Once, Sweiss says, he got the impression that a company believed there was excellence, and then there was diversity – as if the two were mutually exclusive. This practice, known as “malicious compliance,” is where diversity is pitched but meaningful opportunities not provided.

DenOuden concurred.

“The legal world can inherently be an inside game – you want the best, and the people you know are the people you know. Does this run the danger of having the same loop occur?”
Sweiss’ suggestion? Drive out that attitude with data.

“When I’ve said, ‘What if I show you data that showed there are actually more diverse attorneys who have performed better. Would that change your viewpoint?’ The result was a resounding yes.”

“Diversity is a team sport,” DenOuden concluded. Not only must eyes remain open to origination credit – who is working on matters and what kinds of work they are performing – but to ensure inclusivity, “all hands must be on deck.”

Courage is the key

That said, “I can give you all the data, but if you fear repercussions, what good is data?” Sweiss postulated.

Certainly, having such conversations is underpinned by courage, DenOuden noted, adding how – in a corporate landscape punctuated by privacy issues – gathering data can pose a rock-and-hard-place catch-22.

There has been pushback, Sweiss admitted – but consent, he believes, in embedded in the process. He cited one pharmaceutical company who fired an Am Law 10 firm because they refused to provide data.

“They had a minority GC who was very courageous and stood his ground. Yes, it’s business, but we should be doing this for the right reasons. If you won’t be transparent about data, what that says is that you don’t align with [a company’s] values.” Companies with courage take a stand and only work with firms and vendors that share their values.

What success looks like

Imaging the future of DEI, DenOuden speculated on possible, tangible change in the present.

“Top of mind is for minority communities to offer STEM programs that lead to greater higher education opportunities,” Sweiss articulated. Another focus is arguments for affirmative action and their influence on law schools. “If race can no longer be looked at in admission process, what will this do to our pipeline as we try to solve that pipeline issue?

“This is a moment creating eye-opening effect. We’ve finally seen some progress. What will this do for profession and industry?”

Although goals can be different for every corporate law department, at the end of the day, being on the edge of diversity and achieving DEI success comes down to two principal matters, according to Sweiss:

“Making sure everyone in-house is playing a role in results, and showing diversity in legal operations that is reflective of society and challenges systemic inequality.”

This, in turn, forms a foundation for a more inclusive and just society for all.

The robust relationship between Onit and JusticeBid
JusticeBid is a founding member of the “Operation Empowering Change” (OEC) initiative to facilitate DEI data collection to support change in the legal industry, which exemplifies Onit’s commitment to advancing DEI in the legal ecosystem. This strategic alliance between Onit and JusticeBid will provide clients with cutting-edge tools to achieve deeper understanding of their current diversity climate, as well as an opportunity to scale the diversity of their outside counsel across various matters, including panel refresh, AFAs, consolidation, rate review, and more.

Using Data-Driven Solutions to Empower DEI in Legal: A Conversation

Posted on January 10, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Recently, Morae’s Managing Director Bret Baccus and Onit’s Senior VP of Strategy and Growth Brad Rogers sat down for a wide-ranging discussion (view the full webinar here). As part of the conversation, they spoke about DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) efforts in the legal industry and how data-driven tools can help these efforts. Hear their thoughts on this issue in this edited excerpt.

DEI and Legal

BRAD: On the idea of DEI and the importance of its strategic alignment to the legal department and the company as a whole: How have you seen this strategy play out? How have you seen DEI, as a priority, be driven by legal departments?

BRET: I think DEI has always been an important initiative for a legal department, and that legal — as a whole — has been a key driver within corporations around DEI. I think something shifted in the vernacular in the dialogue around DEI after the George Floyd situation. That focus and resurgence in DEI efforts remains significant in all departments, with an even bigger shift in law firms around it.Best practices and opportunities

BRAD: What are the best practices and opportunities for others to leverage data to have an impact on DEI efforts?

BRET: Several things come to mind regarding data collection to drive DEI efforts, even beyond vendor management. First, are you collecting important data from your law firms? There are different applications to do it; having it and using it with your ELM is critical, but there are different third-party applications on the market to consider. Those can aggregate that data so it can get reported to you based on matters and your law firms without exposing some of the more confidential information to individuals working on cases.

The other thing more departments are putting into place now is Mansfield Tracking. This covers your internal processes — what are you doing with candidate tracking overall? What are you doing internally with candidate tracking, and are you looking at appropriately diverse candidates and profiles as you go through the interview process? Some clients of Onit’s use the IT application to help set up and manage the Mansfield process for organizations; that’s just an area where Onit’s application works very well with DEI.

Making an immediate impact

BRAD: An observation: there are certainly law firms out there challenged with the diversity issue and are certainly aware of it. I believe their heart is in the right place, and they’re taking concrete things to have an impact — but that impact is slow. The numbers don’t change much, year-over-year. That’s just kind of the reality of the situation; you’re looking at the numbers, and that’s not very fast-moving.

However, if you look at the teams you source at the matter level, that your law firm partner is sourcing for you and your lawyers, you can use that data to look at the team and make some immediate steps towards choosing diverse options. That’s an immediate impact.

BRET: I couldn’t agree with you more. I mentioned that a variety of applications out there have a great tracking option to deliver that insight. One of my favorites, for example, is the SimpleLegal product from the Onit family; it has a fantastic DEI interface that makes it so easy to do what you were talking about with managing and examining various law firms.

This sort of data-driven look allows you to get a fundamental understanding of what’s happening with diversity efforts on a matter-by-matter basis at different law firms. I head up our organization’s DEI council, and when you start looking, you begin to understand and know what firms are committed to these efforts. Reed Smith, for example, is one law firm at the forefront of DEI efforts, trying to shift what they’re doing and how they’re impacting communities.

A lot of organizations and firms are looking at the DEI topic, but — as you said — the meter is moving slowly. It’s very much a long-term effort, but the good news is that we’re seeing more and more organizations start to make a real commitment to this work.

Click here to view the entire conversation between Bret and Brad.

4 Benefits of Modern Legal Spend Management Software

Posted on December 15, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

In today’s economic climate, companies are increasingly focused on optimizing both internal and external resources; Legal is no exception. From simple spend visibility to cost control and efficiency, modern legal spend management solutions are helping forward-thinking General Counsels make more strategic, data-driven decisions about how they invest their outside counsel spend.

But what benefits can you expect from your legal spend management system? Let’s break them down here:

1. Better Strategic Decisions Driven By Data

When it comes to managing your outside counsel spend, everything (and we mean everything) starts with your data.

Legal billing — from getting rate visibility to discount clarity — is complicated. For example, your rate card and the effective rates you actually pay may be very different. Understanding that (and many other aspects of your bills) is critical to effective budgeting, forecasting, and strong outside counsel vendor management.

Knowing your numbers like the back of your hand won’t only help with budgeting or operational efficiency. Data will also help you make better, faster decisions. For example, which firm in a panel is most efficient for certain matter types? Are you overpaying because of inappropriate staffing decisions (e.g., partners executing associate level tasks or consistent meeting overstaffing)?

Fast access to trustworthy data that can be sliced and diced to support your business’ specific needs and your specific questions will not only save you and your team time and money, but it will also give you the fuel you need to make truly informed decisions fast.

2. Clear “Should Cost” Understanding

What should that big matter you have coming up actually cost? It’s a question GCs and finance departments ask themselves all the time, with little success. RFPs are often wildly off when it comes to predicting costs. It’s common for a matter to cost 150-200% of the firm’s original bid. So, what’s the best way to anticipate what a big upcoming matter will cost?

True, market-driven benchmarking is the only way to not only anticipate more accurate costs for upcoming matters, but also to obtain the most competitive rates or AFAs.

However, benchmarking can be tricky. Make sure your benchmarking solution considers practice area, matter type, and tier of firm. For example, you can’t compare complex real estate litigation with standard insurance claims litigation. You also can’t compare insurance claims litigation costs for one cause of loss with another, or from one jurisdiction to another. So, make sure your benchmarks allow you to get granular; anything less can leave you holding the bag on a very big and unexpected bill!

3. Better Governance

Managing your outside counsel firms can be challenging. Just enforcing guidelines accountability is not only time consuming but can also be like finding a needle in an intentionally large haystack. Even getting visibility on their staffing practices can be tough.

Modern legal spend management software can remove the headaches of guidelines compliance and provide much-needed visibility on staffing and billing practices for both you and your firms. Some solutions provide easy-to-use firm report cards that show trends over time on everything — average hours per matter, timekeeper breakdowns, rates, and more. When shared with your firms, report cards provide a fantastic basis for effective management; many forward-thinking GCs use them to drive quarterly or biannual reviews.

4. Clean, Structured, Usable Data

Data can provide a window into performance, highlighting meaningful opportunities for improvement. Most successful businesses have leveraged data for years to inform strategic decisions as well as operational efficiency – but not so much in legal departments.

Legal billing data is a necessity to understand all aspects of success. However, historically, legal billing data has been a mess (to put it mildly). With no standard taxonomy (way of organizing data), copious human error, and unique domain challenges led to a web of tangled data that in most cases just didn’t line up. With no apples-to-apples comparison possible, data often led to misleading takeaways and potentially poor decisions.

But, never fear. Advanced legal billing software can help you make sense of your data. By leveraging new technologies like machine learning and AI, cutting edge legal billing solutions can not only structure the data you have but also correct errors and enhance the data to allow for deeper insights.

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

What is Legal Document Management?

Posted on December 6, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

As the name suggests, legal document management involves storing and handling documents related to legal matters. Lawyers deal in vast numbers of documents and files every day, from contracts, licenses, and letters to emails, notices, and reports. For this reason, they need access to systems that not only help store documents but also track, manage and search them. In fact, document management should not be confused with document storage, which is merely the saving and ordering of documents within folders either stored locally or in a file server.

Document management is so much more. While there are numerous digital document management tools, document management practices for legal often differ significantly compared to standards in other industries. As a result, dedicated legal document management software emerged in the 1990s to support law firms and in-house legal teams. Since then, the legal document management market has matured dramatically, and the solutions have moved into the cloud and become collaborative.

ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF A LEGAL DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (DMS)

There are now many legal document management tools that can help legal teams to manage all their documents and correspondence; it can sometimes take time to know where to start and what functionality to look for. Before we get to some more interesting features, let’s start with the basic functionality essential for an excellent legal document management system.

STORE, ORGANIZE, AND SEARCH

A legal DMS should enable legal teams to store, organize and search their legal documents. This involves being able to move and copy documents where needed. Users should be able to record metadata about each document (e.g., matter number, team, location, etc.), and that metadata should be searchable along with the file name and document contents.

VERSION CONTROL

A legal DMS should also have version control functionality – allowing different versions of the same document to be saved (and in some cases restored), with the ability to check out documents to prevent version conflict. Auditing is also critical; there should be a record of every interaction between a user and a document version to clarify who did what and when.

NATIVE COMPATIBILITY

Documents should be able to be opened in their native applications directly from the legal DMS. It’s also vital that documents (both a copy and a link to the underlying document) can be shared via the legal DMS. With so many documents exchanged over email, integration with MS Outlook and other email clients is essential so that documents can be sent via email and emails and their attachments can be saved to the system. For this reason, it’s also crucial that legal document management systems support the storage of both emails and their metadata.

NUMBERING

Finally, a numbering convention is necessary with many documents and versions handled. Look for systems that automatically number documents, including matter and version numbers.

IMPORTANT LEGAL DMS FUNCTIONALITY

As well as the core features, there is another key functionality you should look for in a legal document management system.

SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE

A legal professional must adhere to industry compliance and security standards. When choosing a legal DMS, ensure it has top-grade and industry-recognized security certifications (ISO, HIPAA, and SOC) and excellent infrastructure security, including firewalls, application-level filtering, antivirus scanning, and intrusion detection. Also, ensure that data is encrypted both in transit and at rest. Application security is also vital – for example, password expiry and IP restrictions for cloud-based solutions. Any legal DMS vendor should be backing up data to multiple secure locations to ensure data integrity, and robust disaster recovery procedures should be in place.

Look for products that are thoroughly and regularly audited by third-party security experts who provide penetration testing and more. If you opt for a cloud solution, ensure you know where your data will be stored and that the data centers have state-of-the-art physical security.

RECORDS MANAGEMENT

Records management involves managing the creation, use, management, and disposal of records, including certain documents. It’s a critical component of most organizations’ risk and compliance activities. Therefore, any legal document management system should be able to allocate unique identifiers to documents, prevent unauthorized changes to documents, lock documents to avoid modification, and create audit trails of the document lifecycle. The system should also support retention scheduling and rules for how long different documents should be kept. These rules should be assigned based on the type of document. Finally, the legal DMS should allow for the disposition of documents that no longer need to be retained.

PERMISSIONS MANAGEMENT

Look for systems that provide role-based permissioning to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information. With this functionality, documents and folders can be restricted for access by certain users or groups only. However, sometimes more than this level of permissioning is needed when specific matters and associated data need to be completely hidden from all but a small group of people. Just because you can’t see a particular document doesn’t mean metadata (e.g., matter name) will also be hidden in other system areas, such as lookups, which could be a problem for highly sensitive matters. Look for legal DMS that lock down the whole matter by hiding the matter and its data and documents from appearing anywhere in the system for non-authorized users.

INTEGRATIONS

Documents, and contracts, in particular, are part of a broader lifecycle encompassing drafting, review, negotiation, execution, and management. While legal document management systems help with storage and versioning, many legal teams rely on other tools to support the different elements of the document lifecycle. For this reason, when looking at legal DMS, you should make sure it has the integrations you need right now and the future integrations you may need. At a minimum, ensure the system integrates well with Microsoft Office and Outlook.

Given we are now a remote workforce following the pandemic, look for tools that integrate with collaboration and instant messaging tools like MS Teams and Slack. You can also look at integrations with document assembly tools for drafting documents and eSignature tools for document execution. You may also favor legal DMS platforms that integrate with artificial intelligence (AI) tools so that you can intelligently sort, categorize and review your documents and extract meaningful data. AI integrations can significantly improve the search quality within your legal DMS.

Legal documents go hand-in-hand with legal matters and projects. There needs to be a very close alignment between a legal DMS and a matter management system. This enables matter data to be associated with documents and invoices in the legal DMS, and the matter management system pulls in relevant documents for a particular matter. For legal teams to operate efficiently, they need to consolidate and align their data across multiple systems. This also offers the best user experience, so users are not always “context switching” into different software tools. All your systems need to communicate so counsel can navigate easily across matters and their documents. Legal teams should be looking to start building their “legal operations space” – consisting of a legal document management system alongside matter management, eBilling, and contract management software.

DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS

When purchasing a legal DMS, you will likely have two primary deployment options: on-premise, which means the application and documents will be hosted and stored in your organization’s own IT infrastructure, and cloud, where they are hosted and stored on secure remote servers within one or more data centers. There is a third option – hybrid storage, where the application is cloud-hosted, but documents and data are stored on-premise.

Cloud has its benefits in terms of speed of deployment, scalability, and reduced cost of operation and maintenance; however, on-premise and hybrid solutions are suitable for organizations that want more control over their data and have higher security requirements. Organizations such as financial institutions need very high levels of security. While some cloud providers can meet these standards, some organizations will always insist on on-premise deployments. Make sure you know what your organization expects by deployment and document hosting and that the legal DMS will support this.

COLLABORATION AND PRODUCTIVITY

A good legal document management system will help you and your team get work done. Document collaboration is increasingly moving online with document co-authoring tools, including those with MS Office online. This offers a better drafting experience where colleagues can work in real-time to amend and refine documents. Legal DMS systems should offer collaboration tools and integrations to help users not only store and locate documents but also work on them. Look for legal DMS platforms that offer a range of collaboration functionality – from co-authoring and annotations to commenting and approvals. With a growing remote workforce, see if the legal DMS has tools supporting asynchronous working across remotely dispersed teams. Also, consider exploring AI tools to deliver intelligent search capability so users have better access to legal knowledge in context.

TRANSFORM CHAOS INTO ORDER WITH A LEGAL DMS

A legal DMS can transform the way your legal team works, collaborates, and accesses knowledge. It will bring order to the chaos of legal documents and will create a secure and searchable repository that gives your team quick and straightforward access to the documents they need when they need them. The right integrations and functionality will help manage entire document lifecycles and make your legal team more productive with collaboration tools.

Stop hunting down documents across email, local folders, and shared drives, and make the leap to a modern legal DMS. Hopefully, our tips for what to consider will set you and your team on course for an efficient and productive future where working with documents is a pleasure — and not a chore.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.Space today.

Embracing the Paradigm Shift: Enterprise Legal Management and AI

Posted on November 30, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

This article was first published on LegalDive. 

The history of enterprise legal management (ELM) is a study of slow-moving but immensely consequential shifts in purpose, mission and access. For several years, ELM was limited to matter management and spend management. After that, the first paradigm shift occurred when the best ELM platforms began to facilitate engagement, focus on process, offer a user-friendly environment, empower organizations and enable management of many other legal methods.

The second paradigm shift is happening now, taking advantage of the advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology. Today, the top ELM tools combine the powers of artificial intelligence with existing ELM rules to offer a game-changing solution for legal teams. This combination enables legal to operate faster, more accurately, and more efficiently — in everything from invoice processing and contract management to vendor management and many other tasks.

Just as critical to legal departments are the data insights that this new combination provides. ELM’s embrace of AI empowers organizations to look between the rules to find missed savings, provide real-time invoice error detection and analyze how vendors and bill reviewers perform.

So, with all the insights and efficiency this combination of AI and ELM can provide, why are some still hesitant to embrace the change? The embrace of this paradigm shift is not universal – and their arguments deserve examination.

Let’s look at the three most common arguments against AI:

It’s not worth the hype.

The most common blowback against this is simple: AI-enabled technology isn’t worth the hype.

“We have yet to see AI tools in this industry that fully replace people or processes,” one e-discovery specialist says in a LegalTech News piece. “They are better marketed as augmenting a procedure, improving the performance of a team or workstream, or adding automation and precision to workflows.”

True, AI is not sufficiently advanced to replace lawyers or remove critical thinking from processes, but this does not mean there isn’t a huge amount of value in what AI can do now. Where AI excels is in augmenting the work of legal professionals (typically the stuff they don’t want to do), providing insight from large, unstructured, unseen data and automation of simple, highly repetitive tasks. So, while AI is not a “magic bullet,” it offers genuine benefits, not just the reduction of “time spent in the process” but improvements to consistency, transparency, and mitigation of risk, all of which directly impact the top and bottom lines of your business.

To unlock these benefits, look for vendors that have a clear roadmap and will work with your organization to develop a successful rollout plan and deploy their AI+ELM solution to augment and enhance your capabilities.

It doesn’t solve our specific problems.

Transparency in the selection process will go a long way toward choosing a product that does solve those specific issues. Legal technology vendors should clearly lay out the purpose of their AI solution. What problems will it solve? What is the implementation process? What kind of support and training will they provide? What does the return on investment (ROI) look like? On the user side, legal departments must do their homework with stakeholders before they rush into buying a tech solution. Legal should have a clear picture of success and should come prepared with use cases to illustrate the desired outcome.

“Technology for technology’s sake” isn’t a solution. As much as AI can be used, there remains a bigger challenge of whether it will be used. Understanding the use case, implementation, and return on investment are especially important; bringing in nascent technology means you must have a strong change management process. Understanding how the organization will adopt the technology and including all key individuals — from the influencers to the naysayers — are critical to the successful rollout of AI.

With that type of transparency and communication, organizations can find the right vendor for their project needs. Remember this quote from business leader Andrew Shimek when embarking on the search:

“You shouldn’t chase AI in a vacuum,” one industry expert said in an Iltacon panel. “You should think about what are the problems that we have that need to be solved. And if AI is a critical tool that can help solve that faster and better, not at the expense of quality, let’s adopt it. But I think it’s use-case first and AI second—not AI in a vacuum.”

It doesn’t provide the data for success.

Nowadays, many AI solutions are trained out of the box, eliminating the need to collect enormous amounts of data to get started. Of course, to create a highly custom solution, you will need to spend time collecting data, training, and validating. This can be difficult and risky.

Like any digital transformation, you should ask yourself whether you are innovating to sustain the existing approach (by making it faster, more efficient, cheaper, etc.) or disrupting the existing one. Most innovation is centered around sustaining innovation — of which success comes through iteration, not giant leaps. “Don’t let best get in the way of better” is a great motto to remember.

Starting with out-of-the-box solutions that might not be an exact fit BUT offer a faster pathway to value and building internal support for such a transformation is a secure way of creating success, helping you learn, measure and prepare for more customized solutions in the future.

Embracing the paradigm shift

McKinsey’s State of AI survey in 2021 shows that AI adoption continues to grow with significant benefits; most respondents say that adopting AI has resulted in a demonstrable positive impact. In fact, a report from the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) that adoption of AI by legal teams doubled from 2020 to 2021 – from one in 10 teams to one in five.

Legal professionals everywhere are embracing the AI+ELM paradigm shift. On its most basic level, AI platforms can augment and improve both legal and business processes for corporate legal departments, law firms, contract professionals, and procurement teams. With the focused mission of helping business professionals get more work done faster, an AI engine can automate the existing repetitive, manual, and costly legal processes, enabling continuous learning and workflow improvements. The best intelligence platforms combine advanced AI techniques with workflow management to empower organizations with AI that not only finds and reports on things but does things for you.

The bottom line? While AI is not coming for lawyers’ jobs — and won’t be any time soon — the most innovative, forward-thinking legal departments recognize this paradigm shift and are acting to bolster their arsenal with AI-enabled workflow management solutions.

Learn how Onit’s ELM solutions can help your enterprise embrace this paradigm shift.

Technology as a Catalyst for Evolution: 4 Steps to Right-Sizing Legal Ops Solutions

Posted on September 27, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

State-of-the-art tech is a game-changing enabler for businesses that wish to differentiate, grow, and succeed. Here’s how departments can be sure they are embracing the features they need – and not overspending on ones they don’t – to elevate efficiency, ignite revenue, and evolve for the future.

No word on exactly what career he grew up to have, but as the iconic Ferris Bueller once said: “Life moves pretty fast.” These days, the speed of business moves faster than ever – seemingly at the speed of light when fused with modern technology.

In the newly released third and final chapter of the Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report, the multinational study* spotlights the unlimited potential of legal operations to be a transformative agent in driving meaningful business results by positively influencing revenue generation and operational and cost efficiencies with technology.

A “by the book” department dependent on precedents, Legal has, admittedly, never been exactly a trailblazer when it comes to tech: Nearly half of legal professionals (44%) call their department “averse to change.” But businesses that invest in technology surpass others in the best of times and remain a step ahead during times of disruption – and those who adapt to the latest solutions are bound to surpass and replace those who do not.

A need for modernization

To function in a modern and efficient capacity, Legal requires its own systems of record and engagement, just as every other function has. However, the ELR Report revealed that many legal teams lack the automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to advance both machine learning (ML) and human decision-making. In fact, almost half (46%) of legal respondents acknowledge they do not utilize automated systems for managing contracts.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital modernization, of course. But here are four essential steps every department must consider when adopting new tech to right-size its solutions:

1. Look at the big picture.

Whether your business has a technology roadmap in place or not, it is crucial to audit your current offerings. Gauge the functionality of legacy systems and vendors, pinpoint which are outdated, and ask: What do we have that we don’t need? What do we need that we don’t have? 

Another criterion to consider in a post-pandemic landscape where both cultural flexibility and remote work are paramount is: Is a tangible version of this required, or can this be streamlined and moved to the cloud?

2. Choose a single collaborative system.

No single technology can be all things to all people, but platforms that integrate workflows and offer communication skyrocket efficiency – which is highly necessary when nearly two-thirds of enterprise employees (59%) feel legal departments can sometimes be inefficient and 44% believe Legal can improve its effect on deal closures and revenue generation.

Enter enterprise legal management (ELM) to provide workflow clarity, track spend, and reinforce collaboration. Although less than half (48%) of respondents currently utilize e-billing and spend optimization solutions powered by AI, introducing a single source of truth that “speaks the same language” as it captures transactions, matters, and projects will help every function work smarter, not harder.

3. Don’t get distracted by bells and whistles.

Although most departments do want to get up to speed – 46% agree Legal must do better at accepting technological innovation – there is no tech Fairy that can provide the perfect “glass slipper” transformation. So it’s especially important to avoid “shiny object syndrome,” or the tendency to choose flashy features with the promise of an instantaneous tech happily-ever-after.

To prevent shiny object syndrome, compose a features list with two columns: “Must-Have” and “Nice-to-Have.” Keep in mind that overall capability, resources, and fit are critical, as is corporate culture – less than three in 10 ELR respondents (28%) describe themselves as early adopters by nature, and one in four (25%) says they lack the time to learn a new system. Selecting a dedicated team to oversee the rollout and set aside designated training periods can orchestrate a smooth deployment.

4. Focus on what automation can (and cannot) do.

When workloads increase but headcounts do not, the only typical answers used to be longer in-house hours or hiring outside counsel – and either one can be costly, taxing talented teams, budget, or both. Advances in intelligent automation, ML, and natural language processing (NLP) now offer a novel alternative.

While the concept of automation is rife with the stereotype it will replace real employees, this could not be further from the truth. The newest contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions automate contract review and administer data required to identify revenue recognition and acceleration opportunities, giving attorneys up to 30% of their time back for decidedly human pursuits: delivering in-depth, personal client device; focusing on the innovation and negotiations that impact and protect research and development (R&D), mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and intellectual property; and devising new cultural initiatives that bring meaningful change. And when it comes CLM, return on investment (ROI) is real: sales cycles are reduced by 24% and overall legal spend slashed by 50%.

What lies ahead

Technology takes the vision, insight, and knowledge of a business and shuttles it through the enterprise so that it lands where it will produce the greatest effect. But investing in tech is merely step one: Ensuring it is embraced is the real key to elevating operational and cost efficiency.

By deploying new technology, Legal has the uniquely positive chance to cash in on its influence as a trusted advisor, authority figure, and true business partner. And with right-sized solutions, every department can evolve into a more materially impactful, future-proof function for the ever-transforming worlds of business and law.

Read the ELR Report to learn more about how legal professionals view their relationships with internal clients in comparison to the image enterprise employees have of their legal departments and how Legal can evolve to prove material impact and improve efficiencies across the business.

*The ELR Report is a third-party, multinational study of 4,000 enterprise employees and 500 corporate legal professionals across the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany intended to showcase relationship dynamics and perceived image between corporate legal teams and enterprise organizations.

What is a Request for Proposal (RFP)?

Posted on August 8, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a query with which in-house legal departments can outsource their work to external law firms. Especially nowadays, when legal departments must do more for less, the RFP is becoming an increasingly important tool.

A typical use case is when a business unit needs legal advice and turns to their in-house lawyers for it – this could be a request for an answer to a simple query or, at the other extreme, the organization is contemplating a merger with another company or is facing some severe litigation. Ideally, the in-house team has an internal knowledge management or transaction information system containing a record of previous advice or work undertaken for the business. The legal team then needs to ask themselves, can the request be handled internally?

If the work carries high risk, needs significant resources, and has areas needing specialist expertise, involve the organization’s external legal advisors from the start. If this is the case, we need to begin selecting an external law firm to instruct. The in-house department will send a Request for Proposal (RFP) to decide on the law firm to undertake the work.

An RFP for legal services involves a client corporation requesting law firms or legal service providers to submit proposals to do work on behalf of the client’s internal legal team. This can range from a basic fee estimate to a full RFP for significant legal work. Clients create and share RFPs with their legal service providers; they can set vendor selection criteria, track responses, and monitor submission rounds before selecting the preferred firm and inviting that firm to begin the work. RFPs can also go to legal service providers, including those that provide law firm services and not just legal advice, for example, eDiscovery, document review, secondees, or other managed services.

WHICH INFORMATION IS TYPICALLY IN AN RFP?

If an RFP is going to one or more law firms that are new to the client and have not previously been asked to provide their background and work experience information or are not on a client’s panel of firms, then more information of the following nature will be required:

  • A firm’s overview will require an introduction to the firm, office locations, lawyers, and jurisdictions.
  • Information about diversity, legal industry awards, and other firm accomplishments is also essential.
  • A description of experience by practice area, including supporting detail in terms of example cases to help to highlight the firm’s depth of expertise.
  • References – ideally of the type applicable to the law firm proposal or RFP.
  • IT capability, including data privacy and security policies, and good 24/7 communications demonstrate the law firm’s robust in-house technical ability.
  • Law firms should demonstrate their capability to provide invoices consistent with any format specified in the client’s billing guidelines.

However, suppose we discount the RFP to establish the suitability of a new law firm to work for a client. In that case, we should look at the contents of the more “run of the mill” RFP when a client is looking for a proposal/quotation for a new matter but from a controlled list of panel firms, for example. While every law firm proposal differs, several central sections will appear in most RFPs.

Basic sections of an RFP include:

  • Timeline: The RFP will have dates for the submission and, possibly, the work itself.
  • Contact persons and responsibilities: The vital contacts of the client and responsible lawyers in the firm. The client can select the lawyers the RFP should go to and who should respond.
  • Staffing plans: The client will expect the law firm to detail the staffing plans for the matter, including the time estimated for each timekeeper classification and the ratio between them.
  • Rates and pricing: The client will require the law firm to quote the rates they will charge for each timekeeper classification, the total fee estimate and any expenses, what discounts might be available, and suggest any alternative pricing arrangements they could offer.
  • Scope of work: The client will specify the content of the work, giving as much information as possible. A good RFP will have templates for different matter types to assist the law firm in defining how much work is required and the success criteria. This will also include which jurisdictions are covered by the RFP, and it may also allow the matter to be broken down by phase, to get a more granular estimate of the expected costs.
  • Representative Cases: A law firm might need to provide a list of comparable matters it has completed (suitably anonymized) to reinforce its experience.

The time is ripe to get more out of your legal department with simple means. In our “What Legal Ops Teams Should Know About RFPs” blog, we examine the RFP process and explain how our legal spend management solution helps streamline it.

Request a demo to see our powerful legal spend management solution tool for yourself.

Choosing the Right Software to Achieve Your Legal Operations Goals

Posted on July 22, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

In today’s business world, achieving universal goals such as transparency, efficiency gains, and data analysis comes through the combination of skilled personnel and software. The discipline of legal operations is no exception; just glance at the world’s leading legal operations teams. They all rely on tailor-made legal operations tools in their daily work.

The scope of legal technology an organization deploys strongly correlates with the level of maturity of legal operations. Companies with more mature legal operations tend to utilize legal technology more extensively, resulting in greater success in achieving business goals. Utilizing technology can lead to the growth of legal operations departments and the establishment of more advanced goals and capabilities.

With business priorities for legal operations, there are four universal areas that are significant:

  • Reducing external legal spend.
  • Automating and streamlining manual processes.
  • Improving legal work prioritization.
  • Increasing the quality of legal advice.

Overarching these is the additional priority to evaluate and introduce legal technology. Although it may seem like a separate priority ranked alongside the others, it underpins all other legal operations priorities. As demonstrated by legal operations leaders using technology to enhance performance, the introduction of legal technology enables the achievement of other goals.

HOW LEGAL OPERATIONS LEADERS USE TECHNOLOGY TO ACHIEVE GOALS

Mature and advanced legal operations teams use technology. Smaller, less mature teams also need software tools to enhance their performance. Some of the benefits that technology delivers include:

  • Legal e-Billing ensures law firms adhere to billing guidelines which save money.
  • Workflows automate repetitive, manual processes, saving time and reducing manual errors, and freeing up lawyers to do more high-value work.
  • Real-time dashboards on matter or contract statuses give visibility to stakeholders.
  • Comparing law firm price and performance for more transparent and fair reviews and negotiations.
  • Knowledge and document management tools make it easier to collaborate, search, and find information and documents.
  • Consistent data creates reports and analytical capabilities to enable decision-making.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT LEGAL SOFTWARE FOR YOUR NEEDS

A common failing seen repeatedly is when legal operations teams get dazzled by features and buy technology they don’t need and won’t use. Not only is this a waste of investment, but it creates a skepticism that affects future projects. Some teams may need more than one highly customized solution with multiple integrations; others require a simple out-of-the-box tool to automate key processes.

Before you talk to any vendor, you need to know your challenges and goals and document your current process and workflows. Good vendors will not try to sell you all the bells and whistles that result in you buying an underused solution; we want your project to succeed just as much as you do.

Here are the recommended legal technology project steps:

  1. Identify your key challenges, needs, and requirements.
  2. Define the project team; include future users, stakeholders, and don’t forget members from other crucial teams.
  3. Document your current people, processes, and technology for your challenges. Look at how you might change this and your priorities; what is ideal and the acceptable and unacceptable outcomes.
  4. The vendor or consultant can help you refine this further down the line.
  5. Research the market, possible solutions, vendors, and consultants. Consider “build-or-buy” options.
  6. Only now should you approach vendors and consultants. If you do this any sooner, you will be overwhelmed with all the potential opportunities for improvement and lose focus on what is most important for your business right now.
  7. Calculate the business case, including any ROI. (Download our guide to building a business case for legal spend management).
  8. Consider and plan for the impact of change management, stakeholder management, and corporate culture.
  9. Choose the right solution for your team!

DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING

The introduction of legal technology will achieve “quick wins” in the cost and efficiency goals mentioned above. Where mature legal operations departments excel is in the integration of multiple legal technology tools. This creates centralized, consistent data that, in turn, enables advanced data analytics across numerous legal practice areas and work types.

Due to their data analysis capabilities, mature legal operations functions can address more challenging legal department problems and make data-driven, strategic decisions around department staffing, matter resourcing, risk management, negotiations, panel reviews, and more. From your first legal technology project, you have started to create data that will take your cost and efficiency savings to the next level and position legal as a strategic value-generator for the business.

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

9 Advantages of a Matter Management Cloud Solution

Posted on June 14, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

In our Matter Management blog series, we have already addressed the fact that in-house counsel are under enormous pressure in today’s demanding business environment to serve their internal clients effectively and professionally while keeping costs low and minimizing potential risks. In this article, Carina Smolik-Fischer, director of product at BusyLamp (an Onit company), summarizes the top 9 benefits of a matter management cloud solution and how it can benefit your legal team.

In-house counsel are challenged to find innovative legal tech solutions for their legal departments that enable them to increase productivity and speed without sacrificing the quality and value of their work. At first, these may appear to be competing goals, but with the help of a matter management solution, you will make the first step towards reconciling these seemingly conflicting goals. With matter management, you have a centralized solution that allows you to create matters, centrally view files easily, and access related documents and emails.

Matter Management from Onit offers all the modules and features modern legal departments need for daily and efficient work. Legal market experts have developed Onit’s Matter Management solution with a strong understanding of the complex requirements of in-house counsel and the regional specifics of the DACH legal market.

And now to the good news: implementing such a matter management software does not have to be complicated. Using cloud software is the fastest way. Furthermore, cloud-based software programs offer you nine key advantages that can significantly benefit your business:

1. General Benefits

Any cloud-based application – including matter management – opens up new ways of collaboration, flexibility, innovation, and mobility. Users can access applications quickly and easily from anywhere via the internet, extend them as needed, and share their data with authorized third parties within seconds. New functions and innovations are immediately available in high quality, thus offering users more agility and flexibility. But that’s not all: cloud technology for matter management provides numerous benefits that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with local on-premise software.

2. Costs

With cloud software, there are no unique investment costs for purchasing and running hardware and operating system software. Also, there is no need for internal know-how about the software application besides the monthly license fee. With Onit, there are only one-time onboarding costs for the software’s individual configuration, including users, authorizations, master data, templates, and more. In addition, there is a short training session to get you started quickly and comprehensively. This allows you to calculate reliably, minimize financial risk and avoid surprises.

3. Direct Availability

Cloud software is always ready. No technical installation is required, so your IT deployment is limited to testing security-related issues. With Onit, for example, you are using software hosted in the EU that complies with the latest security standards, e.g., certifications such as ISO 27001 and ISO 9001.

4. State-of-the-Art Security Standards

There are often concerns that cloud technologies are unsafe and exposed to attacks. However, this is not the case. Our Matter Management solution runs on Microsoft Azure. Large providers like Microsoft are constantly investing in the security of their data centers, using the latest software, and having specialized employees.

5. Automated updates and upgrades

Cloud applications have automated upgrades and updates that keep your matter management solution up to date. This has the advantage of always providing you with innovative features and constantly guaranteeing the security of your software.

6. Collaboration

Cloud software is accessible via the internet – all you need is your normal browser like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. As an end user, you benefit from this, especially with matter management software. For example: once a digital file is created in our Matter Management solution, you can easily share or assign its content, such as documents, emails, appointments, tasks, etc., with authorized third parties (departments such as HR, procurement, or external law firms). Use the platform itself or MS Teams for this purpose – all required contents of the digital file are under your control 24/7. Legal services such as the internal Legal Service Request are also provided via the Internet browser and therefore do not require technical installation. Sharing on the intranet or using an MS Teams APP makes access easier and saves time. It gives you the flexibility to focus on your higher value-added work.

7. Apps and Plug-Ins

Easily extend your matter management software using APPs and plug-ins. These integrate directly into the application, extending your cloud software with just a few clicks. Matter Management offers integrations with MS Office, MS Outlook, and MS Teams so that you can communicate directly within the solution.

8. Data Security

We are very aware of the fact that your legal department manages extremely sensitive data. A loss of data could have serious consequences. As mentioned at the outset, established cloud providers such as Microsoft have significantly more capabilities to provide data in a highly available, stable, and secure manner. Furthermore, data communication between the local computer and the Internet service is always encrypted to prevent access by unauthorized persons and to protect your data using state-of-the-art technologies.

9. Scalability

Cloud software is flexible and dynamically scalable. Onboarding additional users, sites, or departments is possible anytime and immediately without any lead time or spare capacity in your IT department. This also applies to the use of more storage. Cloud-based software allows you to grow according to the unique needs of your legal department.

Summary

Cloud-based matter management provides legal departments with the tools and applications to make their processes more efficient, streamline their legal operations, and efficiently deliver value to their organization. Add value through smart technologies and improve the visibility of your contribution to the company’s success. Use Matter Management to optimize the spending of your costs. Use your valuable time to focus on high-quality legal advice and put aside the time-consuming management of your legal mandates.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.space.