Category: Enterprise Legal Management

How to Choose the Right Legal Tech Vendor for Your In-House Legal Team

Posted on March 30, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

Technology is increasingly vital in helping in-house legal teams optimize their time and resources. The transformation of working practices over recent years, with the continued trend for remote working, means IT tools are more important than ever for communication, administration, data management, and knowledge sharing at work. In addition, legal teams require specific legal tech software to manage and automate everything from spend management and billing to matter management, reporting, and administration.

In-house legal teams face an array of vendors to choose from. With so much choice, how should in-house legal teams choose the right technology vendor for their needs?

To help you, we’ve compiled a checklist of key considerations:

YOUR LEGAL TECH VENDOR CHECKLIST

1. DOES THE TECHNOLOGY MEET DATA SECURITY REQUIREMENTS?

The data handled by legal teams are too sensitive to take any risks. You need to be confident the technology you choose meets every security requirement of your IT department. Look for solutions that offer data security assurances, such as banking-grade encryption, single-jurisdiction hosting, and compliance with regulatory standards, such as ISO 27001 and GDPR.

2. DOES THE TECH VENDOR MEET COUNTRY-SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS?

Define your requirements by thinking through your daily work and identifying what is missing. How can technology help? Ask vendors how their technology can address your specific challenges. For example, when your company is based in Europe, can the technology meet European country-specific requirements, such as taxation and invoicing?

3. WHAT LEVEL OF CUSTOMER SUPPORT IS ON OFFER?

Does the vendor have a professional customer service team? Will you be assigned a dedicated customer success manager? Does the vendor have dedicated European support capabilities? How many languages are supported? Do they have the resources to provide the support you need?

4. IS THE VENDOR TRUSTED BY CLIENTS AND INDEPENDENT COMMENTATORS?

Check out client testimonials, read case studies and ask to speak to clients. Find out if the vendor and its solutions are trusted and valued. Look for independent approvals or verifications from respected organizations, such as Hyperion Global Partners. Does the vendor have a network of trusted partners to support and champion its solutions?

5. DOES THE TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATE WITH EVERYDAY IT SYSTEMS?

We all use various software and IT systems to support efficient collaboration and communication. You need to find legal technology that integrates fully with common software from Microsoft, Google, and others. Choose interoperable legal technology tools that meet you where you work.

6. CAN YOU REQUEST A FREE DEMO?

Ask all shortlisted vendors for a demonstration of their software and its application to a practical example. Before committing to new software, take it for a test drive. Most vendors offer a free trial to test features, benefits, and usability.

MEET LOCALLY

If you need help choosing a vendor, you can meet many leading legal tech providers at conferences across the United States and Europe throughout the year. These provide an excellent opportunity to learn more about your region’s legal tech landscape, meet some of the people you could work with, ask questions, and sample the technology.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.Space today.

How to Improve Legal Spend with Technology

Posted on March 10, 2022 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Legal Management

If you work as part of a legal operations team, chances are you spend plenty of time thinking about how to improve legal spend – specifically, how to manage and reduce it. Under ever-increasing pressures to do more with less, the spotlight on legal spend is brighter than ever.

The following are just a few examples of enterprise legal management software can go a long way toward reducing legal spend.

1.   Improve Legal Spend by Moving to Electronic Invoices

You can’t improve legal spend without understanding what your baseline is. If your law department and its law firms are working with paper invoices, you limit the chances of understanding what your spend truly is and where you may be overcharged. Plus, paper invoices limit insight into vendor management, evaluations and comparisons.

Why? Because for most corporate legal departments, manual invoice review is time-consuming, tedious and can lead to human error. There are simply too many invoices and not enough time or resources to vet line items. Plus, it’s hard to compare and analyze costs when all information is on paper.

E-billing enables a corporate legal department to adopt industry standards for formats and billing codes. From there, legal ops can begin to capture and “digest” precious data for reporting and analysis – valuable indicators such as overall spending, trends and more – and compare them to industry benchmarks (more on that below). It also minimizes the time spent inputting invoices into billing systems for review and payment processing.

2.   Use a Specialized Legal E-Billing System Rather Than a General Tool

There are a lot of e-billing systems on the market, but many of the most popular ones aren’t designed to handle legal billing. Too many corporate legal departments fall back on general e-billing tools when a legal e-billing system can better deal with legal-specific billing problems and improve legal spend.

Among other things, the right legal e-billing system will offer the following functionalities, which are traditionally not available in general e-billing tools: supporting electronic timekeeper rates from outside counsel, preventing law firms from billing to matters without approval, receiving invoices in the industry-standard Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) format or comparing LEDES invoices against company billing guidelines, permitting write-offs or rejections of individual invoice line items, allowing for comparison of invoices against budget, supporting the automatic allocation of invoices to specified cost centers or codes, and allowing for reporting on spend by relevant factors such as time, activity, matter, firm and more. All of these capabilities are critical to accurate and efficient legal invoicing.

3.   Automate Billing Guidelines that Comport with Outside Counsel Guidelines

Compliance with outside counsel billing guidelines is one of the most important goals of reviewing invoices. Manual review is not up to the task. Technology is, so make sure you have a tool that allows you to input your specific billing guidelines so they can automatically and consistently be applied across all your invoices to identify areas of improper charges and prevent overpaying.

The billing rules often come as part of legal spend management systems. They automatically scour incoming invoices from law firms and legal vendors for discrepancies and fix or flag the invoice for further review. This relieves reviewers from manually combing through each line item, often resulting in immediate savings.

4.   Implement AI that Looks Between the Billing Rules

Legal invoice review has long been rules-based. While billing rules represent an excellent first step for reducing legal spend, it’s only the beginning. Invoices may still slip through the cracks with a purely rules-based approach or be incorrectly approved for payment.

How does this happen?

Billing rules, while valuable, rely on specific descriptions or words to identify potentially improper charges. If by some chance, an invoice employs different keywords or descriptions not included in billing rules to describe a line item, billing rules may not flag the charge. It may, instead, not identify the noncompliant charge and approve it for payment. After all, you can’t program billing rules to consider every potential variable in word choices.

If you want to further improve legal spend, consider an AI-powered invoice review tool that looks between the rules to find hidden legal invoice review errors and even more savings. These technologiesdf work in conjunction with enterprise legal management systems. They are trained on millions of legal invoice charges to look for areas where overpayment is common, or correction is typically needed – things like block billing, vague descriptions, work done by the wrong class of staff or non-work travel.

When these issues are identified, InvoiceAI can either automatically adjust the charge to comply with outside counsel guidelines or it can bring the problem to reviewers’ attention, significantly reducing the likelihood of improper payment and lowering overall legal spend in the process.

5.   Leverage Benchmarking Technologies

Knowing how much you spend on a particular law firm is great. Even better, though, is knowing how much you should spend based on what everyone else is spending – even down to a law firm in a specific location for a particular task. This is where benchmarking comes in.

Benchmarking is a critical part of any sound legal spend management system. But the benchmarking technology you select needs to provide attributes such as practice area, timekeeper level, work type and discounts, which will provide you with the negotiation leverage you need during conversations with your law firms.

For example, a top private equity firm saved 17% on its rates, realizing more than $27M in savings in the first year by leveraging smart benchmarking data.

Also, to ensure that you always understand the going rate for upcoming matters, make sure your benchmarking solution also has proprietary competitive cohorts of law firms based on at least 100 factors, including general firm expertise, rates and even individual partner expertise.

Conclusion

The pressure to do more with less likely won’t end any time soon, but there are ways of meeting that demand by implementing the right technology. Contact us today to learn more about how InvoiceAI and Onit’s enterprise legal management system can help you reduce your legal spend. And if you’re interested in leveraging the power of legal services benchmarking and market intelligence, reach out to our subsidiary Bodhala.

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

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

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

1. The GC’s Role in Tech Decisions

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

Source: Law.com

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

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

Source: Gartner

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

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

Source: Association of Corporate Counsel

4. Industry Leaders Launch Information Hub for Legal Tech Buyers

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

Source: Law.com

5. Connect With Onit at Legalweek NY!

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

Source: Onit

We look forward to bringing you more news and insights as the new year progresses. As always, if you want to learn more about our legal business solutions, including enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, AI and more, schedule a demo today or email [email protected].

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

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

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

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

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

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

In House Legal Software Adoption – Technology Roadmaps On the Rise

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aligning Budgets with Legal Technology Roadmaps

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

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

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

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

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

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

2021: A Year in Review

Posted on February 22, 2022 by - Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

2021 was a notable year for Onit. We not only celebrated our 10th anniversary, but we also saw accelerated growth and significant accomplishments. These included:

In this blog post, we will run through the highlights of 2021 for Onit and its family of companies.

First, though, we want to thank our customers, employees and partners. We couldn’t have reach these milestones without you. Thank you.

We also invite you to connect with Onit during Legalweek. From demos to cocktails to dinner, we’re offering many ways to celebrate Legalweek and learn more about us. Find out more here.

New Products for Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)

Onit has continued its tradition of disrupting the CLM market, expanding our reach on a global scale in 2021. Last year we launched new AI technologies for contract management, including Automate NDA, which uses AI to streamline and automate the entire non-disclosure agreement (NDA) process, reducing the time spent on NDAs by 70%. We also introduced Smart Checklists, offered as part of the ReviewAI Microsoft Word Add-In, which turns playbook checks into intelligent, actionable and collaborative tasks.

Last year also saw Onit extending its contract management market reach to midsize and smaller companies. An essential move in this area was Onit’s acquisition of SecureDocs, which closed in 2021 and was announced last month. SecureDocs is a global software company for contract management, virtual deal rooms and electronic signatures. By acquiring SecureDocs, Onit expanded its product portfolio from enterprise-level CLM to include quickly deployable contract management software for new and growing legal operations teams. SecureDocs will integrate with SimpleLegal, Onit’s legal operations technology subsidiary, to empower greater efficiencies, transparency and intelligence for legal operations teams.

With the addition of SecureDocs, Onit now offers its customers technologies for all stages of legal operations – from newly established companies to global enterprises.

Continued Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) Leadership

In 2021, Onit became one of the world’s largest enterprise legal management conglomerates with the acquisition of BusyLamp, a premier provider of legal spend and matter management software for European corporate legal departments. The acquisition creates one of the largest global enterprise legal management conglomerates, with more than 600 implementations completed worldwide and $8.3 billion in legal invoices processed by Onit and its subsidiaries SimpleLegal and BusyLamp in 2021. It also augments Onit’s formidable global reach into 140+ countries with European domain expertise and a solution well-equipped for unique considerations such as VAT, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and regional tax policies.

BusyLamp wasn’t Onit’s only acquisition in the ELM space in 2021. We also acquired Bodhala, a legal spend analytics, benchmarking and market intelligence leader. Bodhala applies machine learning and AI to help companies source outside counsel at competitive and market-driven rates, with proven results for optimizing spend and the procurement of legal services. Onit’s acquisition of Bodhala creates the most complete enterprise legal management solution on the market, allowing corporate legal departments to evolve analytics into actionable intelligence to optimize outside counsel spend.

Our subsidiaries also reached several milestones and earned awards in their own right. You can read about them in our press release.

Looking Ahead

This past year’s accomplishments marked even more significant growth and expansion than Onit saw in 2020, which is no small feat. In 2020, we launched an artificial intelligence-powered business intelligence platform and AI contract review, closed two acquisitions in 30 days (McCarthyFinch and AXDRAFT), established our AI Center of Excellence and achieved a market-leading NPS score – all despite COVID-related complications.

In addition to our successful acquisitions and product launches, Onit grew its global workforce by 30% in 2021. We expect to hire at an even faster pace in the coming year to continue focusing on growth and innovation. If you’re interested in learning more about the positions we’re hiring for, please visit our careers page.

We’ve also already started to bring in the awards this year, being named to the 2022 Vet 100 list and Houston Inno’s first-ever Fire Awards.

You can expect even more great things to come as the year goes on. Whether you’re looking to revolutionize ELM and CLM for your organization or are interested in joining our team, contact Onit today.

Onit’s AI for eBilling Review Takes Home an Innovation Award

Posted on February 8, 2022 by - Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Legal Management

We’re excited to announce that Onit has won a prestigious Business Intelligence Group (BIG) 2022 Innovation Award for our AI-enabled eBilling validation and processing technology, InvoiceAI. The awards program recognizes organizations, products and people bringing new ideas to life in innovative ways.

InvoiceAI debuted to customers in May of 2021 and then launched publicly four months later in September. It works with Onit’s enterprise legal management solution and traditional billing rules to conduct a first-pass review of outside counsel and vendor ebills submitted to corporate legal departments. Since AI and machine learning power it, it understands context, learns and can identify additional potentially noncompliant charges on top of what billing rules have already found.

This is the next evolution of eBilling review. Traditional billing rules rely on set parameters to identify invoices containing noncompliant line items, such as a specific word or series of words. Suppose a law firm or legal vendor uses billing descriptions that are similar but differ from what is outlined in the billing rules. In that case, an invoice may be automatically approved for payment.

How InvoiceAI Addresses eBilling Review Challenges

The review of a high number of invoices and their collective dollar total have challenged large corporate legal departments for decades. They’re often pressed to accomplish more in less time with fewer resources and lack the bandwidth to chase corrections or parse a large number of warnings. And they’re faced with invoice issues that include vague or insufficient details, block billing, improper coding of invoices and work being done by the wrong staff class. All of these issues are difficult for traditional billing rules to uncover and sort.

InvoiceAI finds issues such as administrative tasks and improper billing for time during travel and then integrates these findings with ELM and existing rules engines for a more intelligent eBilling review that continuously learns. As a result:

  • Attorneys can quickly review invoices
  • Legal operations can identify noncompliant billing guidelines and harvest early savings
  • General counsel can gain greater visibility into law firm performance and legal spend metrics.

As one customer commented:

“Now, our invoice review team doesn’t have to feel like the bad guy. The machine catches these issues (and does it better) so that we can focus on the relationships and let the system drive the needed action.”

Historical and Real-Time eBilling Review – Results

Before its public launch, InvoiceAI combed through the eBilling from 2020 for a set of Fortune 500 customers. It identified an average of six figures of savings in travel-related billed time and expenses submitted to the customers during the onset of COVID-19 when travel was severely restricted. These were invoices previously sent through traditional billing rules, meaning these savings surpassed what had already been found.

InvoiceAI yields positive results for real-time invoice review as well. When it is used with ELM and billing rules, some Onit customers have found up to 20% in savings.

Continuing AI Excellence

InvoiceAI is one of the latest AI innovations Onit has introduced since the founding of its AI Center of Excellence in 2020. Since then, we have released four other AI offerings in addition to InvoiceAI:

  • Precedent, an AI platform that automates and improves both legal and business processes for corporate legal departments, law firms, contract professionals and procurement teams.
  • ReviewAI, which quickly drafts, reviews, redlines and edits all types of contracts.
  • ExtractAI, AI which extracts and obtains usable data from executed, legacy and third-party paper contracts.
  • Automate NDA, an easy-to-implement, best practice AI solution that helps you manage and automate the end-to-end non-disclosure agreement process.

How to Learn More About InvoiceAI

Interested in learning more about InvoiceAI and how it helps eBilling? Start here or request a demonstration.  You can also learn more about AI and corporate legal with these blog posts:

Data Security: How Not to Put Your Legal Data at Risk

Posted on February 7, 2022 by - Enterprise Legal Management

With the global expansion of remote working and increased reliance on digital technologies to support every type of business, it’s no surprise that data security has risen to the top of the boardroom agenda. The issues associated with data security are particularly prominent in the minds of legal counsel since in-house legal teams frequently must help organizations manage and recover from crises, including data breaches.

WHY DOES DATA SECURITY MATTER?

Most organizations today rely on data. That means any data loss, whether caused by cyber-attack or human error, poses a considerable risk to the business. The impacts include significant time, cost, and resources spent responding to and recovering from an incident and the potential loss of revenue and long-term reputational and financial damage.

REAL DATA SECURITY RISKS FOR EUROPEAN LEGAL DEPARTMENTS

Recent studies show that a significant number of European businesses suffered a data breach involving the loss or theft of more than 1,000 records in the past two years; many of them came from a remote workforce. The shift towards remote working in the wake of the pandemic has increased the risks to data – and no legal team or business can afford to ignore them.

Data Breach Preparedness Study sponsored by Experian and conducted by the Ponemon Institute found that 49% of European businesses had suffered a data breach involving the loss or theft of more than 1,000 records in the past two years. Almost half of the data breaches came from a remote workforce (43% of European respondents). The shift towards remote working in the wake of the pandemic has increased the risks to data – and no legal team or business can afford to ignore them.

In the legal profession, the highly confidential and sensitive nature of internal data (and with law firm suppliers) makes it especially important to protect. And in an industry where your reputation is one of your most valuable assets, any data security incident that undermines that reputation is potentially devastating.

The CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) 2022 Survey by the Association of Corporate Counsel highlighted concerns about the risks to data among Chief Legal Officers. It reported that “57% of the respondents in an ACC survey noted the urgency of having a ‘comprehensive data management strategy to ensure compliance, defensibility and security.’”

HOW TO CHOOSE LEGAL SOLUTIONS THAT PROTECT YOUR DATA

Legal firms must ensure their IT security protocols are as robust and effective as possible to protect valuable data. The key is providing the software and systems you use to offer the highest levels of data safety. Even the most technology-savvy legal operations managers may need to be more expert in data security. But there are some key features you should look out for in any legal software you choose:

  • Single jurisdiction hosting ensures that once you’ve chosen the geographical location for your datacenter, your data never leaves that country.
  • Banking grade encryption: using the latest algorithms to encrypt data wherever it is stored, accessed, or transmitted – whether on disk, on the network, or in the database.
  • Secure cloud hosting: choose applications hosted securely on your own data center (private cloud), certified data centers (public cloud), or a hybrid.
  • Regular audits, pen tests, and certifications – compliance with recognized global certifications and standards, including ISO27001, ISO 9001, and GDPR, provides peace of mind in the security and reliability of your software.

Find further advice in our in-house legal tech data security checklist and here: Legal spend management software can help mitigate data breaches.

NOW IS THE TIME TO SECURE YOUR DATA

As the new financial year approaches, now is perfect for organizing your data security protocols. New vulnerabilities and data breaches hitting the headlines recently are a timely reminder of the risks posed to data and the need for constant vigilance. Throughout Europe, data protection plays a central role for legal departments and is a top priority for corporate governance. As you set your legal tech budgets for the year ahead, ensure data security is at the top of your shopping list.

DEVELOPED FOR SUPERIOR DATA SECURITY

The legal operations software provided by Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp eBilling.Space has enterprise data security terms front of mind. That means our solutions handle the matter, and billing data are subject to the highest security standards.

Moreover, BusyLamp has been recognized again by Hyperion Research as an Enterprise Legal Management Advanced Solution in its MarketView™ Report. The report recognized our data privacy policies, highlighting our robust data privacy features, including geographic data segregation options and automated data classification and retention tools.

YOUR DATA IN SAFE HANDS

When it comes to e-billing software that helps you reduce costs and operate more efficiently, you can be confident that BusyLamp offers market-leading data protection and security standards to safeguard the confidentiality of your matters and the reputation of your business.

Request a demo to find out how BusyLamp can safely, securely, and compliantly enhance your legal operations.

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

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

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

The difference matters.

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

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

The Downside of General E-Billing

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

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

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

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

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

The Benefits of Legal E-Billing Systems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: The Global Legal Post

2. The Software That Lets GCs Showcase Their Value

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

Source: Above The Law

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

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

Source: Law.com

4. The Top Legal Technology News Stories of 2021

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

Source: ABA Journal

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

5.  Legalweek Conference Shifts to March

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

Source: LawSites

We look forward to bringing you more news and insights as the new year progresses. As always, if you want to learn more about our legal business solutions, including enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, AI and more, schedule a demo today or email [email protected].

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

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

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

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

Enterprise Legal Management Resources

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

Legal Spend Management Resources

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

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

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