Category: Legal Operations

Spring Forward: Legal Operations, Elevated

Posted on May 14, 2025 by - Legal Operations

From smarter contract management to cleaner spend tracking and real-time AI insights—our Spring 2025 releases are here to level up legal operations across the board. These launches reflect our continued investment in building modern, intuitive tools that legal teams actually want. We’re committed to innovation that listens: every enhancement is shaped by real customer feedback, tested in real workflows, and designed to drive impact from day one.

Whether you’re using SimpleLegal, ContractWorks, BusyLamp, or OnitX CLM—these Onit solutions work towards one vision: to help legal teams automate with confidence, operate smarter, and scale without friction.

What’s New This Spring?

Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) 

SimpleLegal

AskAI (Beta)
Unlock real-time, natural language insights—without the learning curve. AskAI empowers legal and finance teams to generate reports, analyze spend, and uncover key data points using plain language queries.

Currently available as a limited beta for select users. General availability is projected for Summer 2025.

Timekeeper Management Enhancements
Submit, review, and approve timekeepers more efficiently with centralized profiles, support for multiple rates, and clearer audit trails. New features like bulk approval and rejection tracking reduce errors and speed up rate reviews.

Budget Request Updates
Now you can update budget approvers, collaborators, names, and refresh cycles—even after submission. Navigate between records and drill into invoice totals for faster reviews and fewer delays.

CounselGo (Vendor Portal for SimpleLegal)

Timekeeper Management Enhancements
Vendors can now preview submissions, see rejection reasons, and export timekeeper records. With support for multiple rates and cleaner workflows, it’s easier to submit accurate data the first time.

BusyLamp

Automatic Archiving
A smarter way to maintain clean, accurate financial records. BusyLamp now auto-archives work-in-progress entries, helping teams improve reporting accuracy and system performance.

Preferred Law Firms
Take the guesswork out of matter setup. BusyLamp now surfaces your most-used firms by matter type to help you find the right fit, faster.

Invoice Link
Say goodbye to disconnected billing data. Track relationships between invoices, credits, and resubmissions in just one click—making audits and approvals easier than ever.

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)

ContractWorks

AI Contract Extract Enhancements
Get up and running faster with multi-tag selection, prebuilt AI templates, and automatic AI activation for trial accounts.

Contracts API Enhancements
Speed up integrations with publicly accessible API documentation and a new document download endpoint.

OnitX CLM

Contract Hierarchy V2
Gain a 360° view of related agreements. Configure tile fields, use color-coded phases to triage faster, and group contracts by third party for smarter oversight.

Designed to Make an Immediate Impact

Every feature in this release solves a real operational challenge—making it easier to prioritize work, reduce manual effort, and deliver measurable results. Whether you’re scaling your team or simplifying how work gets done, these enhancements are designed to meet you where you are (and take you further).Ready to see these innovations in action?
Contact your Customer Success Manager or schedule a demo to experience the new features in action.

How Generative AI is Elevating Legal Operations Efficiency

Posted on December 19, 2024 by - Legal Operations

In-house legal teams today face increasing pressure to deliver more value while managing leaner resources. According to the Blickstein Group’s 13th Annual Law Department Operations Survey, funding for personnel, technology, and talent retention ranked as one of the top challenges for legal departments in recent years. To address these challenges, legal teams are increasingly leveraging generative AI to streamline workflows, reduce repetitive tasks, and focus on strategic initiatives.

Generative AI—AI that creates text, content, and insights based on vast data inputs—has emerged as a transformative tool for legal operations. Unlike traditional AI systems that rely solely on rules-based processing, generative AI can analyze patterns, produce human-like outputs, and enhance operational efficiency across various legal functions. Let’s explore how generative AI specifically impacts legal operations and delivers measurable results.

1. Revolutionizing Contract Management

Contract management has long been a bottleneck for legal teams, particularly when reviewing high volumes of routine agreements like NDAs, vendor contracts, and service agreements. Generative AI simplifies and accelerates these processes in several ways:

  • Automated Drafting and Review: Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and others can draft contracts based on predefined templates and guidelines. For example, a legal team can input core contract elements, and the AI generates a draft tailored to specific business terms, reducing manual workload.
  • Risk Detection and Clause Standardization: Generative AI can flag missing or non-compliant clauses, propose alternative wording, and ensure contracts meet regulatory and organizational standards.
  • Faster Turnaround Times: By automating low-complexity tasks, generative AI reduces the time needed for contract approvals, accelerating workflows by up to 70%.

This allows legal teams to redirect their efforts from routine contract tasks to high-value activities like negotiating key terms or managing strategic relationships.

2. Smarter Spend Management with AI-Driven Invoice Review

Legal departments often struggle to manage outside counsel spending while enforcing billing guidelines effectively. Generative AI transforms invoice review by using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to identify billing anomalies and enforce compliance:

  • Automated Line-Item Audits: Generative AI reviews invoices against billing guidelines, flagging issues like overstaffing, incorrect rates, or unauthorized expenses.
  • Pattern Recognition: The system learns from historical billing data, identifying trends and proactively suggesting cost-saving opportunities.
  • Scalable Review Processes: Whether reviewing a single invoice or thousands, generative AI significantly reduces manual effort while maintaining accuracy.

By automating invoice review, legal departments not only reduce time spent on tedious audits but also achieve cost savings by catching billing errors early.

3. Generating Legal Documents with Supervised Learning

Document generation is a critical yet time-intensive task for legal teams, especially when accuracy and consistency are paramount. Generative AI leverages supervised machine learning to assist in this area:

  • Template-Based Creation: AI-powered tools can generate matter-related documents, including contracts, summaries, and client correspondence, by auto-populating key fields such as dates, costs, or parties.
  • Consistency Across Outputs: Generative AI ensures that documents adhere to organizational standards, reducing errors and maintaining uniformity.
  • Enhanced Productivity: Pretrained algorithms allow teams to produce complex legal documents in a fraction of the time, freeing up resources for higher-value work.

This ensures that legal operations run smoothly while maintaining the quality and consistency expected in enterprise-level environments.

4. AI-Driven Research for Strategic Insights

Legal research is another area where generative AI delivers transformative benefits. Traditional research methods often require extensive time spent combing through case law, regulatory updates, and precedents. Generative AI enhances this process through:

  • Rapid Data Analysis: AI systems process vast amounts of legal data in seconds, summarizing relevant cases, statutes, or precedents tailored to specific queries.
  • Enhanced Accuracy: Unlike manual research, generative AI scans every line of text, ensuring no critical detail is missed.
  • Data Visualization and Forecasting: Some tools integrate research insights into dashboards, allowing teams to visualize trends in litigation outcomes, contract performance, or compliance risks.

This not only reduces the time spent on research but also equips legal teams with actionable insights for strategic decision-making.

5. Strengthening Compliance and Risk Management

Compliance and risk management are critical areas for large legal departments, especially in heavily regulated industries. Generative AI enhances compliance efforts by monitoring regulatory updates and identifying areas of concern:

  • Regulatory Tracking: AI tools can monitor changes in laws and regulations across jurisdictions, providing timely alerts and tailored recommendations.
  • Automated Risk Assessment: Generative AI reviews policies, contracts, and internal practices, flagging potential risks before they escalate into issues.
  • Proactive Reporting: AI-generated summaries of compliance metrics or risk exposures allow teams to stay ahead of regulatory challenges.

By leveraging generative AI, legal departments can reduce the risk of fines or litigation, ensuring smoother operations and adherence to standards.

6. Unlocking Predictive Insights for Better Decision-Making

Generative AI not only handles repetitive tasks but also provides predictive insights that inform strategic planning. By analyzing historical data, AI tools can forecast trends in:

  • Litigation Outcomes: Predictive models assess the likelihood of success in specific cases based on similar past matters.
  • Budgeting and Resource Allocation: Generative AI helps legal teams predict matter-related expenses, enabling more accurate financial planning.
  • Contract Performance: AI tools can assess contract compliance and performance, identifying potential areas for renegotiation or improvement.

These predictive capabilities allow legal leaders to make data-driven decisions, ensuring their departments remain aligned with broader business goals.

Next Steps: Leveraging Generative AI in Your Legal Department

For legal teams looking to integrate generative AI, the key is to start with scalable, high-impact use cases like contract management, invoice review, or compliance monitoring. Tools like Onit’s family of enterprise workflow solutions offer tailored AI-driven platforms to optimize legal operations.

Generative AI is no longer a distant possibility—it’s a reality reshaping how legal departments work. By embracing these tools, legal teams can enhance their value to the organization, reduce costs, and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive business landscape.

Learn more about how Onit’s AI-enabled products digitally transform the contract lifecycle.

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Future-Ready E-Invoicing: BusyLamp’s Solution for Germany’s 2025 Mandate

Posted on December 16, 2024 by - Legal Operations

A major shift in Germany’s e-invoicing requirements is just around the corner—will your organization be ready?

As businesses in Germany gear up for the upcoming e-invoicing regulations set to take effect in January 2025, staying ahead of compliance requirements has never been more critical. BusyLamp is proud to introduce the InvoiceConnect enhancement for our Smart Invoice Converter (SIC) — an innovative solution designed to ensure effortless compliance, improve efficiency, and enhance data accuracy for legal teams and law firms. This new feature not only addresses Germany’s federal e-invoicing mandates but also prepares businesses for evolving EU-wide standards.

What Does the New InvoiceConnect Enhancement Bring?
Germany’s “Wachstumschancengesetz” mandates that all taxable domestic B2B transactions must utilize e-invoicing starting January 1, 2025. To meet these requirements, BusyLamp’s Smart Invoice Converter now supports:

  • Import and Processing of Multiple Formats: Easily handle XRechnung (Germany’s federal invoicing standard) and ZUGFeRD (PDF/A3 with embedded XML).
  • Automated Conversion to LEDES Format: Transform e-invoices into the globally recognized LEDES format for seamless integration with EBilling.Space (EB.S).
  • Built-in Data Validation: Ensure accuracy and completeness of invoices before submission, reducing the risk of delays or rejection.

This enhancement offers law firms and legal teams a centralized, user-friendly application to manage invoicing processes while minimizing errors and manual effort.

Why This Matters

Non-compliance with e-invoicing mandates can lead to significant operational disruptions, including rejected invoices, delayed payments, and penalties. With the BusyLamp InvoiceConnect Enhancement, businesses can:

  • Ensure Compliance: Meet Germany’s stringent e-invoicing requirements and prepare for EU-wide regulations.
  • Save Time and Resources: Automate key invoicing processes, allowing teams to focus on strategic priorities.
  • Enhance Cross-Border Operations: Benefit from robust support for multiple e-invoice formats, enabling seamless transactions within and beyond Germany.

Built for Legal Teams, Future-Proofed for Compliance

The InvoiceConnect Enhancement streamlines workflows for legal teams and law firms in Germany by integrating directly with EBilling.Space, simplifying invoice submissions, and reducing administrative burdens. With a user-friendly design, billing managers can quickly adopt the solution. Additionally, the feature is designed to adapt to evolving EU e-invoicing standards, ensuring compliance without requiring further updates. Launching December 16, 2024, this enhancement is available to all BusyLamp customers at no extra cost, empowering businesses to confidently meet the January 2025 deadline and optimize their invoicing processes.

BusyLamp’s InvoiceConnect Enhancement is your key to compliance, efficiency, and success in Germany’s evolving regulatory landscape. For more information, reach out to your account manager today. 

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Legal’s Brand Image: A Shining Opportunity for Positive Influence

Posted on March 23, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Legal Operations

Legal is most often viewed as a stellar guardian of the enterprise and outstanding advisor — yet its perception as a business partner is not quite as golden. In these uncertain economic times when businesses are searching for both cost efficiency and growth, what can Legal do to reconcile its reputation and magnify its material impact?

In business as in life, image is essential. It is also a principal focus of the 2023 Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report*, which reconfirms one of the most prominent findings from its inaugural edition: Four in five (78%) corporate employees perceive Legal’s enduring image as a trustworthy protector of the business that imparts sage advice.

Yet even though respondents view Legal as an authority figure and business protector, nearly three in four (73%) do not consider Legal an approachable business partner. In fact, many view Legal as a “bottleneck,” as “adding unnecessary roadblocks,” or “simply expect to experience holdups” when interacting with legal teams. As a result, relationships between Legal and its internal clients have declined year-over-year (YoY) in every department — by almost 10% in HR, 18% in Finance, 30% in Sales, 27% in Marketing, and 41% in Procurement.

Image is (Almost) Everything

Though Legal’s inherent image has remained, the world has changed dramatically over this past year. The bullish economy at the outset of 2022’s data collection is now besieged by the effects of inflation and layoffs due to the macroeconomic climate. This itself had been sparked by the continuing effects of the global pandemic and social and political unrest that have set off a chain reaction of privacy concerns, regulatory revisions, and disruptions to overseas vendors and supply chains.

Cost containment and EBITDA are now the terms of the day, and legal departments are no exception to enduring employee burnout and smaller budgets. For a function established to protect the business, it is not overwhelmingly startling, then, that when so much seems fragile and beyond our control, trust in Legal might experience a stress fracture of sorts.

There is a silver lining, however: The major finding in the 2023 ELR Report is that Legal can play a meaningful part in impacting business materiality, growth, and operational efficiency. Right now, Legal has the opportunity to reset expectations and reshape its reputation in the eyes of its internal clients and executive teams. Here are three ways that Legal can “up” both its positive image and material impact, especially in these times of economic uncertainty.

1. Collaborating more intently.

The 2023 ELR Report reveals that nearly half (43%) of the study’s non-legal respondents state that better communication and collaboration is the most essential way Legal can support its internal clients. Of course, execution of matters is always important. Providing better law firm or outside counsel management is as well. But what clients say they need more from Legal is more involved client service within the business, and that starts with better communication and greater responsiveness.

2. Accelerating processes and workflows.

While there are many capacities in which Legal shines, almost half (45%) of corporate employee respondents feel that Legal can be too slow. Another 15% cite the fact that they feel processes are overly manual, which also has a negative impact on efficiency. Some legal matters do take longer than others, of course, but this is where technology — including AI — can play a significant role in keeping everything from spend management to contracts moving.

3. Championing corporate culture.

Another way Legal can demonstrate its charter as protector is with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Although current macroeconomic conditions may force companies to put the bottom line ahead of investment in cultural initiatives, Legal has a powerful base from which to influence DEI: More than half (57%) say Legal’s impact on corporate culture is positive. That fact must remain top of mind for Legal — to provide a safe and equitable work environment, to elevate problem-solving and competitive differentiation, and to foster and nurture lasting trust.

Reputation, it has been said, is the echo that remains once we are no longer in the room. It can make or break us — and that goes for legal departments as well. Fortunately, Legal has a firm foundation on which to continue building, with its enduring image as trustworthy protector and advisor. Yet Legal doesn’t exist only to protect.

This is Legal’s metamorphosis moment to evolve its image into that of a greater, more strategic business partner — by communicating more deeply with clients, accelerating efficiency, and embracing cultural and technological innovation. In turn, Legal will have a more positive and direct influence on the growth and materiality of every corner of the enterprise.

Read Chapter 1 of the 2023 ELR Report to discover new and enduring perceptions of the legal department, how corporate employees view their interactions and relationships with Legal, and ways in which Legal can evolve its brand image to more directly impact revenue generation, growth, and operational efficiency for its businesses.

*The 2023 Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report is the second installment of a multinational annual study spotlighting year-over-year changes in the brand image of corporate legal departments through the eyes of their internal clients.

Powering Scalable and Rapid Integrations: Onit’s Partnership with Workato 

Posted on March 20, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Digital Transformation, Legal Operations

A streamlined, scalable, and rapid application integration layer is essential to the success of a SaaS platform. A modern platform must ensure connectivity and communication with business-critical applications and data sources throughout the organization. This makes it easy for users to perform workflows that cross over multiple applications. Integrations also deliver critical connections between the platform and stand-alone analytic tools, enabling powerful insights derived from the platform’s data repository.

If application integrations are seamless and easy to implement, the solution can do what it must without any headaches for vendor or customer — and quickly secure its return on investment. On the other hand, a platform that fails to integrate rapidly with other necessary business applications can be devastating for an organization. Poor integration can bring about a loss in productivity, wasted time and resources, and overall platform failure (not to mention the catastrophic budgetary consequences).

OnitX, a smart workflow platform for sophisticated legal matters and contract solutions, has introduced a scalable and secure integration layer powered by Workato. One of the most honored companies in the space (recognition includes a coveted place on the “Forbes” Cloud 100 list and the “Leader” designation from Gartner five years in a row), Workato delivers simple connections of applications that match business needs and reinforce integrated workflows.

The new OnitX integration layer offers SSO authentication, tailored resources, and custom integrations. It also provides unlimited scalability, a centralized admin console, and high-end security features that allow for future growth, easy management, and complete customer and vendor safety. Powerful auditability features enable IT departments and compliance efforts to track the digital trail of essential documents and communications. Additionally, Workato API abstraction makes it simple to adopt new software versions.

Additionally, the platform makes it simple for organizations to preserve APIs as future versions roll out — keeping integrations up to date, so clients do not have to worry about time-consuming version maintenance.

The OnitX platform provides three integration options:

  • Standard OnitX integrations for typical applications that are part of legal matters and contract workflows
  • Custom integrations built by Onit to support the unique needs of individual corporations
  • Partner or customer-built integrations later this year using the OnitX Integration Builder

Several standard OnitX Integrations are either available today or will be available shortly, including:

  • OnitX Legal Holds Management integrations: Allows for the seamless preservation-in-place of electronic documents through integrations with standard productivity tools such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack.
  • Salesforce integration for OnitX CLM: Gives sales teams the transparency to always know the location and status of their contracts within Salesforce, including agreements coming up for renewal.
  • SAP Ariba integration for OnitX CLM: Enables users to initiate contract workspace creation within SAP Ariba and streamline the flow of supplier data into OnitX CLM, reducing data re-entry and improving efficiency.

To learn more about the OnitX platform, please read this blog.

Introducing Onit Catalyst – Upping the AI Game for ELM and CLM

Posted on March 20, 2023 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Legal Operations

Since the birth of artificial intelligence at a conference held at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956, it has made rapid strides. In recent years, AI has garnered considerable investment; as of the end of 2020, the top 100 AI startups globally had a combined valuation of over $258 billion.

However, in some regards, AI technology has become a commodity, with many of the technologies being part of the open source community. Its application to specific business or technical use cases that depend on models built by a combination of data scientists and engineers, functional or industry experts, and a large amount of curated data makes AI a valuable business contributor.

We have been at the forefront of incorporating AI technology into our product as we seek to add more customer value through automation and intelligence. Beyond AI-based products developed in-house, we have acquired various AI-based products and technologies to bolster our capabilities.

We are excited to announce the new brand name of our AI-enabled products purpose-built to transform ELM and CLM is Onit Catalyst. A chemical catalyst is an inert substance, but when added to a reaction, it accelerates it. Onit is applying AI in the same way – combining it with your data, use cases, and other Onit products – to accelerate the value you receive from it. The Onit Catalyst products were previously marketed under the Precedent and Bodhala brands.

Onit Catalyst provides actionable insights from legal matters or contract data through better reporting, dashboards, benchmarks, and legal business intelligence. They can be implemented alongside an existing third-party ELM or CLM implementation or with the OnitX platform, to which they have tight and seamless integrations. With Onit Catalyst, we have done the data science for you. In addition, our AI Center of Excellence has applied AI and other analytic techniques to address real and practice use cases related to enterprise legal management and contract lifecycle management. Powering the Onit Catalyst products is a dataset that includes $47B+ in legal billings, over 200,000 timekeepers, 8,900 law firms, and more than 1 million assisted legal interactions each year.

Below are the products within the Onit Catalyst family:

Onit Catalyst for ELM
Proactive law firm management using legal business intelligence so legal can run like a business		Onit Catalyst for CLM
Smart management of legal documents via process automation, augmentation, and intelligence
Onit Catalyst Report Cards
Onit Catalyst Quarterly Business Review
Onit Catalyst Rate Benchmarking
Onit Catalyst Matter Benchmarking
Onit Catalyst Rate Proposal Analyzer
Onit Catalyst Comparative Analysis		Onit Catalyst ReviewAI
Onit Catalyst Contract Extraction

Onit Catalyst products will always work best with the OnitX platform to form smart solutions that provide insights at the point of decision and need.

Contact us to learn how Onit Catalyst can enhance your ELM and CLM workflows today.

Introducing OnitX – A Modern Platform for Transforming Legal-Related Workflows

Posted on March 20, 2023 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events, Contract Lifecycle Management, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Legal Management, Legal Operations

We previously shared how 2023 is the year for every legal department to optimize their operations to deliver critical business outcomes with fewer resources and budget. It is our opinion that Legal needs to adopt a platform model approach to serve the internal demand for legal-related services more efficiently, so the legal team can spend more substantial time on initiatives impacting the entire enterprise.

To usher in the era of optimized legal operations, Onit is proud to announce OnitX, the smart workflow platform for sophisticated legal matters and contract solutions that speeds the business. The “X” represents the innovative nature of Onit and signifies how the platform is highly configurable to customers’ unique needs, provides integrations with a broad range of technologies and business applications, and ensures a path to the future with extensibility to support new features and capabilities.

OnitX delivers several key customer benefits. First, it provides better visibility to legal services demand, which can feed an internal quarterly “report card” and give the data needed to forecast future needs. It supports greater operational efficiency for the legal department through user self-service, more seamless collaboration, and intelligent automation of legal workflows. Finally, OnitX enables better management of all legal resources, such as a deeper awareness of the “what and who” of legal operation, an improved ability to balance work done internally versus by outside counsel, and a greater understanding of outside counsel activity and spending so you can proactively manage outside law firm work.

OnitX is the evolution of the Onit Apptitude workflow platform that forms the foundation to many of Onit’s products. It includes the critical layers of a modern SaaS platform and adds several innovations:

  • Smart new rate approval through embedded visibility to rate benchmarking data that includes $47.6B+ in legal billings, 200,000+ timekeepers, and 8,900 law firms.
  • An integrated ELM solution tailored for European legal departments
  • Actionable contract insights provided by risk dashboards and mining contract language
  • An easy-to-use Legal Holds Management capability that streamlines compliance and reduces risk
  • A visual forms builder for the workflow engine that makes it easier to build applications.
  • A new, scalable capability to build third-party application integrations powered by Workato, an industry-leading iPaaS technology provider, as well as better and scalable data integration capabilities with Data-as-a-Service

OnitX also seamlessly integrates with the Onit Catalyst family of AI-enabled products to provide smart solutions for ELM and CLM.

The following products are available within the OnitX platform:

Contact us today to learn how OnitX can be your modern matter and contract solutions platform.

The Future of Legal Technology: A Modern Platform for Success

Posted on March 17, 2023 by - Enterprise Legal Management, Legal Operations

In previous blogs, we discussed the mandate for corporate legal departments to optimize their operations and how adopting a platform model can help them do so. In this blog, we help technology buyers or evaluators understand the key elements and characteristics of a modern software platform that supports the management of legal matters and legal-related documents such as contracts and agreements.

The ideal modern platform has five layers to its architecture: service, business analytics, tech, data, and integration.

A Modern Platform Architecture

A service layer is the critical “front door” to legal services for internal clients. It needs to provide a simplified, consumer-like experience to encourage business users to use it versus sending a one-off email or chat to the legal team. Users can either make a legal service request or directly access technology in a self-service manner that addresses their needs. Legal-related services that could populate the service layer include NDA requests, invention disclosures, trademark or logo use requests, whistleblower submissions, and data breach incident reporting.

A business analytics layer provides users with an embedded capability to derive insights from data. While stand-alone analytics tools like Tableau or Microsoft PowerBI are great at doing ad-hoc analysis and reporting, the average business user wants to use insights at the point of need, i.e., during the performance of a workflow. The ideal business analytics layer provides a range of capabilities, such as reporting, dashboards, benchmarking, and legal business intelligence within the platform.

A technology layer includes the software necessary to fulfill a request or automate a workflow. The service layer can provide a skilled user with direct access to the technology layer. For a platform that addresses legal matters and legal-related document requests, the technology layer should ideally include capabilities for matter management, legal spend management, legal holds management, and contract lifecycle management. It should also include an engine to automate collaborative workflows and business processes with sophisticated, custom requirements.

A data layer allows data sharing amongst the different technology layer components. This avoids the double entry of data and provides consistency across datasets, a single source of truth, and the ability to generate consolidated reports and analyze data holistically and more efficiently.

Lastly, an integration layer is a critical connection between the platform and other business applications such as ERP, CRM, and GRC systems. It should also enable connectivity to other data repositories and analytic tools.

While the ideal platform for legal matters and documents solutions has each of these layers, it should also possess several essential characteristics:

  • Is configurable to address the needs and circumstances of a large, complex enterprise.
  • Provides scalability to support future growth in users and data.
  • Is extensible to accommodate new features and capabilities, including integrations with more business applications.
  • Can be consumed in a modular fashion that does not require monolithic adoption by a customer.
    Addresses security, compliance, and reliability needs.

Please contact us to learn how Onit can provide a modern platform for legal operations.

The Power of Platforms: Why Corporate Legal Leaders Should Take Notice

Posted on March 17, 2023 by - Enterprise Legal Management, Legal Operations

When corporate legal leaders consider different legal operations technology solutions, they face a world of bland and similar descriptions for various offerings. A case in point is the use of the term “platform.” The technology platform concept has been trendy for several years, alongside cloud computing and artificial intelligence. While a powerful idea, it, unfortunately, has become a throwaway word as most legal technology vendors use it to describe their loose collection of products that are a mix of organically developed and acquired products. 

Firstly, the discussion of a platform does NOT begin with technology. Instead, it is a proven business model technology-based companies repeatedly apply to dominate their markets. Think Amazon, Uber, eBay, Airbnb, and so forth. 

A platform approach consolidates demand for a specific consumer need efficiently and connects it seamlessly with supply – retail goods for Amazon, temporary and localized transportation for Uber, and vacation rental properties for Airbnb. The model was initially developed to serve consumer markets but has also been replicated for business marketplaces. For operationally efficient and agile companies and business functions, it has also been applied to address an “internal” market for corporate services. 

 

The Platform Model

Two examples come to mind. First, most corporate IT organizations moved to a platform approach starting a decade ago. For example, an employee needs a new laptop, a developer needs access to a database or virtual server, a marketer needs to add a new SaaS tool, and an executive needs desktop support. Solutions from companies such as Zendesk, Jira, and BMC have enabled the CIO to implement a platform approach to aggregate the internal demand for IT services and efficiently satisfy it with a combination of internal hardware, public cloud services, and IT staff and contractors. Second, leading HR organizations offer a similar model. For example, an employee needs a copy of a paystub, wants to change benefits, or needs to make a vacation request. A manager must initiate and manage an annual review process with her team. A Chief People Officer relies on Workday, Ceridian Dayforce, or SAP SuccessFactors to deliver a platform model to address employees’ needs for HR-related services. 

As with other business functions, a platform model does NOT replace the highest value work that the legal department performs that requires deep collaboration and partnership with other business functions, for example, understanding the implications of a pending regulation on a business unit operating model, the development of a new, global chain strategy, or the development of a seamless digital quoting and contracting process for a family of SaaS offerings that is directly accessible by customers. Instead, it creates efficiency for legal and frees the team to focus on these value-add projects. In a previous blog, we shared that ~80% of corporate legal’s time and expense goes towards run rate legal support: contracts, business agreements, IP and trademark requests, legal holds management, real estate agreements, and so forth. A platform model can help reduce this allocation of time and effort so legal can have the bandwidth to focus on making a cross-enterprise impact. Legal leaders have internal references for the model’s effectiveness – their own CIO or Chief People Officer. 

In addition to a better internal customer experience, legal leaders gain greater understating and control of their function: 

  • The visibility to internal demand can feed an internal quarterly legal “report card” and provide the data needed to forecast future demand. 
  • Central aggregation allows managing all work more efficiently, enabling more self-service of legal requests through a combination of established processes and technology. 
  • A deeper awareness of the “what and who” of their operations. 
  • A better ability to balance work done internally versus by outside counsel. 
  • A greater understanding of outside counsel activity and spending so you can proactively manage outside law firm work. 

Back to where we started — given the sameness of how legal technology providers merchandise their “platforms,” what should legal leaders expect when considering a modern technology platform that can support this model? Learn more in our next blog, which outlines the critical elements of a modern platform. 

The Key to Streamlined Legal Operations in 2023

Posted on March 17, 2023 by - Enterprise Legal Management, Legal Operations

With The Conference Board forecasting that the U.S. economy will formally enter a recession in early 2023, many large enterprises are having flashbacks to the past two significant periods of economic turmoil in 2008 and 2018. Likewise, PwC’s 26th annual global CEO survey highlighted the need for businesses to “evolve or die,” per the 4,410 CEO respondents. Seventy-three percent of CEOs believed that global economic growth would decline in 2023. Moreover, nearly 40% did not think their companies would be economically viable a decade from now if they continued their current path.

Behind this sobering economic backdrop are three other prominent trends driving further business complexity:

For corporate legal leaders, these forces represent two sides of the same coin.  On one side, they represent significant run-rate work for already heavily utilized legal teams. But, on the other side, they represent an opportunity for legal leaders to partner with the C-suite and business unit leaders to provide the best possible business guidance on the legal elements of each of these trends.

Corporate legal departments have their own set of challenges. With corporations expecting to do additional work with fewer resources and less budget, so must legal. An E&Y law survey reveals that general counsels expect workloads to increase 25% over the next three years, yet 75% do not expect budgets to keep pace. Per ALM, 2023 rate hikes are 7% to 8% for many corporations, with high-end firms commanding more than a 30% increase.

So, what is the path forward for the corporate legal department? In discussions with Onit customers, we hear that most of their time and expense goes into daily run rate legal matters and activities: contracts, business agreements, I.P. and trademark requests, legal holds management, real estate agreements, and so forth. Unfortunately, this leaves little time for legal to partner with business leaders and provide the guidance the business desperately needs.

Executives now expect legal to operate like other business functions. This includes delivering higher satisfaction amongst internal clients, providing superior legal outcomes (and thus better business outcomes), improving operational efficiency, and demonstrating ROI on spending. To do so, corporate legal departments must optimize legal operations.

They are not alone. Today, many legal departments connect to the business in more influential, material ways – from impacting revenue generation and growth to EBITDA and operational efficiency. While legal operation has existed for decades, the function is at an inflection point. Forward-thinking organizations represent torchbearers for a new chapter in legal operations’ history – an era of optimized legal operations.

Even for departments that have not established a formal legal operations function or team, the operations of legal still happen every day. Nascent legal ops initiatives should adopt a start-up mentality and embrace a modern operating model versus taking a similar adoption path that more mature legal operations functions took.

Legal’s path to making a more material impact on the business requires a focus on driving down the mix of time and money spent on run rate legal matters, so legal teams are freed to focus more on innovation and transformation initiatives.

The Transformation to Optimized Legal

Such a transformation will rely on the usual combination of people, processes, and technology. Corporate legal leaders must now challenge legal operations technology providers to deliver the technology piece of the equation – a modern software platform for managing sophisticated legal matters and contracts with more intelligence, speed, and efficiency. Such a platform needs to provide a digital self-service capability, automate workflows and collaboration, and apply artificial intelligence to bring insights to bear at the point of decision or need.

Why is a platform the linchpin to this transformation? In this next blog, learn how a platform approach starts with a business model, not technology, that can enable Legal to materially impact the business.