Category: Legal Operations

Case Management in Higher Education

Posted on April 8, 2024 by - Legal Operations

Higher education institutions are entrusted with not only educating students but also ensuring the well-being and safety of their students and staff. This responsibility is further heightened in colleges and universities which offer on-campus housing increasing the need for robust case and matter management processes. From academic disputes to disciplinary matters a myriad of instances will require case management in varying capacities.

What is Case Management in Higher Education?

Case management in higher education serves as a structured approach to handling a wide range of instances that occur within academic institutions. Examples of case management in colleges and universities include student affairs, Title IX compliance, crisis response and faculty & staff support.

Crisis case management in particular is of the utmost importance for academic institutions. We saw a clear example of this when COVID-19 forced students into remote learning. Case management systems played a large role managing this sudden switch, allowing higher education institutions to develop and track emergency response plans. This could include allocating remote learning resources, implementing safety protocols, and coordinating campus-wide response efforts.

How Does Effective Case Management Reduce Risk?

Remote learning was just one of many crisis instances legal departments within academic institutions face. With the safety of so many individuals in their hands and intensified scrutiny regarding public perception, the higher education sector is exposed to higher risk of significant repercussions stemming from ineffective case management.

  • Timely resolution: By efficiently managing cases, institutions can address issues promptly before they escalate, minimizing the potential for legal liabilities, reputational damage, and financial losses.
  • Compliance with regulations: Compliance with relevant laws, regulations, and institutional policies is simplified by centralized case management. By adhering to legal requirements and due process standards, institutions mitigate the risk of non-compliance penalties and lawsuits.
  • Consistency and fairness: Consistent policies and procedures across cases minimizes the risk of bias, discrimination, and disparate treatment. Case management can promote consistency and fairness in decision-making when done properly.
  • Continuous improvement: Institutions can adapt to changing needs, emerging risks, and evolving best practices by reviewing and reflecting records of past cases, enhancing resilience and risk management capabilities over time.

Four Steps to Optimize Case Management in Higher Education

1. Define Priorities and Identify Hidden Processes

Create a comprehensive list of relevant issues and matters to ensure that your case management system aligns with its specific needs. This list can aid in uncovering and addressing any undisclosed activities, such as undocumented processes or tools, hindering efficiency and transparency.

2. Transition to Efficient Systems

Move beyond spreadsheets and disparate emails to a collaborative case management system that prioritizes organized, accessible data and document storage. The case management system should facilitate seamless collaboration among team members, enable easy access to information, and ensure consistency in procedures.

3. Track Expenses and Customize

Utilize expense tracking within your case management for cost monitoring of expenses related to outside counsel fees, litigation costs, and other legal expenditures—this includes the cost of your current case management software or lack thereof. This information can be used to adjust the current case management process to fit your department’s evolving needs.

4. Measure Key Metrics

Implement reporting mechanisms capturing essential data points on workload distribution, expenditure trends, regulatory compliance, and other key areas. By analyzing these metrics, academic institutions can make informed decisions, identify areas for improvement, and align strategies with organizational goals.

Higher Education Case Management Software

Higher education case management software is a specialized software solution designed to meet the unique needs of colleges and universities in managing various cases and matters. It plays a vital role in minimizing risk while promoting transparency, efficiency, and compliance.

By implementing case management software academic institutions can create a centralized repository allowing easy access to critical data such as contract statuses and negotiation updates. Contract tracking and monitoring can also be streamlined enabling accurate oversight of contract lifecycles, including expirations and extensions. This ensures timely renewals and compliance with deadlines, enhancing overall contract management effectiveness.

Case management software also offers opportunities for insights into process efficiency by identifying bottlenecks and delays. Through case management analysis, legal teams can pinpoint areas for improvement and implement targeted solutions to enhance operational efficiency continually.

As higher education institutions continue navigating increasingly complex cases, case management software can serve as a strategic imperative for achieving operational excellence and delivering value to stakeholders. Request a demo to learn why Legal Files is trusted by higher ed institutions such as the University of Connecticut and the Illinois Education Association.

What is Government Case Management?

Posted on March 7, 2024 by - Legal Operations

In government operations, efficiency, transparency and responsiveness are must-haves in building public trust and delivering effective services. Government case management software can act as a tool that aids in achieving these objectives playing a pivotal role in streamlining processes, managing data and ensuring that government agencies deliver effective services to citizens and stakeholders. Taking the right approach to case management within your government agency is essential to promote good governance, reducing administrative burden, and increasing accountability.

Government Case Management Defined

Case management in the context of government refers to the structured and organized handling of individual cases or instances through a systematic workflow. A “case” typically represents a specific issue, request, or transaction that requires attention and resolution by a government agency. Properly managing these cases ensures order, efficiency, and accountability across the wide range of responsibilities government agencies face.

For example, a government case could include:

  • Managing a citizen’s complaint or request for a service.
  • Addressing legal or regulatory compliance issues.
  • Handling internal personnel cases within government departments.
  • Overseeing social service programs or benefits applications.

By using best practices in case management and strong software, government agencies can handle cases quickly. This helps them stay transparent and create an audit trail that improves accountability.

What are the 4 steps of case management?

Effective case management in government agencies requires a thoughtful and systematic approach to handling individual cases from initiation to resolution. Below are four fundamental that form the backbone of any successful government case management system:

1. Intake and Identification

The case management process begins with the intake of a new case, where government agencies capture essential information, such as the nature of the request, the individuals involved and any relevant documentation. During intake, government agencies must identify the case’s priority level. They should then assign it to the right department or staff. Government case management software can facilitate this step by automating the intake process and ensuring that no details are missed.

Example: When a citizen files a complaint about a public service, case management software allows the agency to log the complaint, categorize it, and automatically route it to the appropriate team for resolution.

2. Assessment and Planning

Once a case is identified, the next step involves a thorough assessment. Government agencies review the documentation, conduct interviews if necessary and utilize data analysis tools to determine the best course of action. This helps in outlining timelines and milestones needed to resolve the case. By using case management software, agencies can simplify this step. This ensures that the needed information is always available. It also makes it easier to create a resolution plan.

Example: In a human resource management (HRM) case, such as a grievance or a promotion, agencies can use case management software to store and analyze employee records, ensuring that the decision-making process is data-driven and transparent.

3. Implementation and Monitoring

With a plan in place, the case moves to the implementation phase. The agency can proceed with executing the necessary tasks, collaborating with stakeholders and ensuring that the case progresses through the predefined workflow. During implementation, government case management software can reduce manual work. It can send notifications and reminders automatically. It also helps track case progress in real-time. Continuous monitoring allows agency management to identify potential issues and make adjustments as needed.
Example: For a government procurement case, the software can track bids, store vendor documentation, and ensure all procurement stages—such as evaluations and approvals—are completed on time.

4. Resolution and Follow-up

The main goal of case management is to find a solution. Closing the case happens after all needed actions are taken and a result is reached. Post-resolution, the agency should follow-up on any necessary documentation, feedback, or lessons learned during resolution to contribute to ongoing improvements in case management procedures. Government case management software helps ensure that post-resolution follow-ups are conducted efficiently and that any documentation related to the case is stored securely for future reference.

Example: After resolving a social services case, such as approving a benefit application, the software can schedule automated follow-ups to ensure that the applicant received their benefits and that any necessary documentation has been completed.

Government agencies can handle the many cases they receive more clearly and efficiently by following these four steps. A well-executed government case management framework heavily impacts overall success in delivering public services.

Real-World Example of Case Management in Action

Consider the example of the City of Boston’s 311 system, which allows citizens to report non-emergency issues, such as potholes or graffiti. By using a centralized case management system, the city efficiently categorizes and routes these reports to the appropriate departments. This process allows for real-time updates, ensuring that citizens can track the progress of their requests while city managers can oversee staff performance and resource allocation.

Implementing such a system resulted in faster response times, reduced administrative burden, and a higher level of public trust in city services.

The Benefits of Effective Case Management in Government

Adopting a robust case management system brings numerous benefits to government agencies, ultimately improving service delivery and public trust.

  • Enhanced Citizen Experience: By streamlining processes and improving response times, government case management contributes to an enhanced citizen experience. Timely and efficient services simplify internal responsibilities while building trust and satisfaction among citizens.
  • Increased Accountability: The transparency provided by case management systems enhances accountability within government agencies. Stakeholders can easily access and track the progress of cases, making it easier to identify and address bottlenecks or inefficiencies. Clear audit trails ensure that decisions can be justified and scrutinized if necessary.
  • Improved Resource Allocation: Government case management software can enable government agencies to allocate resources more effectively. By identifying trends and analyzing data, government agencies can allocate personnel and funds where they are most needed.
  • Compliance and Data Security: Modern case management software adheres to stringent data protection laws such as GDPR and CCPA, ensuring that sensitive government and citizen data is handled securely. This minimizes the risk of data breaches and ensures compliance with regulatory requirements.

How Government Case Management Software Can Help

Government case management software acts as a central place to store and manage data for individual cases. This makes information easy to access, cuts down on duplicate data, and improves teamwork among different departments. Workflows are designed to guide cases through various stages, ensuring that each step is completed efficiently.

Government case management software offers transparency and easy access. It lets all necessary staff track cases in real-time. At the same time, it keeps files secure. This promotes better resource allocation, minimizes manual errors, accelerates processes and enhances overall productivity.

Government agencies can leverage case management software to simplify documentation and internal processes. Effective case management software often integrates with other systems and databases, streamlining processes and ensuring that relevant information is accessible when needed.
As government agencies continue to evolve, case management software will play a central role in shaping the future of public administration. Ready to see how case management software can transform your government agency? Request a demo of Legal Files today and learn how our software can streamline your processes, enhance accountability, and ensure better service delivery for citizens.

Six Data Migration Tips to Help You Successfully Transition Your Legal Software

Posted on August 24, 2023 by - Legal Operations

There are a variety of reasons legal teams are hesitant to adopt legal technology, but the two most common concerns are losing data during migration and potential downtime while transitioning to a new platform. 

The importance of having your valuable case and matter data in a software system you trust can’t be overstated. In fact, the American Bar Association recommends that organizations should have a plan for storing files electronically should data ever need to be recovered in the event of a disaster. 

Even though data migration fears may exist, there are numerous protections that legal technology providers have adopted over the years to help alleviate concerns and ensure the process goes smoothly. By delaying the adoption of legal technology, you could face worse problems such as security issues, hindered growth, or lower productivity and profitability—which no legal organization wants to experience. 

What is Data Migration?

Data migration is the process of transferring data from one location, application or format to another. For legal teams, this typically means adopting new legal software or condensing legacy data into a new format or application. 

Six Tips to Help You Successfully Migrate Your Legal Data 

Whether you have a legacy system in place or you are migrating data from another platform—there are a variety of actions you can take to help the process go smoothly. You also want to lean on your software provider’s expertise and best practices since it has likely learned from previous successes and failures and can be a valuable resource. 

Here are six tips for how to successfully migrate your legal data so that you can be productive and efficient from the start. 

  1. Understand your data. 

If you are like most legal organizations, you are using multiple applications to manage business, client and financial information. This means that multiple sources of data will need to be migrated to the new software system. First, you will want to create a full inventory of all your data and associated applications. Some of the data will include matter files, client contacts, calendars, workflow elements, email folders, tasks, events, filing, business documents and more. Financial data typically consists of billable time records, trust accounts, invoices and GL/trial balances. If your data is stored in a legacy platform, this typically requires data conversion, a process that your software provider should be familiar with that involves extract, transform and load to ensure that it successfully transitions to the new platform. 

  1. Develop a timeline.

You will want to lean on your provider for advice on the recommended timeline of events and resources needed for implementation based on its previous experience with migrations. Based on these discussions, you will want to create a project timeline for all parties involved. The timeline should include deliverables and owners. The goal is to determine a “go live” date for the software. Your provider should also provide insight into the best timing for cutoff between the two systems so that there is no interruption to operations. 

  1. Involve team members. 

Getting the right team member’s buy-in from the start is essential to a successful data migration. For those that will be helping with the data migration, you will want to make sure they are involved in all the pertinent discussions and have access to product and training demonstrations. By communicating project timelines, progress and status frequently, you will keep your internal stakeholders happy and informed so that progress doesn’t stall. You should include a formal product training to everyone prior to your “go live” date. 

  1. Create a migration plan. 


The data inventory you completed at the beginning of the process will be instrumental in developing your migration plan. You can work with your system provider and the legacy provider (if needed)  to answer any key questions about how the data migration will occur. You will want to answer key questions such as:

  1. Who will export the data?
  2. What format will the data be exported in?
  3. Is there any risk associated with the data migration?
  4. What conversion rules, dependencies or acceptance criteria are required?

By working with your software providers, as well as your organization’s project lead, you can identify any data schema discrepancies and determine solutions to convert formats as required. 

  1. Clean up data.

Just like you don’t want to bring old furniture into your new home, you don’t want to bring old data into your new software system. An important step in the migration process is to clean up any data that is existing before the official migration. You will want to work with key users to identify and scrub existing data to prepare for the new software system. This involves removing duplicate records, deleting old contacts, eliminating unused or inactive accounts and more. The sooner you begin this process the better as it could take a significant amount of time to clean the data properly. 

  1. Secure data and test it. 

It’s also not a bad idea to see if your software provider can set up a test prior to the cutover so

that you have the chance to view key parts of the conversion and make any changes prior to the

final conversion. Conduct some preliminary testing to check that all your data was successfully copied over. It is important that no data is missing, and it appears where and how you were expecting it to. As with any project, unexpected issues may arise. 

Migrating Your Valuable Legal Data Has Never Been Easier    


It’s true that migrating to a new legal software system can be time-consuming and labor-intensive, it’s worth noting that the process doesn’t necessarily have to be filled with stress anymore. By partnering with Legal Files, you can lean on their expertise with 30+ years in legal management technology, supporting organizations across numerous industries to help you make the transition to a new system. 

Legal Files walks you through each step required to better manage, store, and organize all your critical legal documents and all other case and non-case related data within a single platform. Say goodbye to multiple legal filing systems and paper trails for good.

Expertise is offered by full-time, professional team members who are committed to your success. Based on our years of experience helping other organizations improve and thrive through legal software, we can help you configure a system that meets your unique needs.

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.