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Strategic hirings are part of a larger investment strategy to build on Onit’s success and further scale the business.

Houston, April 9, 2024 - Onit, the leading provider of legal workflow solutions including enterprise legal management (ELM) and contract lifecycle management (CLM), today announced three new senior executive leadership team members. Michelle Culp has joined the company as Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for all go-to-market functions. Nathan Peirson has joined as Chief People Officer, leading the company’s global human resources organization and driving Onit’s strategic talent goals. Laura Fese has joined Onit as Chief Legal Officer, leading the company’s global legal operations. Melanie Shafer has been promoted to the new Chief Customer Officer position, where she will be responsible for the company’s services and customer success functions. They join recently appointed CEO Michael Farlekas and CFO Austin Owens, who joined in June 2023.

Michelle Culp will focus on implementing an integrated, global go-to-market strategy for Onit. This strategy will benefit customers of all sizes by enabling them to better understand the benefits of the entire portfolio of Onit’s ELM, CLM, and custom workflow automation applications. Culp brings a demonstrated history of transforming and leading SaaS sales and marketing teams across multiple customer segments. Before Onit, she served as the Global Vice President of Sales at Sovos, a leading compliance software company serving over 100,000 customers, including half of the Fortune 500, across 70 countries. Culp also served as the Vice President of Sales, Small Business at SAP Concur.

Nathan Peirson brings over twenty years of global HR experience to the Chief People Officer role, with considerable expertise in high-growth SaaS and technology companies. In his role, Peirson will drive Onit’s enterprise talent strategy while building a best-in-class Human Resources function. Prior to joining Onit, he served as SVP of Talent and Employee Experience at Paycor, a leading provider of human capital management software. He also served as Worldpay’s Global Head of Culture and Talent and held multiple global HR leadership roles during his tenure. He was recently nominated as one of OnCon’s top 100 HR Professionals of 2024 award.

Laura Fese has joined as Chief Legal Officer, bringing over twenty-five years of experience in managing legal operations for private and public multi-national supply chain and ERP SaaS businesses.  Recently, Fese served as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of E2open (NYSE: ETWO).  Fese is an effective leader with expertise in accelerating growth through developing exceptional legal talent and implementing critical process and automation improvements.

Melanie Shafer has assumed the new role of Chief Customer Officer. Shafer most recently served as the SVP of Customer Experience of Onit’s Commercial Business. Shafer’s primary focus is to create a scalable service experience for Onit customers, regardless of their maturity stage in legal operations. This comprehensive strategy enables Onit to act as a trusted advisor to its customers, enhancing efficiency, cost containment, and risk mitigation for the General Counsel’s office. Before Onit, Shafer served as VP of Professional Services and Support at Zywave, a pioneer in the insurance technology industry, where she led teams responsible for the implementation and ongoing support of 15,000+ customers through multiple acquisitions and international expansion.

Austin Owens joined Onit in June of 2023 and has focused on improving finance practices to support scalable growth. Owens has brought expertise in financial planning and analysis, business analytics, and business process design to Onit, along with experience in global operations. Owens most recently served as Chief Financial Officer at Data Axle, a leader in data-driven marketing and business intelligence solutions, supporting various activities ranging from business unit partnerships with sales and operations leadership to corporate and treasury-focused responsibilities related to cash management and business development. He also served as the lead across the entire lifecycle of merger and acquisition engagements.

“I am excited by the addition of these outstanding senior leaders with diverse experiences. “Together with our exceptional employees, they will be instrumental in transforming Onit into the leading legal operations software platform company serving companies of all sizes worldwide,” said Michael Farlekas, CEO of Onit. “The industry is at an inflection point, with corporate legal departments needing to adopt a core business platform with AI embedded that supports better productivity, higher efficiency, and data-driven decision-making so legal leaders can focus on helping create business advantage for their corporations.”

About Onit
Onit is a global leader of AI-enabled workflow automation solutions for legal, compliance, sales, IT, HR, and finance departments. With Onit, companies can transform best practices into smarter workflows, better processes, and operational efficiencies. With a focus on enterprise legal management, matter management, spend management, contract lifecycle management and legal holds, the company operates globally. It helps transform how Fortune 500 companies and billion-dollar corporate legal departments bridge the gap between systems of record and systems of engagement.

Onit helps customers find gains in efficiency, reduce costs, and automate transactions faster. For more information, visit onitprostg.wpengine.com.

Modernized event management decreases risk for legal departments where the stakes are higher for missed deadlines

HOUSTON, March 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — SimpleLegal (an Onit company), the industry leader in easy-to-learn and implement e-Billing and matter management software, announces the launch of its purpose-built event management feature within its matter management solution.

Compared to available market options, SimpleLegal separates task and event management, functionality traditionally tied together in matter management applications. The separation draws attention to the importance of events, such as court dates, filing deadlines, and depositions, and the negative consequences when events are mismanaged.

“We all work in tools like Outlook and Google where creating a meeting, inviting the right people, and adding relevant details is simple,” says Shri Iyer, SimpleLegal’s SVP of Product Management and Design. “We set out to replicate this ease of use, designed specifically for legal departments, after our customers vocalized that deadlines are too important to be viewed as mere tasks that are checked off a list.”

When it comes to missed deadlines, the stakes are higher for legal departments. Failing to file court documents on time or overlooking statutory limits, for example, can pose significant risk to a business, potentially resulting in lawsuits, attorney sanctions, and case dismissal. The robust calendaring provided by SimpleLegal’s event management gives legal departments the centralized, matter-specific view of upcoming events that has been missing in the market. Better visibility and accountability make collaboration effortless and keep key stakeholders informed.

SimpleLegal’s event management further integrates with CalendarRules, the most comprehensive and reliable court rules platform offering over 1,800 rule sets nationwide. As the first matter management solution to offer this integration, legal departments can confidently prepare for and manage upcoming events and deadlines thanks to automated, real-time data from CalendarRules to SimpleLegal.

“After extensive research and conversations with legal ops professionals, we knew separating tasks and events was the right call. It didn’t make sense to treat a deadline-driven event the same way as a task,” shares Iyer. “To successfully and continually build value for our users, we can’t lose sight of how legal teams operate and must adapt our product accordingly.”

SimpleLegal streamlines legal operations by packaging event and task management into a single matter management solution. This unified approach enhances visibility into team capacity, supports strategic decision-making, and simplifies matter intake and management, increasing workflow efficiency and productivity.

Additional Resources
To learn more about SimpleLegal’s event management, request a demo or learn more on the blog. For company news, industry trends and best practices from corporate legal innovators, read SimpleLegal blogs and follow us on LinkedIn.

About Onit
Onit is a global leader in AI-enabled workflow automation solutions for legal, compliance, sales, IT, HR, and finance departments. With Onit, companies can transform best practices into smarter workflows, better processes, and operational efficiencies. With a focus on enterprise legal management, matter management, spend management, contract lifecycle management and legal holds, the company operates globally. It helps transform how Fortune 500 companies and billion-dollar corporate legal departments bridge the gap between systems of record and systems of engagement.

Onit helps customers find gains in efficiency, reduce costs, and automate transactions faster. For more information, visit onitprostg.wpengine.com.

Onit product brands are OnitX, SimpleLegal, ContractWorks, ReadySign, BusyLamp, and SecureDocs.

96% CSAT influenced by expanded product offerings, ongoing innovation, and ample customer education opportunities

HOUSTON, Feb 1, 2024 — Onit, the leading provider of legal workflow solutions, today announced its 2023 Customer Stewardship Report, detailing significant milestones that its commercial portfolio, which includes SimpleLegal for Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) and ContractWorks for Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), has achieved over the past year. Highlights from 2023 include 103 product releases, a deeper investment in customer experience initiatives by delivering additional service options, and improved results and time savings for customers through artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“We’re excited about the progress we’ve made over the past year,” said Melanie Shafer, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience. “Our focus on the customer experience, coupled with advancements in our products and the application of artificial intelligence throughout our products, reflects our dedication to staying at the forefront of innovation and delivering on customer expectations.”

Onit’s commercial business, focused on servicing the mid-market segment, continuously invests in growing its product capabilities and services. The commercial portfolio is well known for its ease of use, scalability, and success in delivering value quickly – just 95 days to value for customers after purchase. The following are a few of the highlights from this year’s report:

1. Product Innovation – Launched 13 new products and features for its ELM and CLM products, enabling a more cohesive user experience and improved workflows. Also delivered 190 customer requests for product enhancements, and expanded the use of artificial intelligence to drive customer efficiency, like AI-assisted invoice reviews that automatically capture real-world legal billing errors without a human in the loop, to generative AI applications that create clauses and simplify legalese in contracts.
2. Customer Engagement – Expanded service offerings such as custom training options, held 129 product training sessions and 65 office hours, and hosted 32 user groups and Ask Me Anything (AMA) webinars to build cross-customer collaboration. These actions have helped expand customer knowledge of Onit’s product and service offerings, making it easier to use and gain value, leading to a 96% average customer satisfaction rating.
3. Investments & Results – Heavy investment in its products and services has made a big impact on customers:
   1. Average of 97 hours saved each month through improved efficiency with new contract management tools.
   2. Approximately 10% savings on legal spend through rigorous billing guideline enforcement and artificial intelligence.
   3. A 70% reduction in time spent on inquiries from law firms due to enhanced invoice adjustments and rejection workflow.
   4. An average of 35 hours saved annually per customer via expanded bulk action functionality.
   5. 95% improvement in time to value when setting up billing guidelines by making this feature accessible to customers directly.
   6. 92% reduction in time spent creating reports by optimizing dashboards, making data discovery much quicker.

“In 2024, Onit’s commercial customers can look forward to additional investments,” stated Mark Weidick, President, Onit Commercial Business. “Our dedication remains steadfast in creating more significant value across every phase of the matter, spend, and contract lifecycles.”

About Onit
Onit is the leading provider of legal workflow solutions for enterprise legal management (ELM) and contract lifecycle management (CLM). Onit’s comprehensive product portfolio customizes AI-driven workflows for managing matters, spend, vendors and contracts. With Onit, companies can evolve the legal department’s role as a business protector and transform it into a business driver that materially influences the enterprise by improving operational and cost efficiency while simultaneously contributing to faster revenue generation and business growth.

The Onit commercial portfolio of products includes ContractWorks, SecureDocs, SimpleLegal, and ReadySign. For more information, visit onitprostg.wpengine.com.

Onit Catalyst AI technology within the OnitX platform boosts productivity and sharpens the decision-making of corporate legal teams

Houston, TX – January 23, 2024 – Onit, the leading provider of legal workflow solutions, today announced the launch of its groundbreaking Catalyst Virtual Assistant for Legal Operations within OnitX, a workflow automation platform for sophisticated, legal-related business processes. Legal professionals can now use natural language chat to access a new, powerful level of intelligence enabled by generative AI that simplifies and automates everyday legal tasks from within their most-used productivity software — Microsoft Outlook.

“The continuous and rising demand on legal teams as the protector of the business has brought significant challenges for operational scalability. Our objective with Onit AI Contract Chat for Legal Operations was simple —leverage the strength of generative AI to make relevant information easily accessible so the best action can be taken quickly,” said Mary Fuzat, Onit Senior Vice President of Product. “With Catalyst Virtual Assistant, the power of insights from the OnitX platform is brought right to a user’s desktop in Microsoft Outlook.”

The OnitX plugin for Microsoft Outlook has been enhanced with Catalyst Virtual Assistant to serve as a “bridge” to the new generative AI capability now built into OnitX . Users can more easily collaborate with workflows that provide compliance and control over legal processes, access information stored across different OnitX applications, and minimize time spent on mundane tasks.

The Catalyst Virtual Assistant for Legal Ops empowers users to:

• Automatically populate legal service and contract requests.
• Instantly surface related matters, contracts, and legal service requests.
• Answer questions based on legal service request, matter, and contract data stored within the OnitX platform using natural language chat.
• Rapidly draft follow-up emails and review/summarize in the context of your legal matters and requests.
• Translate different languages to support your global business.

The combination of the proven OnitX platform that has hosted hundreds of workflow automation apps and Onit’s deep legal expertise, as represented by the millions of legal interactions processed annually, 3,000+ customers, and $47B of legal spend data, is unique in the legal technology landscape. As a result, OnitX provides corporate legal leaders with a distinct means to boost productivity, ensure better decisions and outcomes, and provide intuitive access to the latest technologies that are practical and enterprise-grade.

“We initially introduced the Onit AI Contract Chat last fall to serve as a digital contract paralegal that reviews and edits contracts on Legal’s behalf,” said Nick Whitehouse, Managing Director of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence. “The Onit AI Contract Chat for Legal Ops is the continuation of our strategy to build meaningful AI into workflows – automating a huge number of legal tasks and scaling knowledge across legal organizations in a controlled and impactful way. These virtual assistants demonstrate how the OnitX platform is at the forefront of this new era of AI-augmented work.”

Learn more about the Catalyst Virtual Assistant for Legal Operations between January 30 – February 1 at Legalweek New York 2024, where the company will offer live demonstrations of all its enterprise legal management, contract lifecycle management, and business process automation solutions.

About Onit
Onit is a global leader of workflow and artificial intelligence platforms and solutions for legal, compliance, sales, IT, HR, and finance departments. With Onit, companies can transform best practices into smarter workflows, better processes, and operational efficiencies. With a focus on enterprise legal management, matter management, spend management, contract lifecycle management and legal holds, the company operates globally. It helps transform how Fortune 500 companies and billion-dollar corporate legal departments bridge the gap between systems of record and systems of engagement.

Onit helps customers find gains in efficiency, reduce costs, and automate transactions faster. For more information, visit onitprostg.wpengine.com.