The third annual CLOC London Institute kicked off on January 20th, 2020, at the Landmark Hotel, London. Over the course of two days, an energetic crowd of 430 attendees from 27 countries came together to CONNECT, LEARN, and COLLABORATE.

Legal Operations professionals from corporate teams and law firms filled the educational sessions and networked with legal vendors and service providers in the exhibit hall to exchange ideas, share information, learn about new services and technologies, and to challenge each other to reach new heights in 2021.

The structured meet-and-greets were fantastic opportunities to forge new partnerships and to rekindle existing ones. Members of the CLOC community also got together quite organically during the Institute to share dinner, or a cocktail, and built even stronger connections. These “Off the CLOC” social and business gatherings presented additional networking opportunities for participants, that will have a ripple effect throughout the year.

The Institute kicked off with opening remarks from Mary O’Carroll and me, followed by an always inspiring opening keynote by Dan Katz, who spoke on (yes, you guessed it) where legal technology and innovation has taken the industry over the last 10 years and his top predictions for the future.

Our goal for the Institute was to provide content that was tailored to the European legal ecosystem, while being practical and providing actions that could be implemented immediately. CLOC’s 2020 priorities seemed to resonate well across the community in Europe.

Here are a few key insights that I took away from London:

• Better Together: We are stronger as a connected community. In an ecosystem in a rapid state of evolution, everyone acknowledged that working in silos will hamper our ability to drive sustainable transformation. We need to work even more closely together to be successful. All boats rise with this collaborative approach, and we all become more invested in each other’s success when we work together to build solutions. Hearing the results of these types of collaborations will be a focus for CLOC London 2021!
• The CLOC Community is a Powerful Movement and Force for Good in the Industry. In an industry that is in a rapid state of transition, harnessing our collective ingenuity and diverse skills and thought will be an imperative for law firms and in-house teams that want to be agile, innovative and impactful to the clients and businesses they serve. We have the opportunity to leverage our collective power to drive positive change across the legal industry and create space for conversations on how we can make a difference. Let’s take on this challenge together!

• As GC roles evolve, Legal Ops is an Imperative Hire. Our panel of General Counsels leading the “General Counsel and their Legal Operations Lead” session demonstrated the powerful and strategic nature of the GC/Legal Ops Lead partnership and how working together, they are driving transformation and delivering value to the businesses they serve. Legal Operations Leads are now essential hires for GCs.
• Technology is an Enabler, Not a Silver Bullet. Technology implementations are still very challenging: user adoption and change management are still areas of underinvestment. Efforts to gain consensus on both the problem being solved and the potential products and services that will lead to better adoption of the selected solution is key. This will be another area of focus in 2021!
• The Proliferation of Legal-tech and Legal Services Providers is Overwhelming for In-House Teams. The new CLOC Legal Ops Directory is a good start in identifying all the vendors; however, this proliferation of vendors represents a more significant challenge for in-house Legal Ops teams . We would like to see more vendor consolidation within legal-tech. We need enterprise systems that work together seamlessly.
• This interoperability between systems will only be possible when vendors across the legal technology industry begin to collaborate to solve the problems challenging Legal Ops and their teams.
• Data is Power. Leveraging data and analytics to measure Legal Teams impact on the business is imperative in driving strategic decisions with business leaders and law firms. Many teams are struggling with access to easily consumable data due to multiple tools and integration challenges. Consolidated platform systems will help to access data and legal service providers can help with cleansing data and the human effort to build foundational dashboards to leverage predictive analytics capabilities.
• AI Needs HI. AI is still in the nascent stages with multiple tools solving unique use cases that need significant Human Intervention (HI). We need to see more vendor consolidation and collaborating in this space to reduce the heavy lift for in house teams. Legal service providers working with AI vendors can present better solutions to clients if they work together.

• Human Capital is Still Our Most Significant Asset! Are we doing enough to nurture and grow our Legal Leaders? The “Legal Leaders of the Future” session reminded us of the need to invest in our people and not leave anyone behind. This will require an intentional effort and investment in the development of resilience skills to prepare leaders for a more VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world. The CLOC community can help chart a new course for those in our community who feel rudderless and fearful of the changes ahead. Together, we can inspire confidence in our ability to operate successfully in a new future by sharing ideas and leveraging next-gen development programs.
• Progress, not Perfection, is Our Mantra. The Legal Ops Journey panel offered a fascinating insight into the different approaches each of the panellists took when prioritizing their initiatives in the first year of their roles. Progress, not perfection, is an essential mantra to adopt. Investments in change management initiatives are crucial to bringing people with you on the transformation journey.
• Law Firm Leaders Need to Solve Client Challenges. Law Firm COO and Innovation roles will help drive change, but in-house teams need to use their influence and buying power to invest in and reward innovative firms.

The 2020 London Institute was a great success in bringing our members together to Connect, Learn, and Collaborate. We are excited to begin planning the 2021 London Institute and hearing how the connections and collaborations forged this year have impacted each of you and your journeys as Legal Ops Leaders.

Mark your calendars for January 18-19, 2021. We’ll be meeting at the Grand Lancaster, London. See you there!

Lisa Konie discusses how to create an internship program at your organization by using a step-by-step process developed through her personal experience at Adobe Inc. By utilizing these steps and guidelines you will be well on your way to developing your own successful internship program at your organization.

Setting Up an Internship Program – Tips for Success

Creating an internship program requires thoughtful effort. Interns take a lot of work and you shouldn’t just create an intern program lightly. There are a number of components to consider before starting a program, especially for legal interns.

For example, many interns do not have practical experience, or knowledge, and will require a considerable amount of guidance. Throughout the program, the interns will need to have frequent check ins, access to systems and tools, schedule of activities, and complete training programs before they can begin working on projects. In order to have a successful program, it will require dedicated support.

Keep in mind that these young adults come with their own set of ideals and priorities. It’s important to ensure your intern fits into your corporate culture, but also demonstrates their curiosity to learn more about how your organization operates. Before starting an internship program, it’s critical to evaluate whether you have sufficient time to mentor, monitor and train your interns. Without this component your interns and your program will not be set up for success.

Getting Started

Why do you want to implement an internship program?

What are you trying to accomplish with your program? Although internship programs can offer a tremendous benefit to your business, and help with your recruiting and staffing needs, you need to have a plan in place before you start. A well crafted, structured and robust internship program will increase your chances of success and keep you on track to meet your goals.

What are you hoping to gain from an internship program?

1. Do you just need help with projects?
2. Are you looking to pay it forward?
3. Is there a diversity component?
4. Are you looking to create a pipeline of talent and hire as full time employees (FTE’s)?
5. Do you want an infusion of eager minds with a new point of view?

Once you’ve come to an alignment within your organization on why you want to bring on an intern, consider what characteristics you are targeting. Are you looking for 1L’s, 2L’s, 3L’s, MBA candidates, areas of interest, etc?

Is your organization ready for an internship program?

It’s up to you to make sure that your intern fits into your organization and that they have a great experience. Keep in mind that interns are a marketing vehicle for your company. You want the intern to return to their school and tell all their classmates that they had an amazing experience at your company. Take some time to answer the following to consider whether your company is ready to implement an internship program.

• Has your company bought into the concept of the internship program? Without buy-in from all levels of the organization, especially at the executive levels, the intern won’t feel welcome.
• Do you have someone who can oversee the intern throughout the entire period of the internship?
• Can you assign a buddy for the intern, someone that is “safe” for their questions?
• Does your organization have a general internship program at the corporate level? Can you tap into that resource and combine your efforts with theirs?
• Will your intern fit into your company culture? Keep in mind there are likely to be age differences between your interns and the general internship pool. Lots of corporate intern programs are focused on college interns and your law students might feel differentiated and out of place.
• Consider your brand. Can you afford to bring on interns without hiring them at the end of the internship?
• Will the work they are assigned to be challenging and insightful, rather than just repetitive busy work? Interns are willing to step out of their comfort zone and learn practical concepts that they haven’t experienced or learned about. Give them an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.

When should you start?

Find out your own organization’s H.R. hiring schedule. H.R. schedules are typically not in sync with law schools.

It’s important to know key dates for campus recruitment. Schools are usually soliciting participation at on campus interviews (OCIs) in late spring and in early summer. Top law students are getting recruited by law firms in early fall. Create a plan for recruiting and set appropriate expectations internally, as well as with your intern.

Since campus interview season starts in August, you may miss some great talent if you start interviewing in January or February. If you’re targeting certain schools, reach out to the career development center at those schools to understand the time table for their OCIs.

Keep in mind that 1L students cannot be recruited until December 1st, as opposed to the typical August timeframe with 2Ls. There is less expectation for a 1L to receive a returning offer since they aren’t in as high a demand as 2L candidates, so this may be an option if you miss the key recruiting window or don’t anticipate hiring as a FTE. By considering a 1L for your internship, you can still get top talent well into the beginning of the year to help source your internship program for that summer.

Design Your Program

Develop the Structure.

A comprehensive and robust internship program should include information on learning objectives and goals, daily responsibilities, short and long-term projects, supervisor assignments, evaluation procedures, policies and expectations, orientation and off-boarding processes, just to name the basics. What will the intern do and what are they expected to accomplish? Will they have daily tasks, or will they be working on special projects? What is the reporting structure?

Secure budget and establish compensation.

Ensure that you have enough budget and whether it’s going to cover relocation or housing while your intern is on-site at your location. You’ll also need to determine compensation for the individual during the timeframe that you will have them on board.

Develop a job description, open a job requisition and get ready to post the position.

Make sure your job descriptions are all in order well before you post your internships. Open a job requisition, if that’s something that your company requires. Also, determine whether you’ll have recruiting support from your H.R team.

There are a number of recruiting platforms that many schools are tied into, so don’t lose hope if you don’t have support from your H.R. organization. You can still post intern job openings directly with school career development organizations.

You don’t have to be a large corporation with lots of bodies and resources to have a great program. You can recruit on your own through phone screening, or by leveraging job boards directly at law schools.

Plan your projects in advance.

Make sure that you have a sufficient amount of work for the intern to do. Sitting idly with nothing to do is a horrible experience. It’s critical to make sure that your interns always have enough to do, but are not completely overwhelmed. You don’t want them to feel like they have to put in a 60-hour work week, but at the same time, you want to make sure that they have enough interesting work to do.

Pay attention to the projects and the work that you have scoped out for your interns. You do not want your interns to go through an experience where they do not have enough to do. You also need to recognize that sometimes interns might be a little reluctant to put their hand up and say that they’re not busy enough because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves. It’s up to you, or the person who is overseeing your intern program, to make sure that you’ve got consistent touch points and that you know that your intern is busy to the appropriate level.

Onboarding, Orientation and Evaluation

1. Assign a mentorAssigning a buddy is a great way to allow the intern to have a connection with your department that is beyond just the manager. It also gives them a “safe” way to ask questions and get training.
   1. Identify people across your legal and organization that want to mentor and enlist their support. You may also need their support in interviewing or in assisting the intern throughout the summer.
   2. There are many ways for people across your organization to get involved. It’s up to you to make sure that you have lined up those resources in advance and that they understand their role. This will help ensure that your intern has a valuable summer and becomes part of the team.
2. Set the tone for the intern on arrival.You may need to do things differently for your intern than you do for your usual FTE’s. For some of them, this may be their first exposure to a “corporate” position.
   1. Welcome the intern and introduce them to the team in which they will reside and to the organization. This will help integrate them more quickly and help them adjust to the social and performance aspects of their projects and their internship so that they can be successful.
   2. Take your intern to lunch, walk them around your department, send out an email communication about their arrival to your department.
   3. Make the intern feel included in all things. This is the theme that you will need to continue throughout the summer to ensure that your intern has an amazing experience.
3. Schedule meet and greets.Scheduling meet and greets between your intern and your key leadership team allows your interns to get a better understanding of what happens across the entire legal department at the beginning of their internship. This gives them the confidence to reach out to their managers to provide input about certain areas, tasks or kinds of work that may be of interest to them. It will also help them determine if they are a good fit for a full time role, if offered.
4. Plan a team building and networking event.It’s important for your intern to realize how valuable this experience is and to gather information about what the practice of law is really like, and to meet the people who work in the industry.
   1. Early team building events will integrate the intern quickly into the organization. This can be just a fun activity that takes place during the summer, or if you want to partner with other people at different companies, you can pull all of your interns together and have a broader and more inclusive experience.
   2. Using defined touch points, interns will better understand how to leverage their time with your organization to “fine tune” the remainder of their law school education. They will also better understand what they want to do in the future and how to map out their career.
5. Set up frequent check-ins.Ensure that you meet with the intern on a regular basis and have formal midpoint and endpoint evaluations. Discuss how the intern is contributing, strengths and areas that need growth, and any other feedback for the intern. Invite the intern to report on project statuses and ask questions to better understand their role, project and your organization.
6. Don’t spread the interns out too thinly.Co-located interns are much easier to oversee and you will be able to create a more inclusive experience for those interns. Remember, if you do not have co-located interns, team building becomes even more critical. You will need to work harder to integrate those interns who are not co-located. Team building outings, or exercises, will help to connect your interns not only to the teams with whom they are embedded, but also to other interns.
7. Send out an after internship survey.Gather feedback about what worked and what you can do differently from the interns. Integrate that feedback into the program design for the following year.
8. Prepare to hire outstanding candidates.Make sure you have budget allocated and the paperwork underway so that your internal processed doesn’t delay your ability to make an offer. If you want to extend an offer at the end of summer, prepare early so that your interns are not left hanging wondering whether they’re going to get a job offer. Early planning ensures that you won’t miss out on hiring top talent that you have invested in.

Key Takeaways

• Just Start. Don’t make this a tools problem. Go through the exercises and develop a strong foundation.
• Prepare. Start with process definition. Determine what matters to your organization and drive toward measurable results.
• Make it a Amazing for Your Intern, Your Team and Yourself. Keep in mind that these students are all looking for an experience that will build their career and help them refine their focus. Make sure at every turn you have created an outstanding experience for them during their summer. Whether it’s filled with cool transactional work,interesting meetings with different individuals across your organization, or even informational interviews, take the time and effort to exceed expectations.
• Stand Out From the Crowd Think about all of the little nuances that will allow your intern program to stand out and be something different from all the other intern programs out there. This will ensure that your program will be a success.

The above information is based on a podcast that is accessible to members only. Listen to the Podcast. For detailed documentation on intern programs, including sample generic job descriptions, and more details on key dates, access the Internship Initiative on CLOC.org.

Attend a CLOC Institute to learn more about this, and many other topics of interest to legal operations professionals. Are you an in-house legal professional? Join CLOC as a member and be part of the discussion!

Technology is not the answer! I repeat this phrase at least a dozen times a day to my entire legal department. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE legal tech! My first task as a legal operations leader was to assess our current tools and devise our technology road map for the future. However, it kills me when everyone assumes that once we license a tool, everything will function as ‘clockwork’. The truth is, licensing a tool is like getting a gym membership – it doesn’t work, unless you do the work. In this article, I want to emphasize the importance of the ‘2 Ps’, people and process, that make technology work. With all the hype around legal tech, I feel that everyone forgets that any technology is only as good as the people that use it and the process it supports.

Innovation means different things to different people. Against popular belief, I don’t think innovation always means some big technology implementation is the answer. Innovation starts through an adoption mindset of our people and is reflected in the process we follow.

People:

1. Change the ‘we have always done it this way’ mindset

I mentally switch off the minute I hear this phrase, and let’s face it; we all hear it at our workplace almost every day. Most people don’t believe in changing status quo or questioning why something is being done a certain way. They assume that someone else in the organization must have thought through the process and there may be a valid reason for doing a task. Well, sorry to burst that bubble – but most times no one has really thought through a process or if they did, it was possibly eons ago and is not relevant today. Most times when you actually dig deep into any process, there could be a large chunk of tasks which are non-value add tasks. And, quickly eliminating that task will save time and energy. However, keep in mind that eliminating non-value tasks can threaten the status quo and you’ll still face challenges. In my professional journey, I have always believed in building my team with people with the right attitude because only then can my innovative ideas see the light of the day. For the extended team, it is an uphill task of constantly educating the leaders and team members to look at things from various angles and from a new perspective. No matter how you hard you try, you will have naysayers in the team who generally either fall in line or fallout over a period of time.

2. Find fearless team members

An innovative environment needs people who are not scared of making mistakes. The leadership team needs to create a psychologically safe environment to let people know that it is ok to make mistakes. This needs constant reinforcement and clear messaging from the top leadership. I do like to draw some distinctions here though. While I am happy for people to try things differently and fail, I don’t have tolerance for sloppy mistakes on a business as usual process. Most team members are bogged down with so many daily operational deliverables and KRAs that it doesn’t leave them with any mind space to think of new ways to do things. The ones who genuinely have the passion to innovate will free their mind and find time to tread on new paths.

3. The doers are better than the dreamers

Most innovative people are creative and by that nature also dreamers. I am occasionally guilty of tuning out from the realities of life and imagining a world that may be. This is the space where I get my next bright idea. Unfortunately, ideas don’t work on their own and I have to quickly roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty. I give higher points to people who actually get the job done than those who spend a large part of their day talking about an organization that should, or could, have been. There is scope for improvement in most processes across organization and those improvements are not going to magically happen on their own. We will need the doers to get down to the root of the process and fix it as required.

Process:

1. Document a process

Most legal departments don’t document their processes. Most people undermine the freedom that process documentation brings to them. They fear that documenting processes will mean that no one in the organization will need those teams in the future. I was recently working with my IT team on a tech implementation and I asked my IT team to document their process for future use so that I don’t trouble them each time. The junior IT team member looked at me innocently and said I would make him lose his job. What he didn’t realize was that I was trying to free up his time to focus on other projects, rather than constantly repeating work and wasting his valuable time. I don’t necessarily blame him for his response since he was being candid with me. He may have been sharing what he had learned from his senior team members. This brings me back to my earlier point of changing people’s mindset, which has to be a top-down approach since team members tend to emulate their leaders.

2. Break down the process

This is the key to any change. Although an end to end process may overwhelm everyone, breaking process down to every single task will help identify tasks that can be eliminated, automated, or reassigned to a different resource. We recently reviewed some of our document archival processes and were able to eliminate 60% of the tasks after they were broken down. The team can now support larger volumes and is able to manage certain other tasks that they were not doing earlier. I strongly believe that process improvement can only happen once we have detailed process and procedure maps with all steps broken down to the individual task.

3. Not a one-time task

You can’t draft process maps, file them somewhere and forget about them. Process improvement is a continuous activity. Legal departments now have dedicated legal ops team which include process experts to monitor current processes and are constantly thinking of ways and means of improving processes. Once the process experts sit side by side with lawyers, they are able to see the impact of process changes and immediately recommend tweaks as needed. Infusing legal teams with business, finance, IT and process experts also instils a culture of viewing the department as a business and not purely as an advisory shop.

While discussions on legal tech continue to grow, as they should, we need to continue to state the importance of people and process. We don’t want the very critical pillars of a successful and innovative department to be lost under the bright and shiny lights of legal technology. CLOC understands the importance of the 2 Ps and the core competencies for legal ops teams include communication, cross functional alignment, and technology and process support amongst others. As I continue to look at new technology in the market, I never lose sight of my people that I continue to train and the processes I continue to improve.

The 2018 Chief Legal Officer Survey states that only thirty nine percent of law departments surveyed employ at least one legal ops professional. Of that 39%, less than 50% of the legal ops professionals came from the legal department. Of course, these numbers don’t necessarily mean that the legal operations team is led by a seasoned leader. Even the largest legal departments may have administrators, or project managers, who chanced on the role with no one to guide them. The above survey also states that most General Counsels spend only 18% of their time in the management of their department, which means that they are probably not spending too much time thinking about how legal ops needs to be structured. As new ops leaders take on the role or existing legal ops professional broaden their portfolio, it is important to set clear vision and priority for your department or you will spend most of your day dousing fires.

As I started my journey of a legal ops leader, like any other leader coming to a new role, I spoke to my existing legal team to understand their pain points and challenges. I realized very quickly that I had to draw up a roadmap for my department before I was drowned in the laundry lists of everyone’s problems.

Here are my top tips for new ops leaders coming into an existing, seasoned legal team. I am sure there are many other tips which legal ops leaders would go by, but this is what is important in my opinion.

1. Understand team dynamics

To state the obvious, it is very important to spend your first few days understanding your legal team structure, key leaders and stakeholders. If you have the opportunity to interact with legal team leaders and managers before you start in your role, take that opportunity in a heartbeat. While formal catch ups are a great way to understand about people’s work, I find informal conversations to be insightful as people drop their guard. Make notes of each person’s requirements (but make no promises at this point), this is important when you plan your roadmap as it will guide you on areas you want to focus on. It also helps to gather support if you can personalize your road map to real life problems. When I came on my role early on, one of the biggest problems was our duplicative invoicing processes. Acknowledging the problem in my stakeholder meetings and providing a plan to fix it in week three of my job helped people realize that I was there to help. And, meeting that deadline established my credibility early in my position.

2. Don’t try to churn the ocean

As a new leader you want to work on garnering support early on and you will want people to feel you are there to help. As a result, your colleagues will pour out their problems to you and expect you to wave your magic wand and solve their issues. Unfortunately, organizations are far too complex for a magical solution. As I mentioned above, listen to everyone, but make no promises and for your own sanity, don’t try to solve every single problem for every single person on the team. Prioritize your vision based on your department structure. For my organization, our commercial and regulatory teams constituted the largest part of our team and I focused on those functional areas to find the low hanging fruit and quick wins.

It is also important to steer clear of operating in solution mode in your early conversations. As natural problem solvers, many new ops leaders jump into solution mode very quickly. Spend your first few weeks understanding and mapping your current processes. Most legal departments are not likely to have detailed process maps and you will not be able to get most of your programs off the ground if you don’t understand the current processes.

3. Make a plan

Never undervalue the power of a 30 / 60 / 90-day plan. I have used this in every single new role, and it has worked brilliantly. A 90-day plan gives me structure and helps me from getting lost. I draw my plan based on big picture themes and then build tasks to support the theme.

My plan as a new ops leader looked like below. You will see that I tend to start more internally and focus on vendor management only after I had a good understanding of internal processes and stakeholders. The plan gives assurance to the Chief Legal Officer (CLO) that I know what I am talking about and that s/he made the right decision in hiring an ops lead.

4. Do a SWOT analysis

My first month in my new job, I spent all my time making notes on what works and what doesn’t. Again, some of this is very basic and simple but it is the simple that we forget. When I presented my SWOT analysis to our CLO and the legal leadership team, all I got was nods and alignment in thoughts. It was great to know that we were all on the same page. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses also gave me a foundation to build the vision for my own department.

5. Build your own vision

I was lucky to have a CLO who gave me a blank canvas and asked me to paint what I wanted. I understand not everyone would be as lucky as me. However, this is the most critical for your own success and for others on the team to show that you mean business. CLOC has amazing content that can help you build your legal ops plan. I knew I didn’t want to tackle all twelve core competencies in year 1 and based on my SWOT analysis, I picked five, or six, competencies to focus on. I structured my team based on my priorities and drew a roadmap based on the pillars I chose.

The key competencies I focused on were – Technology, Automation and Continuous Improvement; Legal Finance, MIS and Law Firm Management; Knowledge Management and Process Documentation; Resource Allocation and Professional Development.

My main goal was to document our processes within the first 12-18 months. We didn’t have any standard operating procedures and our playbook and policy documents were outdated, so we created a plan to tackle those first. As we went through the documentation process, we were able to identify gaps in our process and define what we wanted to improve early on. It was the process documentation that led us to our technology roadmap. We focused on our existing technology and increasing technology adoption became a priority. Finally, we wanted to start capturing metrics and some of the tools we put in place helped us with that process. The ability to present data to stakeholders early on sets you apart from other ops professionals. Most stakeholders like to believe that they know the pulse of their department, but they face some harsh truths when they are presented with hard data. Your data may not be perfect in the beginning, however, metrics and KPIs are the best quantifiable ROI tools.

All organizations are different, and every ops leader will have a unique journey. CLOC is a great forum with some very relevant content that helps connect you with peers in the industry who are very open to sharing ideas and collaborating. Knowing you are not alone in this journey gives solace to a lot of us.

The Vital Role Of Reporting For Legal Operations

Easy to use, clear and comprehensive reporting functionality has evolved from an added bonus to a must-have requirement for corporate legal teams when evaluating legal technology. The pressure on legal operations to demonstrate improvements and return has led to reporting features being almost as important as the fundamental benefits of the software tool in use.

Where legal operations is missing a trick is when data analysis from a particular tool is used in isolation. To use legal spend management software as an example, out-of-the-box spend reports and user-friendly analytics wizards allow legal departments to monitor work in progress, measure actual spend, and forecast budgets accurately.

That’s not to say legal spend data isn’t useful on its own. On the contrary, legal operations teams use spend data to make better matter resourcing decisions, negotiate discounts, get more value from firms, and hire more internal staff.

Combining Legal Data To Better Manage Risk

Where the in-house legal function is working closely and in partnership with the business units across the company, the range of information and data it holds will often put it in a unique position within the organisation. This data not only supports an awareness of what the business is doing but also forms part of the historic corporate knowledge that is built up over the years; such as previous contracts, decisions and outcomes. Historically, this information was not held in a structured electronic format, which meant any form of data and trend analysis, as well as knowledge management, was extremely manual and time consuming.

With the increase in legal matter management and legal spend management solutions as well as better document search and retrieval there is a growing need and clamour for data processing, data analysis and knowledge management. Capturing basic contract terms and/or details of legal opinions in a matter management system provides a very simple knowledge management tool and a rich source of data. Other tools that will help provide data are any solutions used to create standard contracts, access to benchmark reports, as well as internal resources (finance reports etc.).

Those legal operations teams that are seeing the most value are those that combine data from various technology tools to take their strategic input to the next level. One such area is management and mitigation of risk.

A legal operations team that is carrying out data analysis on all the data at its disposal will be in a position to identify trends that will lead to a range of questions that should spark further debate, such as;

• How much work is done “in-house” versus being sent externally?
• Are the correct processes being followed?
• Are we getting the right level of technical support for the type of transaction?
• Is there a growth in the types of transactions either at a business unit or country level?
• Is one firm being used more than others for similar types of transaction from a particular part of the business / legal team?
• How does the firm perform against others for similar types of transaction both on price and performance?
• How does the business differ to market peers?
• What is required to manage a specific regulatory change?
• Is the in-house legal function and its staff compliant with the relevant regulatory authority guidelines, such as the Solicitor Regulation Authority (SRA) etc.?

Below are some examples of how the answers to these questions could demonstrate a change in the risk profile and risk appetite.

By monitoring the volumes of work, what type of work is being done, who is doing it (in-house lawyers, external lawyers or a combination of both), the time taken, the costs etc. the legal operations teams will be better placed to advise on the organisational design, support and management of the legal function as well as the risk profile and the risk appetite of the legal function and in certain cases, the supported businesses.

A better understanding of what is being done and by whom, will help ensure that the legal function is properly resourced, is not taking on activities that are better placed in other parts of the organisation, and that the appropriate processes and procedures are in place and controls are being administered. For the legal function and its in-house staff, this might include ensuring that they are complying with the rules of the governing bodies such as the SRA, NALP, the Federal Bar Association in Germany etc.

Spotting an uplift in a particular type of work (such as litigation) or activity (such as drafting) could indicate a lack of understanding of the contract terms within the business front line areas who are requesting contract changes, bad working practices, poor standard documentation, or changes in the markets and/or economic climate (each of which also presents opportunities). Legal operations teams can help to mitigate these by highlighting trends and ensuring that the legal function;

• Delivers better training and communication to the business and legal function
• Carries out regular reviews of standard documentation,
• Supports reviews of policies, practices and procedures, and
• Develops a better understanding of the market.

Consistent use of one firm over others should provoke questions as to why that firm is being used. It may be that they are very competitive on price or they have the appropriate skill sets. Fixed fee arrangements are increasingly popular, but if the firm is not providing any supporting timekeeper activity data, it becomes difficult to know whether the firm is providing the right level of technical support and whether the fee structure is still fair and balanced. As part of the legal operations team’s vendor management programme, they should ensure that that firms are maintaining the right level of skill sets for the work they are being asked to undertake, as this will help mitigate legal risk caused by a lack of technical knowledge and support. For the more complex deals it would be normal to see more senior lawyers engaged with the matter.

With the increase in cyber security and greater scrutiny by regulators who are starting to require more rapid, robust, evidence-based reporting, the need for greater use of these solutions is becoming more prevalent to avoid data being compromised and fines being levied. Understanding what data has been passed to which supplier helps ensure that those suppliers have appropriate controls in place to manage that information in line with Information Governance and Records Management policies and procedures and that any breaches promptly reported.

It is also worth noting that a lack of data in the legal systems is equally as insightful as it will show where parts of the business and/or legal function are not following agreed practices and procedures. Furthermore, using “gap” reports in the legal systems helps identify problems within the data that will distort any data analysis.

For legal operations teams to deliver process improvements and efficiencies, ensure compliance with policies and regulatory requirements, optimise their spend and manage risk, they should analyse the data that is available to them from all the data sources at their disposal. As they start to analyse all their data, instead of analysing point solution data in isolation, they will start to discover new trends and insights not previously seen or understood.

About BusyLamp

Founded by a team of lawyers and powered by frustrated users of endless spreadsheets and clunky legacy legal tech systems, BusyLamp is the leading SaaS alternative for efficient legal operations. We help legal departments save time, significantly reduce costs, and collaborate more effectively with in-house and outside counsel by simplifying and improving their legal processes. Legal departments leverage our end-to-end solution to improve visibility and efficiency from pitch to completion. Become a member of the BusyLamp user family and take advantage of our sophisticated sourcing, fee tracking, e-billing, matter management and vendor management features, all with powerful reporting and analytics.

www.BusyLamp.com

There is a lot of buzz regarding the change AI is bringing to the legal space–who hasn’t read an article about “robot lawyers” coming to take our jobs? On some level we know this isn’t an accurate forecast, but the media thrives on the vagueness and uncertainty surrounding AI. Meanwhile, it’s often difficult for GCs to determine if a software pitch is the right solution for their legal operation needs.

Some of this interpretative struggle is due to the seemingly endless applications for legal tech solutions. That’s why it is critical to understand that AI brings new processes to the table, but that lawyers and legal professionals will always work in tandem with AI. It’s not humans or machines; it’s “Humans + Machines.”.

What is LIBOR?

In July 2017, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced that by the end of 2021 British banks would no longer be required to submit rates for the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). This means that LIBOR will play a diminished role in the global financial system going forward, and may disappear altogether.

Ever since that announcement, law firms, corporate legal departments, ALSPs, and everyone in between have been asking: How many of our clients have “LIBOR-infected” contracts? How much money is at stake? How do we prioritize and facilitate re-negotiation and re-papering?

The first hurdle is to identify the LIBOR-infected contracts. After that, teams of lawyers and legal professionals can work on remediation. That’s a two-pronged problem, requiring a two-pronged solution.

Identifying LIBOR Contracts with Machine Learning

Discussing machine learning (ML) solutions brings us back to that “robot lawyers” misunderstanding. A well-trained ML platform will find a lot of relevant data points in a large set of documents and can be adapted and customized with additional ML techniques to meet the unique challenges posed by the LIBOR problem. Designing and building these robust techniques requires strategic planning and communication between various types of subject matter experts . A software development team can build ML algorithms in multiple different ways, but it takes experts in law and finance to fully flesh out all they need from a custom LIBOR analysis tool. Basically, “robot lawyers” don’t exist; effective ML requires a range of human experts to sit down and discuss how best to solve incredibly complex problems in a sophisticated and results-oriented way.

ML is not a conveyor belt where data goes in and perfect results come out. It takes time and iteration. This is actually what makes ML a natural companion discipline for legal: both disciplines require taking in imperfect data, then developing creative and effective solutions with that data.

For example, an ML implementation team handling “LIBOR-infected” contracts must ask whether a few natural language processing (NLP) techniques can find all the required data, or whether more complex vectorization models are needed. Data points are neither simple nor intuitive: spread percentages; governing law clauses; jurisdiction-specific legal language; synonymous or nearly-synonymous terms such as “Eurodollar”; and fallback clauses tied to other reference rates such as SOFR and SONIA.

ML can solve a lot of problems in legal, but sometimes it’s forgotten just how vital the contributions by experts are. At the end of the day, ML is just complex software. ML is only as good as the team that builds it, oversees it, and shepherds its evolution.

Solving LIBOR Remediation with Expert Services

The LIBOR problem requires teams of various specialists. Many organizations already have such teams, or at least a set of processes in place. Service teams from law companies like Elevate must be nimble enough to integrate with clients and their processes in order to augment what is already there. A client may not want to use ML, but an outside services team may recognize the potential for ML deployment or see that it is wiser to simply ramp up the human review team.

Either way, for an acute problem such as LIBOR, a services team must bring necessary resources, processes, and technology to their client’s team, and help deliver efficiency and cost savings in four major ways: quantification, action planning, remediation, and reporting.

Quantification

To properly determine the level of repapering a client needs to remain compliant and reduce risk, any outside services team should know how to quantify their client’s LIBOR exposure with a full historical assessment of the contract paper in question.

This initial quantification is effort-intensive, which is why many organizations bring in the efficient expertise found in law companies. Moving fast and iterating is just as important for AI developer teams as it is for a specialized services team.

Quantification efforts will typically include:

• Scoping
• Targeting data repositories for relevant contract data
• Identifying the contracts most impacted by LIBOR (perhaps using a platform like ContraxSuite)
• Reviewing and summarizing contract information for further analysis
• Working with a client’s pre-existing methodologies to provide internal stakeholders with the clearest picture: which agreements are impacted, their level of exposure, and actions needed

Action Planning

After quantification comes the action plan. For a services team, this may mean:

• Supporting Legal Project Managers as they help their teams map out necessary steps and delegate tasks
• Coordinating parties for effort estimates and accountability
• Identifying, assisting, and leveraging third parties (e.g., outside counsel, law companies, technology providers, and/or experts)
• Building consensus and internal buy-in for final action plan

Remediation

After quantification and action planning, it’s time to finalize the review and tally up the contracts that require remediation. The following are five general types of remediation:

• Level 1: Tracking all “no action” contracts
• Level 2: Notification (outgoing) of LIBOR rate transition
• Level 3: Notification and simple remediation of contract (no countersignature required)
• Level 4: Notification and simple remediation of contract (countersignature required)
• Level 5: Notification and full remediation of contract

To assist with the facilitation and resolution of these items, organizations will most likely need to hire temporary contractors or outsource the remediation process to a legal service provider.

Reporting

Throughout the process, it is important for legal teams to be aware of the progress being made, agreements pending, agreements remediated, cycle time, type of remediation, etc. A good services team knows how to support the management, tracking, and presentation of reports for internal stakeholders, ensuring accuracy on scope, quality, and budget over time. Again, the use of AI tools by a services team can take this even further, providing deeper data- based insights for future projects.

Conclusion

“Humans + Machines” is better than humans or machines by themselves. We have delivered contract insights on existing and remediated agreements, using the specialized skills of our services teams, and powerful software tools like contract analytics platforms that sift through thousands of LIBOR-infected contracts. The current centrality of the LIBOR problem is just one of the many examples of “Humans + Machines” completing high-quality enterprise legal work. It will only get better from here.

About Elevate

Elevate is a law company, providing consulting, technology and services to law departments and law firms. The company’s multi-disciplinary team of legal professionals, business professionals, and technology professionals extend and enable the resources and capabilities of customers worldwide. Learn more at elevateservices.com.

The pace of transformation in the legal services market continues to accelerate and we’re seeing a growing enthusiasm from in-house legal teams to embrace this change. There are a growing number of opportunities to develop skillsets and embrace alternative legal careers, as well as to be at the forefront of this evolution by driving change and encouraging genuine thought leadership. In this blog we focus on the people aspects, including how the pressure to upskill teams may affect individuals in different ways; the diversification and introduction of new roles and skills, and an increased focus on wellbeing.

The lawyer of the future: One size doesn’t fit all

‘Strategic’, ‘commercial’, ‘flexible’. According to in-house legal teams, these are the key attributes needed by the future lawyer to succeed. Are the days when lawyers were expected to know the law and only the law now in the past?

With many organisations aligning their legal teams to business areas, lawyers are under pressure to become more strategic and flexible; equipped to respond to queries across multiple legal disciplines and having the commercial knowledge to support this advice and provide tangible solutions. Add to this the need to consider legal tech within these solutions, provide thorough project management and become data literate, and you can see that the role of the in-house lawyer is under immense pressure to evolve. Many lawyers are embracing this challenge with enthusiasm, hungry to be learn new skills and discover alternative career pathways. Where though does this leave those lawyers who want to remain in a specialist position and don’t have the appetite to develop further skills? Is there still a place for them in the in-house legal team structure? We recently discussed this question with a group of clients, and the answer was a resounding yes. These people are in fact integral to the success of the legal team and we need to acknowledge the value they bring to the function. Whilst they may not wish to bring new skills to the table, they too can be part of this transformation solely by adapting their mindsets and becoming more inquisitive. By challenging the status quo, identifying alternative approaches to tasks and asking colleagues if certain tasks could be done more efficiently, they will add a huge amount to the legal transformation agenda.

Whichever ‘change bucket’ you’re in, the key is to appreciate the different perspectives each individual can bring, recognising that some may be more subtle than others.

From forming to storming: The changing role of the in-house legal team

The evolution of the in-house legal team is starting to gain pace and we are seeing new areas of expertise developing. The rise of the ‘legal operations’ role is a prime example; this is now a key senior role in many firms and does not necessarily have to be performed by someone with a legal background. Rather, business, financial and strategic skill sets are key to be able to identify opportunities to maximise value for money of external legal spend and deploying strategies to make efficiency and cost savings.

Given the demands on the in-house legal function to manage complex regulatory change projects, streamline high-volume legal processes as well as perform the role of the firm’s trusted legal expert and minimise risk, we are increasingly asked by our clients whether they should be looking to hire their own legal project managers or legal technology experts to support them. The answer to this is not clear cut. It depends on the size of the organisation and the appetite for keeping the work in-house rather than leveraging law firm’s expertise in these areas. Regardless of this, if you are considering it the first step is to fully engage with these roles and understand the value they would bring to your organisation, taking into account the behavioural change which would need to be adopted to ensure the full integration of the team.

Our view is that the in-house legal function’s transformation journey is, to quote Tuckman’s group development model (forming, storming, norming and performing), currently in the ‘forming’ stage where team members with differing skills will act independently of each other. To move to the next stage of maturity, ‘storming’ where the group start to work towards the common strategic goals will require people to embrace conflict and change in order to succeed. Actions speak louder than words: a refreshing approach to mental health.

Alongside the maturing landscape of the legal services market has come the recognition that the legal industry needs to be doing more around mental health. A leadership focus on this topic, and employee wellbeing more generally, has seen this become one of the key priorities this year. Two refreshing aspects which we have seen regularly are worthy of highlighting:

1. Pledges alone are not seen as enough. Operational and behavioural change need to align to deliver the improved outcomes underpinning those pledges; and

2. A movement away from sticking plaster solutions to the problems when they arise, and much more determination to address the root causes. We expect to see this remaining a key agenda topic in coming years ahead, with an increasingly strong focus both on leadership and actions, not just words.

All in all, this is an exciting time to be in the law! New career paths, brand new roles, and new opportunities for people with diverse skills. But what is clear is that traditional roles and legal expertise still very much have a central place in this broader NewLaw community, and integration and collaboration are key to the progression of the industry.

About Ashurt Advance

Ashurst Advance combines NewLaw expertise, a positive approach, collaborative working and thinking beyond the immediate deliverables, to help solve our clients’ business challenges and create value for our clients. We bring together the firm’s legal and industry experts, our process and technology capability, and a scalable range of cost-effective resourcing options in a fully integrated, managed and quality assured offering to deliver results which are aligned with our clients’ needs. Ashurst Advance has acted successfully for over 400 clients on nearly 1300 matters across 55 workstreams globally.

We would be delighted to have a chat with you at the London CLOC institute, so please do come and visit our booth situated in the Ballroom Hall.

As the calendar flips over to 2020, many in the financial services industry are hearing the steady tic toc of the LIBOR clock counting down to 2021 when LIBOR becomes an obsolete reference rate.

Countless contracts and automation processes include LIBOR as a reference rate and over $350 trillion or more than £240 worth of financial agreements reference LIBOR — with more being created despite the looming change. Regardless of these numbers and clear warnings from regulatory bodies and other industry experts to prepare now and not delay, many organisations do not have an articulate transition plan.

Most organisations have begun to assemble multiple internal stakeholders to ascertain the best way to manage the transition. It is not too late to form a LIBOR Task Force, which should also include retained 3rd party providers that bring the expertise needed to develop and manage a transition plan. Executive support and input on Task Force prioritisations are essential and will help to eliminate any roadblocks as the project progresses. In addition, a Program Manager should be assigned supported by, in most cases, several project managers as there are typically multiple work streams requiring oversight. With the right team and project management, a seasoned Program Manager is able to oversee several projects at once, ensure accountability, and meet agreed upon milestones. Organisations that do not have a Program Manager need to fill this essential role immediately. In addition, strong communication at every step of the process cannot be stressed enough and will be a major factor in determining the project’s overall success.

Part of preparedness also means gaining an up-front understanding of the full impact and ramifications of this change. There are many known and unknown variables, ranging from the effect on balance sheets, potential stress scenarios as a result of new reference rates, as well as addressing client response. Whilst many contracts and legal documents contain fallback provisions if LIBOR becomes unavailable, since LIBOR is generally for floating rate transactions and SOFR, SONIA and others apply to fixed rate transactions, it can leave organisations open to potential financial and reputational damages, especially if risk is not properly managed.

Understanding the reverberations before-the-fact is one of the most challenging aspects of any LIBOR transition plan. To pave the way for an informed, cost effective, and streamlined path to compliance that has little to no impact on business as usual, organisations should consider the taking the following steps:

• Assess: Determine any anticipated risks or challenges. To assist in this process, Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in conjunction with experienced resources can identify what must be transitioned and what supporting materials need to be developed (documentation, systems, fallback provisions, standard operating procedures, limiting new transactions, training, etc.). AI and enhanced machine learning are highly effective in identifying active agreements and pinpointing their contents. This is a complex process that requires both human and technology resources.
• Prioritise: Identify potential issues and bottlenecks so they can preemptively be addressed and remedied. Six Sigma trained resources and applied principles can be highly advantageous during this phase of the project.
• Strategise: Establish a comprehensive and detailed roadmap complete with specific steps, stakeholders, vendors, resources, and procedures. Ultimately, the success of the project will, in large part, be determined by the quality of this plan which should include standardised approaches/playbooks for legal document drafting, remediation, amendment, and outreach.
• Execute: Execution is everything. Deploying the strategy in a streamlined, sensible and diligent way is the final step toward transition. Tracking to the strategic plan will ensure all milestones and objectives are met and compliance is achieved.

No plan can fully anticipate every roadblock or challenge. That is why the transition team must remain nimble; able to pivot and adjust prioritisations as new information and potential risks are uncovered. Paramount to successful execution is also well-articulated communications plan and function, along with rigorous calendar management to ensure all stakeholders are informed and contributors are held accountable.

A well-conceived plan will include the use of third party resources including technology solutions and alternative legal service providers (ALSP). As noted, successful execution will be delivered by a combination of human resources and technology. ALSPs like Integreon are instrumental in working with clients to expertly handle the vast amounts of documentation (contracts, prospectuses, and other legal documentation, as well as marketing collateral and product details) that requires remediation. Any mention of LIBOR as a reference rate must be replaced with agreed upon new language. Some may consider using a law firm for this work, though they may find the price tag to be cost-prohibitive. In addition, law firms do not typically handle, nor are they resourced to handle this manner of project. On the other hand, this is right in the wheelhouse of most ALSPs who ideally will bring deep expertise, access to a large pool of experienced resources, and the technology relationships required to galvanise and execute successfully.

In 2020, financial institutions need to make a New Year’s resolution to start the LIBOR transition process. Although 2021 may seem like a long way away, there is clearly much to be done to fully understand the size of the challenge, properly resource, develop a sound plan, and efficiently execute. Happy New Year and here’s to a happy and healthy LIBOR transition starting…now!

About Integreon

Integreon is a trusted, global provider of award-winning legal and business solutions to leading law firms, corporations and professional services firms. We apply a highly trained, experienced staff of 2,400 associates globally to a wide range of problems that require scale and expertise, enabling clients to become more operationally efficient by streamlining operations, maximizing investment and improving the quality of work they provide their end clients. With delivery centers on three continents, Integreon offers multi-lingual, around-the-clock support, as well as onshore, offshore and onsite delivery of our award-winning services. Visit us at CLOC London on January 20-21 at table 25.

Jenita Gillespie is Director of Legal Operations at Bon Secours Mercy Health. While she was originally hired as a Paralegal eight years ago, her personal path to the directorship is also the story of the transformation of legal operations at Ohio’s largest healthcare provider – a story that highlights the successes that can come with implementing strong, data-driven processes. We recently had the privilege of sitting down with Jenita to discuss how she was able to drive this transformation so other legal departments can learn from her story.

How the Legal Operations Function Evolved

When Jenita joined Mercy Health – prior to its merger with Bon Secours in September 2018 – there was no legal operations department. Using her background in billing for law firms, she began closely analyzing the bills coming into the Mercy Health legal department and realized the department was being overcharged in some cases. While her supervisor initially dismissed her claims, Jenita was able to present data that identified clear discrepancies between what some law firms and technology vendors billed for and the services they actually provided.

After presenting her findings, Jenita began to advocate for a more systematic approach to billing and other operational functions at the Mercy Health. Leadership agreed, and she was asked to oversee the implementation of a legal process management system that integrated data from a variety of applications across the organization. Implementation of that system, which made it much easier for Mercy Health to track, analyze and manage work across multiple workflows, generated initial savings of $1.25 million, and Jenita was subsequently promoted to Manager of Legal Information Systems.

Jenita was thinking well beyond solving the department’s immediate billing issues and began to focus on developing more effective processes in other areas like vendor management and financial management. She gradually began to implement a series of process improvements. One of these improvements was establishing strict guidelines and procedures ensuring that every outside counsel fee arrangement had to be approved by the legal operations department before billing, and that any work billed by outside counsel that had not come from legal would not get paid.

With fee approvals done by legal operations and data from the legal process management system, Jenita’s team was able to carefully monitor bills coming from outside counsel and quickly identify previously unrecognized patterns in billing practices. She was able to catch inconsistent pricing and unreasonable increases that had been overlooked, and decided to implement billing violations to ensure the department would no longer be overcharged.

With increasing visibility into legal spend, she gathered data related to real estate matters and determined the company’s spending well above market rates. Her data and reporting convinced leadership that Mercy Health could spend a quarter of what they were paying to outside counsel by hiring an in-house lawyer to handle real estate. When Jenita discovered that other firms were also failing to bill market rates for other practice areas, she was able to negotiate outside counsel rates down hundreds of dollars per hour in some instances.

With examples like these, and with her entire department adhering to the streamlined procedures she developed, Jenita was able to get support from the Chief Legal Officer of Mercy Health and the finance department to maintain consistency and efficiency in workflows and financial management.

As Jenita’s work expanded to areas like technology and process support, data analytics and business/operations reporting, she petitioned for another promotion to accommodate all her new responsibilities. After consulting resources from the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), she determined the role of Director of Legal Operations encapsulated all that she did, and delivered that job description to her supervisor, who then approved. While CLOC resources were not responsible for Jenita’s promotions, they did give her a more comprehensive view of legal operations, which she was able to communicate to leadership. The resources also helped her show leadership how streamlined, effective and efficient the legal department could be with a legal operations director implementing a strict, data-based approach to process and workflow refinements and providing continuous oversight.

What’s Next for Legal Operations?

Jenita not only discovered new ways to manage spend and streamline processes for the for Mercy Health’s legal department, but she also found additional savings and efficiencies through the company’s merger with Bon Secours – integrating the companies’ information systems and legal operations workflows in just six months. Jenita’s story is an example of what’s possible with the right resources, data and technology. Law departments worldwide should carefully consider how a more systematic approach to legal operations can help them achieve substantial cost savings and efficiency improvements. What was possible for Mercy Health’s law department is achievable for others. Data-based processes and decision-making – driven by go-getters like Jenita – represent a promising way forward for legal departments.

Aaron Pierce is vice president & general manager of LexisNexis CounselLink.