If your company has spent years trying to streamline your contracting process, it’s easy to get excited hearing about the ease of implementation or the ability to achieve ROI quickly via a contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool. But once your organization has selected a CLM tool, you might be thinking: how do we get started? How do we turn these promises into reality during implementation? 

It’s 100% possible for your organization to implement a CLM efficiently, effectively and with demonstrable go-live success. Here are the top 10 tips for an agile implementation of contract lifecycle management from DocuSign and Spaulding Ridge, a DocuSign platinum partner: 

Tips to follow before you kick off a CLM project: 

1. Document your existing process. Whether it’s on the back of a napkin or a color coded swimlane diagram, starting with a visualization of your existing contract process helps your team understand the starting point for developing a process within CLM. Even if this entire process ends up getting scrapped, starting from the same point helps your team get on the same page. 

2. Know your stakeholders. If your process is the “what”, your participants in the contract process are the all-important “who” (legal, for instance). If you hope to design a better process within your CLM system, you’ll need not only their input, but their buy-in.  

3. Designate an executive single point of contact (SPOC) for build decisions. What happens when there’s a disagreement on a path forward between your legal and sales teams? To streamline the process, you’ll need someone to break ties and stalemates to avoid delays. Delegate an involved leader to be the final vote should these situations come up.  

Tips to follow before you begin the CLM build: 

4. Focus on the big steps before diving into details. If your team has been working through a manual process for years (or decades), seeing the advanced capabilities of CLM solutions can be eye opening. But a good process is more important than any bell or whistle a system offers. Define your MVP and make sure you align on the larger process steps before diving into nuanced functionalities.  

5. Get your subject matter experts (SMEs) engaged. During design workshops, it’s extremely important for the core project team to stay involved. The core team should prioritize engaging cross-functional SMEs internally to ensure that the process design is not only streamlined, but all-inclusive of necessary participants. A bonus of this engagement–these SMEs will be more equipped to become future power users and evangelists of the system within their unique department or function. 

6. Formalize your sign-off process. Once you’ve completed your design, put a bow on it via a formalized sign-off. This act may seem symbolic, but it’s a way to ensure your team is fully engaged and bought in. A clearly defined scope of work that is agreed upon across your team, the vendor and the implementation partner is critical to avoid an untimely “re-designs” in the middle of the build, or worse, after the build has been fully completed.  

Tips to follow during CLM implementation: 

7. Get trained: Classroom Style. If your CLM solution has formalized training offerings, the best time to take these courses is during the build. That way, as your team completes the technical components of the build, you’ll have your training at the top of your mind and be well prepared for the subsequent testing and go-live.  

8. Get trained: Hands-On Learning. Whether your team is utilizing a solution implementation consultant or not, hands-on learning during the build is a great call. Ask to take some time during the technical portion of the build to facilitate knowledge transfer. That way, you’ll be able to pair your knowledge of the concepts of the system with the real-world example that your organization will be using for years to come. 

Tip for user acceptance testing: 

9. Try to break everything. If you’ve followed the tips up until now, you’ll have a good understanding of your process, your people, the CLM tool and your specific CLM configuration. This is where it all comes together: bring a cross-functional team together to test all of the functionality of your configured system. If your team wants to do UAT right, don’t just test the standard path – test the nuances, exceptions, and one-offs. The best CLM systems have been fortified by a robust UAT with engaged participants. 

Tip for CLM go-live: 

10. Advocates = Adoption. Congrats – your team has made it to go-live in record time! Now how do you get your team to start using the system right away? If you’ve engaged your cross-functional teams throughout the process, utilize them as departmental trainers and system advocates. Change management is crucial to an efficient start on CLM. The more your team spreads the word and stays involved, the more likely your organization is to adopt usage of your new CLM tool.  

The more you invest upfront in these best practices ahead of time and throughout your CLM implementation, the more long-term success you’ll have. The most successful CLM implementations include an experienced system integrator partner and a dedicated vendor account team including customer success managers who’ve helped hundreds of customers navigate these projects successfully. 

While these 10 tips can be utilized for any contract management solution, selecting the correct tool increases the likelihood that you’ll have an efficient and effective start with contract lifecycle management. Learn more about how DocuSign CLM helps automate manual contract tasks, streamline workflows, and reduce errors and risk in your contract process. 

This blog was contributed by DocuSign and Spaulding Ridge, a DocuSign platinum partner.  

Questions on how the DocuSign CLM function can make your business more efficient and streamline your agreements process? Contact jennifer.schwartz@docusign.com or ahelin@spauldingridge.com. Or visit our sites at https://www.docusign.com/products/clm/toolkit or https://www.spauldingridge.com/docusign 

Like much of the rest of the world, I have been Wordling. Every. Day. Today, they said I was Splendid! Beyond the quick endorphin shot that gave me, I’ve been spending more time lately thinking about the magic formula behind this simple word game. What is it that makes it so engaging, and how can we make the technology we use every day in our professional lives this easy and fun?  

Here are my top takeaways on what makes Wordle such a delightful product experience and what inspiration the LegalTech community can take from those insights. First, the three things that really make Wordle connect with users:   
 

1. Wordle aces Time to Value – it gives users value back within seconds (in this case, value being fun). It doesn’t require a huge learning curve, implementation time or onboarding time. The onboarding instruction guide is 85 words long and took me 40 seconds to read. 

2. Wordle avoids the Build Trap – it only has a few capabilities, and it makes those features work really well. Plus, it only lets you play once a day – meaning you can’t binge it and then get bored. It makes you want to come back again and again. It just works by doing a few things really well.  

3. Wordle is Agile –  Wordle was recently acquired by The New York Times, and some small hiccups ensued. We learned we weren’t all solving the same puzzle with our friends and families and speculation started growing that the acquisition would ruin the thing we all loved.  The brand needed an intentional, well thought-through approach to making the integration successful, protecting the essence of all that is good about Wordle. But the team recovered quickly! Our lesson is to listen, iterate and make improvements fast! 

So how can we take the essence of what Wordle does so well and apply it to the much more complex LegalTech space? We can start by bringing some joy into the equation. 

We all know the last two years have not been kind to corporate legal departments. A perfect storm of record M&A volume, a slew of new regulatory and compliance challenges – including a rapidly growing list of environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related issues – and a pandemic that disrupted traditional workflows and created widespread staffing shortages, has left many corporate legal departments feeling exhausted. 

I’ve seen the phenomenon first-hand. As chief product officer for LegalTech at Thomson Reuters, I help create technology to help legal teams confront their challenges. As those challenges have grown considerably over the past few years, I’ve felt a very real urgency to address the existential question: Can technology really help improve the experience of our people? 

As I’ve continued to talk with clients – one of whom started a call by apologizing for looking disheveled because he hadn’t slept in 48 hours – We’ve landed on three key criteria to inform LegalTech product development experience from the customer’s perspective.   

1. LegalTech needs to be Smart – The LegalTech industry needs to ensure we are truly saving people time, not asking them to spend more time monitoring and second-guessing the technology. That’s a really big deal when it comes to leveraging AI for things like automated contract review and spend management analytics. It means the technology must understand the language and nuance of each industry to inform the next best actions – and explain those recommendations by showing the logic. It means we need to be able to trust that the AI is fair, representative, and accurate. We need a human-centered approach to AI that instills trust and confidence.  

2. Proprietary platforms need to be Open – The way we work and collaborate has changed in the last few years, with cats and alien eyes joining us on virtual meetings. We must bring technology to where people are already working. For decades, tech companies have built software on their own proprietary platforms hoping to win clients over to their product universe. In fact, it is a far more effective strategy to build an open platform that can work seamlessly through existing platforms, which legal departments are already using to collaborate, both with their in-house colleagues as well as outside counsel.  
    

3. Technology is all about staying Connected – Over 50% of large legal departments use more than nine legal technologies, often disconnected from each other. This leads to a fragmented and inconsistent experience, and the effect is the opposite of what  we all want – needing technology to just work, seamlessly. Law departments have a role to play – asking for industry standards like LEDES and SALI, asking for open APIs, asking for ownership of their data. Raise the issue with software providers, asking for your suite of solutions to cooperate with and complement one another. And tech companies need to listen, learn and innovate. 

Tying this all together, tech providers need to think like partners. For some product development that means rolling, iterative software development schedules make incremental refinements and improvements every day or every week, allowing end-users to learn and absorb new product enhancements gradually as part of their workflow. 

The world has changed. The way people work has changed. In LegalTech, this means we need to be smarter, with human-centered AI capabilities, open, with the ability to meet people where they work, and connected, intersecting the choice of technology with the integration of technology.   

LegalTech can not only be better, but it can also be – dare I say – Splendid! 

Author: Kriti Sharma is Chief Product Officer, LegalTech at Thomson Reuters.

Elevate’s mission is to help law organisations with practical ways to improve efficiency, quality, and business outcomes. Today’s legal operations teams take a strategic business approach to their work with law department teams. Lately, the challenge to do ‘more with less’ has intensified, increasing the opportunity for law department heads and legal operations teams to achieve greater efficiency through innovation. 

The findings of recent reports [1] from multiple law industry experts drive home the point. Although many law departments’ headcounts are rising, particularly for legal operations teams, law department professionals must contend with greater workloads, especially around compliance. In addition, law departments find it ever more challenging to secure and retain talent, and law department lawyers spend much of their time on non-complex, rote work and automatable tasks. Many law department leaders don’t have the ability to obtain real-time, actionable data on outside counsel activity, performance, and costs. 

To capitalise on the opportunities that will positively impact their organisations and the industry at large, general counsels’ collective goals include: 

• Ensure the highest and best use of their lawyers 
• Gain better control of legal spend (rather than simply slashing it) 
• Leverage data and AI to analyse law department and outside counsel activity and performance to achieve strategic business advantages  
• Manage and prepare for emerging data-related risks  
• Evolve legal operations’ strategic capabilities. 

Pursuing these goals occurs in the context of a law department’s level of operational maturity, as measured by the “CLOC Core 12” functional areas. Some organisations are still at the emerging stage, with a few defined legal operations processes or templates, limited use of technology, and only starting to develop formal metrics and institute reporting. Other law departments are further along, with a defined operational strategy linked to overall business goals, well-defined processes, standardised templates, basic tools, and nascent reporting capabilities. A few law departments have evolved into the highest level of maturity: they have strategies that include short – and long-term initiatives; they have created and use embedded processes, automation, simplified templates; they pursue continuous improvement through updating playbooks, refining processes, and adopting new technology; they have deployed enterprise-wide tools that leverage systems integrations to facilitate collaboration, and they use reporting and enforce metrics that incorporate business intelligence to drive optimal results. 

During this workshop and subsequent breakout sessions, our panelists and the session attendees will highlight their respective maturity stages, the challenges faced, the decision process in selecting a solution, how and what to measure for success, and the positive impact that solution has had to date. Workshop attendees will exchange their stories and lessons learned. These stories will be anonymised and available on our website.  

Increasing a law department’s functional maturity begins with understanding its goals, challenges, and needs. Those factors form the basis for a sensible, effective strategy and dictate how best to customise solutions for a given organisation to ensure an innovative path forward. Helping law departments with all of those activities is what Elevate’s consulting, services, and technology are all about. 

[1] See, for example, “Vertically integrated Legal Service” (Neville Eisenberg and Richard Susskind in The Practice – Vol. 7 Issue 4 May/June 2021); Alternative Legal Service Providers: 2021 Report (Thomson Reuters Institute, the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law, and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford); 2022 Report on the State of the Legal Market (The Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center and the Thomson Reuters Institute). 

One of the most frequent (and frustrating) charges for a legal department is to find work that can “create business value” across the broader organization. With a goal that nebulous in definition and scope,  it’s easy to see how initiatives to create value are difficult to get off the ground. Even projects that seem likely to provide clear benefits across multiple teams can be delayed or left unfunded without a direct line to track revenue impact. Legal operations teams are the ideal driver for these legal-led initiatives, as they are uniquely positioned to help define, align and track cross-functional value.

Overseeing the adoption of a digital contracting process and platform, is a legal-driven initiative that will provide significant company-wide benefits. But to make a compelling business case for a digital transformation of this scale, legal operations professionals need to draw a clear line between contracts, the data that can be tracked from them, and profitability. In some cases, legal operations will need to translate existing processes into dollars and cents so they can illustrate improvement. In others, they need to track new data points in order to illustrate financial impact.

In this post, we’ll highlight a few ways that a better agreement process can directly create business value and align to larger enterprise goals. It’s part of a bigger conversation about why legal teams (and legal operations in particular) should drive contract transformation. At the core of this discussion is a law department that is empowered with data about the way contracts are searched, created, negotiated, executed and managed throughout the entire organization. As you read through, consider the data your department currently has access to and the additional data you would need to collect to make your case and how you can easily digest and report on that data.

Cost reduction

An extremely straightforward way to increase business value is to find and eliminate unnecessary cost. Every dollar of eliminated waste is a dollar of business value. With a modern contract management platform that serves as a searchable repository for storing agreements in one place, it’s easier than ever for legal operations to give the business more visibility into obligations, unwanted auto-renewals, help consolidate duplicate contracts and flag rogue cost centers.

With robust search and analytics functions built into the repository, contracting teams can also pinpoint specific contract language that leads to penalties, litigation and disputes. By highlighting these problem areas, legal operations and contracting teams can make adjustments that minimize similar costs going forward, and can also lead to reduced outside counsel spend.

Data-based workflow decisions

Digital systems do far more than just create consolidated data about the content of contracts, they track data about and uplevel the contracting process itself. Now, central contracting teams can look at the agreement process from end to end and begin collecting data about contract turnaround time, error rate, volume by geography, hours spent servicing each line of business, etc. For key questions about how dollars are spent or saved in documenting the terms of business agreements, legal contracting teams can use the workflow data generated to find a metrics-based answer.

Integration of your CLM tool and processes with other critical business systems further amplify the value of data generated from an agreement platform. Linking data from other systems—customer or vendor management, payment, compliance, HR, etc.—helps legal understand their own workflows better and uncover areas for business partners where handoffs can be simplified.

Increased speed

Time is money. The faster and simpler you make it for your business to complete contracts, the faster you can achieve desired business objectives and the faster you can generate revenue from those activities. An easy way to increase speed is to replace manual handoffs with automation. Rather than relying on a contract creator to route an agreement to the correct internal approvers, a well-designed digital system can automatically send the document to the next responsible party and alert them to their tasks in the systems where they do their work.

Integration with other systems plays a vital role in increasing the speed of contracting as well. When a sales user can pull contract data and pre-approved clauses directly from their CRM and self-service clause library, legal teams can spend less time on correcting errors during the review process. When changes and alerts can be delivered directly through Slack, teams will spend less time searching email for the latest version of an agreement. And when this time savings are scaled to hundreds of contracts per month, it’s easy to see how deals get done more quickly, directly contributing to the bottom line.

Better forecasting

Earnings forecasts have a lot of financial ripple effects through an organization. Legal teams have an opportunity to create business value by contributing to these forecasts with high-confidence data on terms contained in both completed contracts and agreements currently under negotiation. With a clear understanding of the content of those agreements, dollar value and obligations therein legal teams can create accurate predictions of both revenues and costs related to contract fulfillment, leaving far less gray area in the overall forecast.

This is just one example of how a digital contracting platform can help legal operations teams align to the larger goals of the enterprise and set up metrics to track progress. Using real-time data about the company’s contracts, the legal team can create a powerful recommendation engine to help leadership respond to the current business conditions.

Employee resource efficiency

Using traditional methods of contract management, legal team members spend far too much time on repetitive tasks that don’t take advantage of their unique skills. A modern contracting system supported by AI can eliminate much of that busywork, by reducing hours spent searching for the correct contract language, enhancing reporting, decreasing immediacy biases, and making negotiation suggestions based on predetermined risk levels. In the same way that spell check and track changes have become a routine part of contract creation and revision, intelligent contracting analytics can become ubiquitous for legal teams that manage far-reaching contract ecosystems.

With redundant work significantly reduced, legal operations professionals can help create more effective legal teams that have the ability to focus on new projects or further develop their special skills. More effective use of internal resources could also mean less reliance on outside counsel, which is a significant cost savings, as discussed above.

To learn more about how legal teams can create business value with better contracting practices, meet with us at CLOC’s Global Institute in Las Vegas May 9-12! You can visit us at Booth 401 or attend our interactive workshop on “How Simple Can Contracting Get” at 10:30am on May 11th in Monet 3 & 4. 

In the meantime, please check out our quick guide to contract management best practices.

In 2020, a worldwide pandemic forced legal operations teams to get creative, find new technology solutions for remote work and identify ways to maximize efficiency without increasing headcount or risk. Now, with the worst business impacts of the pandemic hopefully behind us, forward-thinking legal operations teams continue to build on this evolution, accelerating transformation to help their organizations grow stronger than ever. 

What trends are having the most significant impact on corporate legal operations?  

This blog post, which highlights findings from our latest whitepaper, compiles current data, metrics and trends from leading legal operations reports into one comprehensive guide. It also maps each trend to the CLOC Core 12. From bigger budgets to prioritizing diversity and inclusion, closing compliance gaps and beyond, it illustrates how legal operations will take action to solve today’s (and tomorrow’s) most pressing challenges. 

1. The Win-Win of AFAs (CLOC Core 12: Financial Management) 

Alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) have often been branded as complicated, and that’s likely due to many legal departments fearing they may pay more with an AFA than an hourly fee. However, the tide is slowly changing as the average AFA revenue across AmLaw 200 firms has consistently increased since 2018. 

However, AFAs – which offer benefits for spend management over traditional billable hours — can be incredibly advantageous for clients, legal operations teams and law firms. They provide more control over spend, more reliable billing and a greater capacity for companies to remain on budget. 

Generally, the more flexible an AFA, the more appealing it is. Utilizing spend management software to analyze current AFAs and compare vendor rates can help make enterprise-changing decisions. 

2. Championing Diversity and Inclusion (CLOC Core 12: Organization Optimization & Health) 

Not only do diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives contribute to more robust work quality and skyrocket a competitive edge, they simply encapsulate the right thing to do. Still, despite an American Bar Association (ABA) ‘s Model Diversity Survey determining a marked leap in diversity among in-house counsel senior leadership, only 11.5% of GCs at Fortune 1000 companies were ethnic or racial minorities. 

There is good news, though: post-pandemic, legal operations professionals cite their number-one priority as implementing a D&I program. 

Bloomberg’s 2021 Legal Operations Survey concluded that diversity is bolstered by both tracking metrics and introducing new processes, such as internal diversity training, more remote work opportunities and forward-thinking recruiting patterns. Also imperative? Holding vendors, namely law firms, responsible for the same standards of diversity and inclusion. 

Three trailblazing companies that have elevated D&I are Intel, Uber and Novartis AG. Corporate legal departments can start by asking their current law firms to complete the ABA Model Diversity Survey and combining that data with D&I information from RFPs in a centralized legal solution. 

3. Navigating Data-Driven Vendor Processes (CLOC Core 12: Firm & Vendor Management) 

According to a survey of GCs, vendor management is their top priority. This is even though CLOC’s State of the Industry Report revealed only 27% of legal department respondents formally reviewed law firm performance. In such an absence of vendor evaluation guidelines, how can return on investment (ROI) be determined? 

This is where legal technology software shines. By assisting legal operations teams in orchestrating a formal vendor performance review process, it can also track vendor metrics, billing compliance, accruals and spend totals, shifting to a data-driven strategy and the most cost-effective business resolutions. 

For an example of how a company built its own vendor management app to standardize vendor approval, automate engagement letter creation and execution and streamline the RFP process, see here.  

4. Bigger Legal Tech Budgets (CLOC Core 12: Technology) 

Corporate legal departments are projected to triple their legal technology budgets by 2025, according to Gartner’s 2021 Legal Planning & Budgeting report. Additionally, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s (CLOC) 2021 State of the Industry Report revealed that technology implementation is increasing, a triumph in efficiency for legal operations professionals who often tend to handle as many as five different business areas. 

Not surprisingly, efficiency is the principal motivator encouraging general counsel (GC) and chief legal officers (CLOs) in $1B+ organizations to purchase new tech. With legal operations teams seeking to streamline and automate workflows, these purchases prove more than the sum of their parts. They are an integral part of “a defined and actionable legal systems roadmap,” the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) 2021 Legal Technology Report for In-House Counsel says.  

In fact, 32 percent of respondents in Deloitte’s 2021 State of Legal Operations Survey believe that procuring state-of-the-art e-signature, e-billing and contact management tools have supplied them with the ability to “provide actionable KPIs and reporting without significant manual effort,” maximizing time, energy and expenses saved. 

5. Bridging Cybersecurity and Compliance Gaps (CLOC Core 12: Information Governance) 

With data breaches on the inevitable rise and the average cost of a breach $4.24 million, it’s no wonder that 57% of the respondents in an ACC survey noted the urgency of having a “comprehensive data management strategy to ensure compliance, defensibility and security.” 

Legal operations are an essential puzzle piece in comprehensive cybersecurity. Law.com stresses that organizations collaborate with IT to conduct data security and privacy measure audits focusing on consumer protection. The American Bar Association revealed that only 43% of those surveyed use encryption, and only 39% execute multi-factor authentication. Because remote work protocols dramatically augment technical vulnerabilities and cost over $1M more per breach, investing in a secure multi-factor authentication tool is fundamental for risk management. 

6. Capturing the Power of AI (CLOC Core 12: Technology, Practice Operations)  

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer merely a visionary trick in sci-fi flicks: its tech has helped lawyers and legal operations professionals analyze data patterns and generate business insights. 

AI has proven especially vital in legal contract review software by reviewing thousands of contracts simultaneously, migrating legacy contracts and exporting data in under five seconds. Studies show that its functional aptitude for performing first-pass reviews makes even the newest users more than 51% productive and 34% efficient. 

Those percentages provide a compelling argument for AI when extrapolated across a legal department. Whereas an average company has 55 lawyers who review a total of 9,526 contracts annually, AI can propel the same legal team to process 4,906 more each year. That’s analogous to hiring 28 additional lawyers! 

Another bonus? Saving in-house counsel countless hours while circumventing the 9.2% average value “leakage.” 

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Whether it’s accelerating staff, budget or technology, each of these legal operations trends shares one element: in today’s rapidly metamorphosing world, they are becoming more critical by the day. Embracing change and advancing unrivaled growth with enterprise legal management software, contract management and transformational vendor and diversity programs will revolutionize legal operations in 2022—and long into the future. 

Read more about these trends in our latest industry white paper: Six Leading Corporate Legal Operations Trends For 2022. 

The legal profession has historically seen itself as unique and exempt from the constraints and concerns that have dominated the business sphere. With the rise of technology and its role increasing in power and influence over how businesses run, the legal profession now is coming around to the idea of not being a cost center and the department of no to a value creator and the department of can do. 

What has aided the legal department in transforming into a business partner and value creator, in part, has been the legal operations role. Yet, many persistent myths surround legal operations, the purpose it serves, and how best to develop such a function. Like most things, a legal operations function needs a solid foundation to grow.  

It Starts with Hiring 

The foundation begins by recruiting and hiring people who can speak both the “traditional” language of legal (words) and the “traditional” language of business (numbers and data). Legal operations individuals also possess both process improvement acumen and technological know-how that they can use to evaluate and improve existing processes and assess potential new tools to put in place to facilitate better productivity and efficiency. As for the specific backgrounds of legal operations professionals, they have diverse backgrounds. Some are former consultants or finance professionals. Others may be former attorneys or paralegals. All bring a wealth of experience working with legal professionals and the ability to bridge the gap between the legal, finance, and technology worlds.  

Bridging the Business and Legal Gap 

Although not a legal operations professional myself, I have often functioned in this role in the various legal departments that I have been a part of. Given their small size and the need for me to be a cross-functional business partner and enable business growth while also protecting the company against excessive levels of risk, this meant I needed to take on a variety of CLOC’s 12 Competencies outlined in its 12 Competencies Reference Model. Of these 12 competencies, two that I took on and developed for myself were knowledge management, managing outside legal spending, and technology management and support.  

The Contract Management Conundrum 

Contract lifecycle management is one area that illustrates these two competencies coming into play. As someone who has long lived in the world of contracts, managing a small number of them doesn’t seem to be an insurmountable task. Yet, that small number can and often does increase exponentially when working for a fast-growing company. As the number of contacts grows, so does the challenge of managing them (and so does the complexity of the contracts themselves)! Practically, this means that your manual management process may require something that is less time-consuming and more efficient.  

Contract Complexities Pre and Post Award 

Legal operations individuals know that drafting and negotiating contracts is one thing and that managing them is quite another. Managing them requires the input and support of several business functions since contract obligations have far-reaching impacts. This is where having the proper processes and tools in place can make a world of difference and allow for better and more strategic contracting. Managing contracts includes not just ensuring that the right people review the agreement and its terms but also tracking key milestones and deadlines and gathering data regarding common contracting pain points and preferred fallback clauses. 

Choosing the Right Tech 

Technology can help here but finding the right technological tool can often be an overwhelming, time-consuming task in itself. This is where having a legal operations professional, or simply someone who can take on some of the duties of a legal operations role, can be immensely helpful. That person will have the experience and knowledge to navigate the contract management space and, ideally, after doing an audit of your company’s existing processes, be able to suggest ways to improve the processes and potentially integrate a new technological tool or service to help automate and expedite contract lifecycle management.  

The importance of having individuals who can bridge the knowledge and skills gap between the legal, finance, and technology worlds cannot be overstated. Businesses do not operate in a vacuum, and neither should their individual departments. Legal operations effectively serves as the glue that brings these different teams together, especially when it comes to developing the right processes and selecting the best tools to be used by the right people. 

If you are eager to learn more about this fast-growing and exciting space, please consider attending Agents of Change: Leveling up Legal Operations to Maximize Business Growth where Matt Patel, Co-Founder and COO of Malbek and two legal operations leaders will discuss legal operations best practices! 

By Jeffrey Solomon, Senior Director of Product Management, Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions 

Corporate legal departments (CLDs) are becoming increasingly technology-driven, and yet most CLDs would probably not consider themselves full of technology experts. After all, who gets into the business of law to become the next Elon Musk?  

Still, there’s no doubt technology is an essential component of a successful, well-run CLD. That’s why, according to Gartner, legal departments are expected to increase their spending on legal technology threefold by 2025. Indeed, if you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you probably have some form of legal bill review software or another type of legal operations application a click or two away.  

And while it’s great that you’re likely already using some form of technology to accomplish everyday tasks and (hopefully) make your department more efficient, there are bigger questions at hand beyond just “How can I save time on bill review?” Questions like:  

• Which technology investments will help me achieve my departmental and corporate goals? 
• Will AI or similar kinds of modern technologies help me reach my goals more quickly or more strategically? 
• If so, which solutions are most appropriate for my department today, and which should I plan for in the future? 

A technology roadmap is essential to successful legal operations 

To answer these and other questions–and to make sure you end up investing in the right technologies– you need to develop a roadmap that will help you get from whatever technology maturity stage you’re in right now to where you want to be. A technology roadmap is a long-term, multi-year plan that allows you to assess your current technology resources and align existing and future investments to both your CLD’s and the company’s goals. 

Creating a well-considered and solidly planned roadmap is essential if you want your lawyers to work more productively, intelligently, and efficiently. It will allow you to achieve three things: 

• Plan for and invest in the technologies that will add the most value to your organization in the short term and long term 
• Keep you from wasting money on “shiny objects” that will not help you achieve your business objectives or simply won’t be adopted 
• Ultimately generate greater efficiencies, better business outcomes, and help your teams work smarter and faster 

Building your technology roadmap 

How can you generate your legal technology roadmap—one that’s unique to your business, is adaptable enough to evolve as your organization’s needs change, and sets you up for current and future success? 

That’s the question at the heart of our latest whitepaper, A Practical Guide to Creating a Legal Technology Roadmap. It is a step-by-step guide to creating a technology roadmap to ensure you’re aligning your technology investments with your corporate objectives and your current reality. You’ll learn: 

• How to get started 
• Which questions to ask 
• How to analyze your department’s legal technology maturity level 

• How to prioritize technology needs for the stage you are in and the next stage in your development 
• How to get buy-in from senior leadership and the day-to-day users in your core processes 
• And more 

Download the white paper today to learn how to build a roadmap that is aligned with your CLD’s vision for the future. 

The art of tailoring an approach that aligns to an organization’s unique needs 

As corporate law departments continue to look for ways to do more with less, the concept of shared services frequently enters into the equation. For most organizations, centers of excellence (COEs) represent a generally familiar approach. Historically, a “typical” COE model was often thought to rely upon lower-cost/administrative resources focused on lower-risk tasks that arise with frequency. And while this type of COE most certainly still exists, gone are the days where this one-size-fits-all approach to shared services is the only option on the table. This blog post will outline the considerations most heavily influencing the design of shared services models today, identify a few potential challenges (most of which can be proactively mitigated) and provide guidance on the next steps toward designing a (successful!) shared services model. 

In exploring how a COE might drive value in an organization, where should a corporate legal operations department start? 

There are many reasons to consider legal shared services: improving client service, reducing costs, standardizing processes, lowering legal costs or spend, supporting corporate strategy, eliminating redundant processes, or helping to introduce new technologies. So — where to start? 

1. Define  short- and long-term goals in collaboration with stakeholders for the shared services initiative 

Shared services centers appear to be underused, according to findings from a 2021 EY study in conjunction with the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession. While 73% of companies use them to support the legal function in some capacity, only 9% use them extensively. One frequent driver of this lag in shared services adoption is the absence of a clearly articulated set of goals and objectives for the initiative. In the absence of this, shared services models can stagnate, thereby reducing overall value and leaving internal resources frustrated by the lack of progress. To avoid this outcome, formally define goals at the outset and include all impacted stakeholders in the process. 

2. Solicit executive feedback on shared services goals and enlist leadership support to drive stakeholder buy-in 

The implementation of a shared services model can be challenging under the best of circumstances. However, with a well-articulated set of goals and buy-in from appropriate members of an organization’s leadership team, the likelihood of success with a COE initiative will increase exponentially! Once the goals for the shared services initiative have been defined, pressure test them with leadership to confirm alignment with other strategic initiatives that may or may not be in the COE line of sight. Finally, ask for a commitment from leadership or an executive sponsor to help drive stakeholder messaging, thereby confirming a top-down approach to promote enthusiastic acceptance of the shared services initiative and the organizational changes it will bring. 

3. Develop an implementation strategy  

There is no substitute for a well-defined strategy, except a well-defined and documented strategy. With this in mind, be sure to formally capture the requisite details of the implementation plan, socialize and gather feedback as required, and identify a resource to maintain and update the COE plan as required. 

4. Communicate early and often 

No one likes to be surprised by changes to organizational strategy and/or structure. Thus, a change management and communication plan that contemplates stakeholder outreach both early and often is likely to drive the best outcomes. 

Realistically, what legal work can be managed in a shared services setting? 

The law department’s move toward shared services does not necessarily mean making wholesale changes all at once. Typically, law departments will start a shared services journey with activities that are high volume or low risk that have clearly defined and standardized processes, for example, e-discovery, template automation, document review, entity management or contract life cycle management. Starting with high-volume or low-risk areas, companies can design specific workflows and can measure performance according to standard metrics and process guidelines. Begin with one, two or several of these activities during the initial move to this delivery model. 

However, there is a trend for companies to also look at expanding the legal shared services model beyond those traditional activities to include more transactional-type support. These activities may include regulatory remediation and repapering programs, contract drafting and negotiating (vendor or customer) intragroup service agreements, and IP rights management. These types of activities were previously thought to be too high risk to be handled by a shared services format; however, with detailed workflows and proper oversight, there has been success with expanding beyond process support. It should be noted that the expansion typically requires a legal-driven shared services model with the right mix of legally trained professionals or a COE that utilizes professionals with the right legal skills to provide the necessary amount of legal expertise to offer guidance when needed.  

Is it a COE or something different? 

There is often a lot of confusion about the differences between COEs and shared services teams. A shared services center (SSC) usually refers to a dedicated unit, including people, processes and technologies, that is structured as a centralized point of service and is focused on one or more defined business functions. Shared services may come from several different physical locations (regional or global) and can operate onshore, offshore or virtually in some cases. Service delivery may be executed by internal resources or external providers, or a hybrid combination of both, and can involve a single or multiple business functions. Companies sometimes engage external providers to consult with various elements of the design, structure, location and execution options.  

Comparatively, a COE is typically thought of as a specialized knowledge center. A COE is a team that provides leadership, leading practices, research, support or training for a particular focus area. The focus areas of COEs vary and may include technology, business concepts, strategic initiatives or specific legal skills. In other words, they are smaller groups within an organization that can get better results by devoting themselves to a particular activity or set of ideas. Within COEs, there is an emphasis on advanced training and certification, knowledge sharing, and development of standards and methodologies. For COEs to gain acceptance within an organization, they must be given a clear mission and then provide demonstrable value to the business units. Like SSCs, COEs have many variations and should be implemented to meet an organization’s individual legal needs. COEs can be centralized at the enterprise level, within business segments or in the form of smaller communities of practice.  

This is a big change — what is the best way to bring the shared services vision to life? 

The deployment of a shared services team can represent a big change from a cultural and resourcing perspective. A strong business case that clearly illustrates the overall benefits to the organization and the impacted resources will establish a solid foundation on which to build. From there, internal socialization of both project goals and project approach is key, although a methodical change management and communications plan is equally important to determine the right messaging at the right time. Finally, a flexible, phased approach to shared services implementation will allow for adjustments as needed.  

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization. 

EY member firms do not practice law where not permitted by local law or regulation. Ernst & Young LLP (US) does not practice law or offer legal advice. 

Co-authored by: 

Christine Sanz, Senior Manager, EY Law – Legal Function Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP 

Melissa Miller, Senior Manager, EY Law – Legal Function Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP 

Legal operations professionals are the cornerstone in any corporate legal department with wide ranging impact across an organization. They are the process visionaries who make sure the legal work gets done on-time and on-budget, that the right stakeholders are included, risk is identified and mitigated, and that the best technology and service partners are tapped to make everything run smoothly. 

When it comes to working with outsourced service providers from managed services or alternative legal service providers (ALSPs), there is both a science and art to managing the vendor relationship to extract maximum value.  Done right, the outsourced relationship can bring tremendous support and expertise to the legal operations function as well as other departments and external law firms.  Handled poorly, the outsourcing effort can fail, creating unnecessary risk, reflecting negatively on the legal operations team and other teams within the organization. 

So how can legal operations pivot to extract maximum value from its outsourced service providers and ensure success?  By focusing on five key areas including Building Trust, Communication, Metrics and Reporting, Active Engagement, and Honesty. 

Building Trust

If trust cannot be established between legal operations and the outsourcing provider, the relationship is doomed; trust is a two-way street.  The outsourcer must consistently and predictably provide excellent communication, quality work, and accountability with proper metrics and reporting to back it up.  All of this instills confidence in their services.  However, the legal operations person also has to become an internal advocate for the outsourcer, someone within the company who is committed to their success. Change can be frustrating so legal operations must ensure that all of the internal stakeholders remain informed and involved as the relationship grows. 

Whether it’s a one-off project or a long-term managed services contract, the legal operations professional has the power to be a champion of the outsourcing effort.  Legal operations often has to make the case for outsourcing, to show proof of concept, anticipated value, and a vision for how it can work best.  There may be some initial resistance and objections at the company, and a preference to use in-house resources.  Legal operations needs to be vocal about the reasons and benefits for outsourcing in order to overcome and address concerns. Service providers need to be very aware that their champion will also be the person taking the brunt of criticism when partners are not performing up to expectations, so their goals must include supporting that champion proactively and substantively wherever possible.

At the outset of the relationship, the provider needs to get connected to the right people and necessary information.  Their client contact within legal operations must help get them what they need to get them off to a flying start.  When both the client and the outsourcing company trust each other and have one another’s backs, the relationship really takes off. 

Legal operations people working at large organizations often face a long process to get an outsourced vendor approved for a Master Services Agreement.  Therefore, it behooves them to support the services provider so that they are able to leverage that resource to the hilt once they finally have the agreement in place.  The company doesn’t need multiple vendors if it makes the most of the ones it has vetted.  Once vendors are approved, give them the training, information, and access they need to succeed.  Document the process with playbooks, briefing documents and workflow maps to establish clarity and uniformity.  Ensure that the company’s legal operations team and in-house lawyers are on hand to provide quality control at key junctures.  Any changes in process, even slight modifications, need to be checked and approved.

Communication

Communication with outsourced providers is more than emails, conference and phone calls – it’s a mindset and modus operandi.  The communication flow must be immediate and mutual between legal operations and the external resource regardless of the information being shared.  This includes sharing good news, relaying bad news, or discussing a process change.

From a troubleshooting standpoint, if an issue or problem arises, the outsourcing company should notify the client immediately and vice versa.  By definition, the outsourcing company has one degree of separation from the company itself, so delayed notification can cause the issue to get exacerbated and potentially more out-of-control.  Communicating the problem promptly and clearly allows for a solution to be devised so resolution comes more swiftly.  Quick issue notification, communication, and resolution are primary factors in building trust in the relationship and being a true partner.

Communication is also crucial from a billing standpoint, and the onus is on the outsourcing company to keep legal operations contacts informed of the financial status of ongoing projects.  Perhaps the work is clicking along fine but the bills are totaling up much higher than the budget allows – that’s a problem.  Or maybe there is not enough work being supplied by the client and the budget is not being used to its full extent; the outsourcer needs to communicate that, too. 

As a legal services provider, there is value in establishing a client’s preferred method of communication. Important emails can be lost in a busy mailbox and phone calls can go unanswered during a hectic day.  Understanding when a short conversation would be more effective than a flurry of email messages should not be underestimated.

Metrics and Reporting

Any discussion about communication these days inevitably leads to accountability through metrics and reporting.  The outsourcing company must track and provide status updates and reporting to the satisfaction of legal operations and its stakeholders.  At any time, legal operations should be able to ask the provider for status on team size, productivity, bottlenecks, and delivery dates and get a quick, thorough response.  Where physically is the work being done, and is the location secure?  Where are the work assignments coming from within the company, and are they in line with the outsourcing agreement?  Weekly check-ins may be necessary at the beginning of an engagement and then less frequent as the relationship becomes more established.  The more granular tracking and details the outsourcer can provide, the more prepared and forthcoming legal operations can be when reporting on progress to the GC and company executives.   

Tracking and reporting on metrics can provide more than updates and status reports. They can deliver valuable insights into a client’s processes, resourcing, data and help frame conversations around methodology or delivery improvements. One of the first operational tasks in a project should be the mutual agreement of the key metrics required to manage the process and risk. Both teams will obviously have different perspectives, but the core metrics needed by both teams will be very similar.

Metrics and reporting can be enormously helpful from a diagnostic point of view if something goes wrong.  Outsourcing companies have human beings on their delivery teams, and they are going to make mistakes, despite their best efforts.  Discovering these errors and mitigating or eliminating them as soon as possible helps to keep risk low and iron out kinks for a smoother, more flawless process.

Active Engagement

Outsourcing companies cannot work in a vacuum – they need frequent interaction to operate as a seamless extension of the corporation’s own team.  The outsourcing resources must be actively engaged with the client via email but also on calls, especially now that in-person meetings are uncommon and most are done virtually. 

The legal operations/outsourcing partner relationship is ever-changing and it can grow over time to serve the client organization more adeptly.  The more the outsourcer becomes familiar with the company’s priorities, protocols and deadlines, the more successfully it can support the client.  Both sides are equally invested in a quality result, both sides are careful not to waste time and money going down the wrong road.  Ideally, both legal operations and outsourcer are empowered to call an audible if a project is going astray. 

One of the secrets of successful outsourcing companies is the personalities of the people they employ.  Client-facing outsourcing team members must be able to speak up, push back, and earn the client’s confidence.  More passive individuals who are less forthcoming may be highly intelligent or knowledgeable but they are not always well suited to client-facing positions.  The best outsourcing providers have client-facing team members who have terrier-like perseverance and who develop the confidence to speak up at the right time.  These inherent tendencies are improved by empowerment and guidance provided by experienced managers.

Honesty and Transparency

The pandemic has brought about a new level of humanity and honesty in the working world.  How many times has a dog barking or child bringing in a school paper appeared in business meetings over the past two years?  Many of the formalities of business have fallen away, giving people the opportunity to be more “real” and connect on a more level playing field.

Honesty and transparency are essential elements to building strong legal operations/outsourced provider foundations.  This involves the culmination of all the principles mentioned above including communication, metrics and reporting, building trust and active engagement.  Over time, the outsourced provider earns trust through being honest and transparent with legal operations and vice versa. 

An honest outsourcing company will admit when a project is out of its wheelhouse and will not overstate its capabilities. While legal operations may be disappointed at an initial no, this is much preferable to the outsourcing company saying it’s capable and then the project fails.  An honest answer paves the way to a possible solution, and the companies may be able to work together to co-create a solution that benefits both.  Both legal operations and the outsourcing resource must be equally transparent about what each is providing and how they meet in the middle to get the job done right.

Conclusion

Legal operations are in a central position to leverage outsourced providers to bring about successful outcomes.  By combining key principles like establishment of trust, communication, measurement and accountability, active engagement and honest transparency, they ensure that outsourcing relationships pay off and deliver on their promise.  Over time, the relationship will shift from being client and outsourcing vendor to an equal partnership.  When legal operations cultivates outsourced teams which are true extensions of their internal resources, that’s a win-win.

About the Authors:

Clare Chalkley, Robert Daniel and Randi Salzberg are all subject matter experts (SMEs) in their respective fields at Integreon, a global ALSP and managed services provider. 

• Clare Chalkley, Vice President – Legal Services, is based in London and runs managed document review and litigation services projects for Integreon, having previously been a litigation support manager at Clifford Chance law firm and other roles in the field for 25+ years. 
• Robert Daniel, Senior Director and Financial Services SME, is based in the U.S., having previously worked for Bank of America in legal discovery and related positions for 25+ years.
• Randi Salzberg is Vice President, Marketing and Creative Services in Integreon’s Business Enablement Services division. Before Integreon, she was a Managing Director in Marketing at investment firm Alliance Bernstein for 25+ years.