CLOC Celebrates Outstanding Legal Operations Achievements in 2024 Legal Innovation in Operations Project

San Jose, CA – April 17, 2024:  The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (“CLOC”), the leading organization dedicated to transforming the business and practice of law, is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2024 Legal Innovation in Operations (LIO) Project award.

Congratulations to:

First launched in 2020, the LIO Project was developed to honor innovation and design excellence in legal operations and recognize those contributing to the evolution of the global corporate legal ecosystem. This year’s recipients will be recognized during the CLOC Global Institute, May 6-9, 2024, in Las Vegas.

Irdeto initially relied on an external tool to maintain compliance with GDPR regulations but found that their process was creating inefficiencies and contributing to poor data quality. Over the course of nearly 9 months, the Irdeto Legal Operations team partnered with internal business units to initiate new processes and create automated workflows within existing systems. The outcome has resulted in reduced time, costs, and efforts across multiple teams, as well as allowed Irdeto to work in-house, without reliance on an external tool.

In 2020, Trane Technologies charted a new course, to boldly challenge what is possible for a sustainable world. Among the company’s core purposes was the creation of a world class Lean Enterprise. Executive leadership mandated the Legal Department to identify obstacles to efficiency, engage key players, and expand the journey of continuous improvement. This endeavor resulted in the creation of Lean Legal Operations (LLO), which applies lean principles to legal operations, creating efficiencies, common work, and information sharing to reduce duplicative efforts. LLO highlighted the need for a single point of access for all legal applications and today, it is becoming the bedrock of the Trane Technologies Legal Department.

Suzano, with over 500 contracts generated monthly, recognized the need for agility and efficiency in their contract management processes. That’s why they embarked on a journey to revolutionize their approach. Through collaboration with internal stakeholders, user feedback and a thorough analysis of systems, they adopted DocuSign and meticulously mapped all contracts and created prioritization based on impact, as well as developed automatic templates and workflows, and integrated with other existing systems. The results speak for themselves: 46% of procurement contracts are now generated automatically, reducing lead time to just 6.8 days. Additionally, the contract sending process has been optimized, taking only 10 minutes. Further, they possess an unwavering commitment to training and stakeholder engagement, with 18 sessions conducted and over 500 users trained in just four months. This holistic approach has not only improved efficiency but also bolstered security and compliance across the organization.

The LIO Project recognizes organizations that are pushing the boundaries of innovation and design in legal operations, while collaborating with in-house legal teams. The program focuses on recognizing those organizations that are proactively changing their practice group service and business models to better address client needs from an operational perspective, rather than solely from a substantive one. The program honors organizations that prioritize the analysis, design, and improvement of both the client experience and business performance through the lenses of its corporate legal function and their customers.

The final recipients were selected based on their ability to demonstrate the role and value of legal functions when focusing on business outcomes rather than solely on legal outcomes. Applicants are assessed based on the following criteria:

• CLOC CORE 12:  The solution should be delivered within one of the CLOC CORE 12 functional areas.
• Compelling Client Need: The solution should address a specific, articulated issue that meets the client and/or user’s need and can be applied to their situation.
• Addressable Market Size: The problem should be relevant to a large market of users/client, ensuring that the solution can be widely adopted.
• Robustness/Stress Testing: The solution should be thoroughly tested and/or refined in a meaningful way relying on evidence-based input where iteration and measured learning occurred.
• Feasibility: The solution should be feasible and easily built, replicated, or acquired by others.
• Inclusiveness: The solution should address the needs of both business of law personnel and legal practitioners, ensuring inclusivity across the board.
• Measurability: Specific metrics and measurements should be identified and applied to measure the success of the solution.
• Insightfulness: The teams should develop new learnings and insights from their efforts, contributing to the growth and development of legal operations

CLOC congratulates the 2024 recipients and thanks all who submitted compelling entries for this year’s LIO Project.

To learn more about the LIO Project, visit here.

Press Contact:

Angela den Tex

angela.dentex@cloc.org