Given the profound changes roiling the market for corporate legal services, it can be tough to tell just what makes today’s in-house law department tick. The agenda for CLOC’s Annual Corporate Legal Operations Institute, dissected in this infographic from Corporate Counsel Business Journal, isn’t a bad place to start.
Continue Reading CLOC Agendalytics
There are a few simple tricks you can try to improve the pace, accuracy and consistency of your document review team.
1. Batch by Thread
If you aren’t reviewing only the most inclusive email (the longest email in the conversation that includes all other emails in the conversation), then batching by thread complete is essential to fast and consistent review.
Continue Reading Easy Hacks for Better Document Review
Connie Collingsworth is chief business operations officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her remarks have been edited for length and style.
CCBJ: What led you to pursue a career in law?
Connie Collingsworth: I was somewhat strong-willed, always standing up for what was right, and I wanted to be an independent professional.
Continue Reading At the Table: Look Past the Paper to the Person
When you think of enterprise legal management (ELM) systems, you probably think about the ways they can make spend and matter management more efficient. But ELM systems are quickly evolving, becoming more comprehensive all the time, and today they can help optimize contract management, NDA creation and distribution, legal holds, legal service requests and much more.
Continue Reading Transforming the Legal Department: ELM Solution Puts Information at Everyone’s Fingertips
Legal technology, information management, cost control and convergence move into the spotlight.
To celebrate our 25th anniversary, we are digging into the MCC archives for insights into the evolution and accomplishments of corporate counsel. Last issue, we focused on our inaugural edition. This issue we examine our first five years – 1994-98 – a period when corporate counsel were focused on building closer relationships with outside counsel, exemplified by the DuPont partner program. Our next four issues will tackle five years of MCC at a clip. Enjoy the trip.
Continue Reading Looking Back: The Search for Trust, 1994-98
Jonah Paransky of Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions explains how law departments will deliver value with operational rigor. His remarks have been edited for length and style.
CCBJ: How has the corporate legal department’s role expanded beyond its traditional responsibilities?
Jonah Paransky: There are several key items worthy of notice. The first is there’s been a sea change in expectations for how corporate legal departments will operate.
Continue Reading Corporate Law Departments, Expected To Be More Like Other Units, Face a Sea Change
Late last year, CLOC, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, released the results of its first annual State of the Industry Survey, looking at such metrics as legal spend; legal department and legal ops headcounts; commonly used e-billing vendors, contract management systems and alternative service providers; and law firm evaluation priorities.
The respondents represented 156 companies in 32 industries, spanning 30 U.S. states and 11 countries. With a median company revenue of $7 billion, they claimed an average external spend of $60 million per company.
Continue Reading Resetting the Process: An inside look at the state of legal operations
There is an undisputable tension in the legal ecosystem. How do you explain it? Is it a natural tension that flares up every other decade? Is this the last industry to finally embrace technology? Is it a perfectly normal cycle that occurs from a macroeconomic perspective when innovation forces change? Or a combination of them all? There is obvious change evident in the pace of legal technology advancements, but that is only one part of the broader ecosystem. Here’s where that evolution is happening.
Continue Reading Tension in the Ecosystem: Will the practice of law ever be the same?
For the first time in some years, law departments are anticipating bigger budgets, and they plan to put that money to work in-house. That’s bad news for outside counsel, who continue to sit squarely in the crosshairs of spend-conscious general counsel and their ops squads, who, despite their growing budgets, plan to cut outside counsel’s share from 40% to 36%.
Continue Reading Cost Control Is Job 1
Thanks to ongoing technological improvements to enterprise legal management software, in-house operations are more efficient than ever. Dan Ruderman of LexisNexis CounselLink has worked in this space for decades and has seen the ways the broad implementation of legal spend management systems have helped attorneys become more focused – and helped law departments bring down their overall costs. His remarks have been edited for length and style.
Continue Reading Improving Law Department Operations