CCBJ March 2023 Edition

The material in this publication contains general information, is not intended to provide legal advice and should not be relied on to govern action in particular circumstances. The sources of material contained in this publication are responsible for such material, and any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the source.

How to Spot and Nurture Future Leaders

CCBJ: Why don't we start with what led you to join Dunnington Bartholow & Miller?

I have a very non-traditional career path. I come from a music background and then decided to go to law school. In 2004, I created my own firm with a partner, somebody who clerked with me and whom I respect tremendously. We were partners for 10 years and then I started my own firm, which I had for three or four years.

Although I wasn’t looking to join a firm, I was approached to join Dunnington. As a solo practitioner it's very difficult to expand and I really wanted to get a bigger platform and have the support of associates and paralegals, and partners to refer business to.

Dunnington was a great spot to go to because I knew the vast majority of the people there and loved being around them. I chaired bar association committees they previously chaired and they were involved with me in other capacities in those associations. So I knew they would respect my practice and my path, and I really couldn't be happier with my decision.

Let's talk about your leadership style and who or what may have influenced it.

I currently serve on the executive committee of my firm and, as I mentioned, have held various leadership positions at bar associations and other organizations. That said, I never sought to be a leader and it was never an aspiration of mine. However, I do have ideas and like to implement them. I do see things I would like to fix, situations where I'd like to intervene and projects I want to participate in. So I guess by virtue of that aspect of my personality, I just ended up taking on leadership

positions. Life leads you from one step to the next.

I once saw a video of a very young Steve Jobs talking about who he likes to work at his company. He believed that better leaders came from people who don't necessarily want to be a leader. That is really me. I never aspired to be a leader but I have ideas and if things are

The really good attorney is able to take constructive criticism, move forward and submit a better draft. They have that grit.

 Olivera Medenica, Partner at Dunnington Bartholow & Miller LLP, talks about how openness to feedback and a stubborn resolve to do better are key traits to have.

not going the way I want them to be done, I'm going to address it.

What qualities do you look for when you're hiring new people for your team. It sounds like you want to be surrounded by people you like working with.

I do, but that likability factor is not necessarily the number one thing that I look for. Of course, you want the best GPAs from the highest-ranked law schools. But for me personally, what I look for in the experience of both associates and laterals is somebody who hits that “75%” and is a likeable person, someone I want to work with. If you can see immediately that it's going to be very difficult to work with the person then there is no fit.

But when they come into the interview I need to see they're hungry to work; that they're not afraid to roll up their sleeves and jump right in. There may be certain things they don't feel comfortable with, but they will try to work through it, really push themselves. I want to be confident that although you may have to give me three, four, five different drafts until the work product meets my expectations, you're still going to work hard and leave nothing in the tank.”

That's the kind of quality that I really value in an associate, and it's not that common. A lot of people take criticism very personally and they just can't learn and advance. I think the really good attorney is able to take constructive criticism, move forward and submit a better draft. To just keep at it. To have that grit, that strength to just power through it. Because you go to depositions and you have opposing counsel yelling at you. Or you go to a court and you have a judge yelling at you. It's not an easy world for an associate but that having that determination and that resolve to do better is important to me.

The same thing goes for a lateral. You can't predict what's going to happen 6 or 12 months from now. Are you going to have a bigger portfolio of clients? Are you going to have less of a portfolio? Either way you’ve got to work through it and keep plugging away. And if you keep at it

NETWORK

The participants in the CCBJ Network demonstrate, through their many contributions, their unwavering commitment to the advancement and success of corporate law departments. The engagement and support of these “partners of corporate counsel” assure we continue to develop and distribute the news and information this unique and sophisticated audience relies on to meet the evolving legal and business needs of their organizations.

Strategic Partners

American Arbitration Association

Barnes & Thornburg

Clifford Chance

Contract Logix

McGuireWoods LLP

Mitratech

Thomson Reuters

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP

Opentext

Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics

Advisors Contributors

CobbleStone Software

DISCO

Epiq

Everlaw

Exterro

iDiscovery Solutions

iManage

Level Access

Lighthouse Logikcull

Onit

SimpleLegal

Zapproved

Please help us improve and expand our services to corporate counsel by sharing your ideas with our publisher, Kristin Calve, at 844-889-8822 or kcalve@ccbjournal.com

in a consistent way—in a smart way—there's no doubt that you can be successful. But you do need to have that constant questioning of yourself every day. What have I done and how can I improve? It's a critical aspect of being successful, both as an associate and as a lateral. It’s that true grit that I want to see in people who come to Dunnington.

How would you describe the culture of your firm?

There is no room at Dunnington for somebody who is truly unpleasant and difficult to work with. We expect that everyone is treated with respect, from the receptionist and the person who helps you with photocopies to associates, paralegal and partners. That's

a critical part of Dunnington and has been ever since I joined. And there's not a chance in the world I would be here if it were not that way. Unpleasantness is not acceptable behavior.

For these reasons we rarely come across situations where our firm is divided. We work by consensus. Even big decisions that come across our desks are by consensus. We agree to things. We discuss them. It’s been that way as long as I have been here and, based on discussions with my partners, it precedes me. It's a place where your voice is heard. And everyone plays an important role.

We don't have legal assistants, we have paralegals. We do have support staff in the sense that we have

office services, a team that does photocopies and other administrative tasks, a receptionist, etc. But there is not one person on our team that is “extra.” Every person plays an absolutely critical role and given that we understand how important each person is to what we do, there's a culture of respect that pervades all aspects of our operations.

Can you talk about the best career advice that you've received, what the context was, and how it's helped you make these pivots?

I've been really blessed to have had some terrific mentors who have played an important role in my legal career. I never sought out a legal mentor; it’s happened naturally. And there haven’t been that many, maybe two that have played a really significant role. I can't say that there's one piece of advice that either one of them gave to me that was critical. It was more about the regular communication and the input when I sought it out that shaped the direction of my life. And even though my father passed away when I was about 21, he was very supportive of me career-wise, as is my mother. So I'm very fortunate in that respect.

But if there’s one bit of advice that’s really stuck with me and I use it a lot it is that sometimes you just have to pinch your nose and jump in cold water. What that means to me is for my career changes and big life changes, I just go with my gut instinct and then rely on my existing skills to make it happen. If you overthink decisions you can miss opportunities. So whenever I need to make a move or decision, that advice about diving right in helps me gather up my strength and just do it.

What changes would you like to see within the legal profession?

Greater diversity, of all kinds, and also greater clarity from in-house counsel as to what they expect in terms of diversity from their legal teams. I also think that a very important aspect of law is professional development, and it should start very early on in a lawyer's career at firms of all sizes. I believe it would lead to greater satisfaction for younger attorneys, greater longevity in the practice of law, and just better attorneys.

At Dunnington, we place an enormous emphasis on the professional development of our team members, particularly our associates. We have monthly meetings with a specialist who comes in and trains our associates, meets with them individually, helps them set up a business plan, and coaches them when they have to write articles or speak for the firm. Younger attorneys are really, really focused on their billable hours, which is incredibly important —we run a business—but so is professional development, because it's very difficult to move up to partner without it.

So I think for the legal profession as a whole, recognizing the importance of professional development is critically important. The attorney that not only has legal chops, but also the ability to manage a client in a professional manner is critically important. Being able to present to an in-house legal team is critically important. Being able to assess the reasonableness of a bill is critically important. There's no point in doing tremendous legal work for a client and then submitting a bill that makes absolutely no sense.

We try to instill in our associates how important it is to us to have the wherewithal to address all aspects of running a business, of making sure the client is happy, and of educating our clients about what's going on in the legal world. I do think the profession has made some progress on diversity but we're still far from where we should be, especially in top management. I think that’s very much on everybody's mind. 

There is not one person on our team that is “extra.” Every person plays a critical role and enjoys the respect that pervades all aspects of our operations.

Front

Not a Robot Lawyer!

As the AI wars heat up, the obvious question for lawyers is: What’s in it for us? Plenty, according to Pablo Arredondo, co-founder and chief innovation officer at Casetext, a legal tech company focused on improving access to legal research. “As cool as it is that artificial intelligence can generate text, that’s not what will matter most to the practice of law in the coming months and years,” Arredondo told the ABA Journal. “It can read text and summarize it and annotate it and translate it, and it can categorize text and synthesize it and interpret it,” Arredondo said at a panel at ABA Techshow 2023. “These are the things that lawyers spend a lot of their time doing in various ways, and having AI that can assist you while you do that is critical.” To make that happen, Casetext has released CoCounsel, billed as the “first AI legal assistant.” Arredondo says that unlike language models that provide false information, Casetext’s tool reliably helps with legal research, contracts and other tasks. But whatever you do, don’t call CoCounsel a robot lawyer. “It doesn’t actually change anything about the lawyer’s ultimate responsibility or the work that they do for a client,” he says. “If it is used correctly, it can add a huge amount of value. This is a tool to help lawyers do what they do every day.”

SHO R T TA K E S

Dumbing Down Sedona

Discovery guru Ralph Losey recently played a game with AI bot ChatGPT. He asked it to rewrite the 14 Sedona Principles at an 11th Grade and a 2nd Grade level. The results are fun and enlightening. Here’s Principle #14 in the original: “The breach of a duty to preserve electronically stored information may be addressed by remedial measures, sanctions, or both: remedial measures are appropriate to cure prejudice; sanctions are appropriate only if a party acted with intent to deprive another party of the use of relevant electronically stored information.” Here’s the 2nd Grade: “If someone breaks the rules and doesn’t take care of the information or tries to hide it on purpose, the court can make them fix the problem and even punish them.” 11th Grade is even shorter and easier to read. “Seems to me like the AI did a pretty good job,” Losey says.

Firms Need to Trim Fat

Law firm profits fell nearly 4% in 2022, according to a report from Wells Fargo, as hours billed per lawyer fell below 1,600 for the first time in the 15 years Wells has been doing the report. This has Owen Burman, managing director of Wells’ legal specialty group, fretting about excess capacity and low productivity as unsustainable. “A handful of law firms, including Goodwin Procter, Cooley, and Kirkland & Ellis, have trimmed their associate ranks as demand declined,” he says in a piece from Bloomberg Law. “That list could grow if demand doesn’t pick up.” Kay Hoppe, a well-known Chicago recruiter, is a bit more sanguine as managing partners at leading firms nevertheless remain bullish on long-term growth. “It’s not their first rodeo,” Hoppe says. “They are not overreacting.”

In-housers Resist “Bad Guy” Label

Unhealthy Working Ways

Mary Abraham believes the typical ways of working in law firms are problematic – even dangerous. “Specifically, working with constant interruption and too little sleep has an impact on the body similar to alcohol and substance addiction,” she writes on her blog, Above and Beyond KM. “The impact on work product also is bad unless the lawyer involved expends more of their depleted resources to catch and fix errors that result from exhaustion or distraction.” Clearly, she says, a change is needed – driven by what she calls partner activism. “This means exercising restraint in assigning work and setting standards. To be crystal clear: this absolutely is NOT about lowering standards. But it is about setting and maintaining standards that are healthy rather than excessive.”

The More Things Change

In this piece on JD Supra, Eric Dewey, former CMO of several law firms and now a business development coach for lawyers, discusses the General Counsel panel at Thomson Reuters’ 30th Annual Marketing Partner Forum, which included GCs from Sallie Mae, TMX Group, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, and Stretto. His key takeaway? “General counsel may change, but their themes remain surprisingly consistent,” he writes. Among those themes are these chestnuts: “understand our business; partner with us; be efficient; and, collaborate.” The top concerns for GCs include: ESG; legal operations; corporate governance; corporate and crisis communications; cloud services and anything cyber-related; ERP; health law; employment law; government relations; and regulatory, especially the strategy function.”

In this piece from FT, legal heads discuss the balancing act they face as they take the lead in today’s complicated policy environment. FT industry and investments editor Brooke Masters writes that top lawyers are now asked to weigh in on vaccine mandates, cyber security breaches, supply chain struggles, and diversity and inclusion efforts. That is sparking debate about how senior in-house lawyers balance their broader responsibilities, which means being involved in key decisions from the very beginning – which is not always how things play out. “We should not be the department that has just a final veto,” says Maaike de Bie, group GC at European airline easyJet. “That sounds to me like a position where people come to you at the very end. Whereas, if you are involved from the very beginning in decision-making, you can help shape the decision and make sure it’s both lawful and ethical and the right thing to do.”

Briefly

Alan Holliday Rejoins McGuireWoods’ Global Finance Practice in London

Private Equity Infrastructure Partner Brendan Moylan Joins Weil in London

DISCO Launches Timelines, a Cloud-Based Solution for Legal Professionals to Build More Compelling Cases Faster

Former Federal Investigator, General Counsel Jeremy Lewin Rejoins Barnes & Thornburg

Clifford Chance advises Obvion on their €500 million Green STORM 2023 RMBS issuance

CobbleStone Software

Listed as a Leading Legal Technology Solutions Provider by the Corporate Counsel Business Journal

OpenText ValueEdge23 increases speed-to-value for application development and delivery organizations in the OpenText Cloud

Epiq Announces Five New Capabilities for ‘Metrics That Matter,’ the Industry’s Most Comprehensive Legal Business Intelligence Solution

Akin Gump Advises Brightwood Capital Advisors on $300 Million Senior Secured Credit Facility for Giving Home Health Care

Onit Unveils the Next Generation of Its Platform and AI-Based Portfolio

ESG Leader Beth Sasfai

Joins Cooley in New York

Thomson Reuters Adds UK Supreme Court Dockets to Westlaw

William Essig Joins Barnes & Thornburg As Litigation Partner In Chicago

Required Reading

Too busy to read it all? Try these books, blogs, webcasts, websites and other info resources curated by CCBJ especially for corporate counsel and legal ops professionals.

AMICUS BRIEF: Association of Corporate Counsel / Sidley Austin

The SEC opened a can of worms when it took aim at DC’s Covington & Burling to enforce an administrative subpoena seeking the names of clients who were victims of a data breach. Covington rebuffed the feds. We’re not going to in violate professional conduct rules by disclosing client secrets, the firm responded, prompting the ACC to jump into the fracas with a brief, prepared with the help of Sidley, arguing that the SEC’s position would have wide-ranging negative ramifications for in-house counsel. “Corporations rely on the trust and confidence of the attorney-client relationship with their own lawyers and their outside lawyers,” says the brief. “In that way, in-house counsel functions in essence as both lawyer and client—often at the same time. That makes them doubly exposed to the Commission’s proposed degradation of attorney-client confidences and secrets.”

ARTICLE: BLOOMBERG LAW

It started with a breakthrough in removing skin blemishes several years ago. Chris Marlett, CEO of investment bank MDB Capital Holdings, seized the opportunity he saw to invest in nano-pulse technology that could make the treatment commercially available. He and others established a new company called Pulse Biosciences, which he eventually took public, and they were (kind of) off to the races. The process, particularly navigating patent protection, was a nightmare. And with that Marlett tried to turn lemons into lemonade by starting one of Arizona’s newest law firms: MDB Capital-owned PatentVest, an end-to-end firm to help startups hone their tech, capture it in strong patents, and, possibly, go public. Such an all-in-one legal and business service profiting nonlawyers is banned by ethics rules in virtually every other state, but Marlett is undaunted thanks to Arizona’s ongoing experiment in who can practice law. “Now,” he says, “we’ll have one unified process to do it.”

OPINION: MLA Global

Historically, in-house corporate legal teams have been viewed as the “department of no” – “a cost center and bureaucratic roadblock that stifles creativity and jams up the sales and marketing pipeline,” writes Allison Rosner, a director on the in-house counsel recruiting team of Major, Lindsey & Africa. However, she says, the pandemic gave rise to an opportunity to turn the tide. In order to make this happen, the business and legal departments need to be nimble and adapt together as aligned partners to facilitate success for the organization as a whole. Accomplishing this, however, requires a seismic shift in how most legal departments are perceived by other stakeholders across the organization. How do you accomplish this? In this piece, Rosner lays out 8 helpful steps to set the wheels of transformation in motion.

Contributors

Thanks to the law firms, technology companies, alternative legal service providers, management consultants and other supporters of corporate law departments who share their insights and expertise through the CCBJ network. Your participation is appreciated.

Jared Applegate is the Chief Legal Operations Officer for Barnes & Thornburg. Jared continuously works to provide market insight, competitive intelligence and innovative thinking to attorneys and clients on pricing strategies and related matter management solutions. Jared is responsible for managing the law firm’s portfolio of alternative fees, creating innovative and practical pricing solutions and improving firm economics.

Alexandra Guajardo is a Legal Operations industry expert with over 20 years of experience driving operational excellence on both the firm and corporate side. She continues to drive, advance and enhance the Outside Counsel Program at Shell USA, while providing strategic support to all legal departments globally.

Brenda Hansen is the Senior Legal Operations Consultant for Epiq’s legal business advisory practice. Brenda has more than 20 years of experience in the legal industry with both in-house and law firm administration experience. She is known for her ability to partner with business leaders to identify gaps and produce solutions that generate new levels of efficiency and productivity.

David McVeigh, Chief Executive Officer at Axiom, has more than 30 years of experience in business leadership, management consulting, and private equity portfolio company management. Prior to Axiom, he served as Gartner, Inc.’s Executive Vice President, Global Business Sales, and as a member of its operating committee.

Olivera Medenica CIPP/CIPM is an equity partner at Dunnington Bartholow & Miller LLP, and is a member of its intellectual property, privacy, advertising, art and fashion law, international, litigation and arbitration and France desk practice groups. Olivera is also a member of Dunnington’s Executive Committee, chairs its Trademark Practice Group, Privacy Practice Group as well as its Diversity Committee.

Karen Meyer is the CEO of Contract Logix. Karen leads strategy for the company and oversees all aspects of the business. Karen brings more than 20 years of SaaS experience building organizations to scale and drive growth. Prior to becoming Contract Logix’s CEO, Karen led Upland Software’s Global Customer Success organization.

Sterling Miller is a three-time General Counsel who spent almost 25 years in house. He has published four books and writes the award-winning legal blog, Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel. Sterling is a frequent paid contributor to Thomson Reuters as well as a sought-after speaker. He regularly consults with legal departments and coaches in-house lawyers.

Mark Nastasi is the Executive VP and founder of CobbleStone Software with more than 20 years of professional experience in the industry. He launched the first commercial contract software in 1995 named CMTS (Contract Management Tracking System). He has worked extensively with general counsel, paralegals, lawyers and legal professionals to help manage contracts better.

Anthony Pacilio is an expert in neurodiverse employment and currently serves as the vice president of CAI Neurodiverse Solutions. There, he helps neurodiverse candidates find roles, as well as helps businesses maintain best practices when working with neurodiverse employees. In the past, Anthony has worked in the finance and healthcare industries with similar missions.

Melanie Shafer is the Vice President of Customer Success and Professional Services of Onit’s portfolio of simple legal tech solutions which include SimpleLegal, ContractWorks, SecureDocs, and ReadySign. Melanie’s passion for managing people, developing employees, and building teams and processes is critical for scaling service operations through significant organic growth.

Keith Vallely has started numerous businesses with varying degrees of success, culminating with a multitime award winning Entrepreneur Magazine HOT 100 business in the technology sector. In 2011, Keith joined Epona USA, as the Director of US Sales, and as their first employee in the United States, to open the USA office and begin the process of spreading the power of SharePoint as a DMS platform for the Dutch-based Epona Legal BV.

Bruce White has more than 35 years of experience in the litigation, arbitration and mediation of environmental disputes and administrative permitting and enforcement proceedings. The majority of Bruce’s practice involves litigating and negotiating settlements for various complex environmental issues.

Weil Secures Exoneration in Texas after 26 Years in Prison

Cooley Partners With FemTech Lab to Support High Growth Femtech Companies

Clifford Chance advises Lenus Capital Partners on healthcare acquisition financing in Colombia

Akin Gump Advises Certain First Lien Lenders as Yak Access Completes Major Recapitalization

McGuireWoods Partner Susan Rodriguez to Become U.S. Magistrate Judge OpenText Collaborates with Bayer to Simplify Digital Operations

Weil Advises Advent International on the Sale of Tag to Dentsu

Melissa Messina Brings Investment Banking, Public Finance Skills to McGuireWoods

Clifford Chance advises Sealed Air on financing of US$1.15 billion acquisition of Liqui-Box

Paul Yin Continues Private Credit Growth Momentum at Akin Gump in London

Weil Secures 9-0 Victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in Bartenwerfer v. Buckley

Cooley Bolsters Private Equity and M&A Capabilities With Addition of FivePartner Team in Denver

McGuireWoods Advises CHIEF Capital on Investment in Guardian Fleet Services

Pulse

Shining a Light on Neurodiversity

ANTHONY PACILIO CAI NEURODIVERSE SOLUTIONS

 Anthony Pacilio picks up where he left off with his previous interview with CCBJ and gives more insight on best practices for hiring Neurodivergent individuals.

CCBJ: The last time you spoke with us about CAI and neurodiversity, you gave us a really great rundown, but I think it a brief refresher would be helpful.

CAI is a technology services firm that for 40 years has been bringing together talent and technology to power the possible. CAI Neurodiverse Solutions is our end-to-end neurodiversity employment program where we manage the recruitment, selections, training, and integration process for private and public organizations to realize the benefits of neurodiversity. “Neurodiversity” refers to the range

of differences in individual brain function and behavioral traits. It encompasses autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, among other neurodiverse conditions. I’m neurodivergent myself; I have depression and extreme social anxiety disorder.

CAI Neurodiverse Solutions brings neurodiversity into the workplace, but in a way that solves complex business challenges as well, so there’s a return on investment for the organization while individuals gain meaningful employment. As I mentioned last time, neurodivergent individuals tend to do well in analyzing data, problem solving, pattern recognition, creative thinking, and attention to detail. And there’s a place for such individuals in a wide range of fields, not just IT, which has gotten a lot of attention. There’s finance, legal, healthcare, to name just a few.

Many organizations, including law firms, are actively focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. Can you talk about how the neurodiverse agenda you’re seeking to advance is a part of that? For example, how will it figure into DEI reporting. Is it even on the radar of organizations collecting such data on themselves or those they do business with?

So, DEI—or DEIA (the “A” for accessibility)—is all about fostering a culture that builds a strong pipeline of both neurotypical and neurodivergent candidates. Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a mass implementation of DEI initiatives, but the conversation has always been about gender, race, and ethnicity. Even as organizations, including large law firms, add chief diversity officers, the neurodiversity piece has been somewhat overlooked. Now neurodiversity has a seat at the table. Over the past five to seven years, CAI has made a compelling case that organizations are missing a huge, untapped population—the 30 to 40 percent of neurodivergent adults who are unemployed according to the University of Connecticut.

CAI Neurodiverse Solutions can connect companies with that talent, but first we need to explain what neurodiversity is and why it’s important. We talk about return on investment— how neurodivergent employees boost productivity, work quality, and innovation—but there’s also a humanitarian aspect. Workplace opportunities should be extended to everybody. Society needs to advance that chapter. When we explain what a neurodiverse workforce looks like, organizations get it. But some are still slightly

hesitant to start until we say we’ll be there to support them. Once we follow through with that, we’ve elevated their DEI initiatives and have now moved the needle to bring more diversity and inclusion to their organization.

What are the steps to developing a neurodiversity program that is embraced by both sides of the table? How would someone go about educating the board, the C-suite, the executive committee? And how do you ensure that, once hired, neurodivergent people don’t feel unheard, overlooked and marginalized?

I recently found myself in a room with many executives. I explained what neurodiversity is and the comorbid conditions that can present alongside it. Then I asked, “Who knows someone or works with somebody who is neurodivergent?” A full 90 percent of the hands went up. If I had asked that question cold, the response invariably is, “I don’t know anybody who’s neurodivergent.”

Once you explain what neurodiversity is, it lights up a room. So the first step is educating the folks that may sit at the top. But sometimes it’s a grassroots effort by people who know somebody close to them who is neurodivergent. It’s about getting someone to champion the effort. Typically, that’s someone who is impacted by another who is neurodivergent. That person is going to be the catalyst to getting the chief diversity officer, the DEI team, HR, the recruiters, etc., on board.

They, in turn, will bring CAI Neurodiverse Solutions in to provide neurodiversity awareness training. We’re able to describe what a day in the life looks like; what it’s like to work with somebody who has a varied thought process; and so forth. That starts the process. And we’ve mastered sourcing talent that aligns with business needs. We go deep, looking at the cognitive and behavioral aspects of the individual. We focus on their skillset because when an organization calls upon us to fill a particular job, we need to make sure that we have the skillset to match. CAI has built extensive local partnership networks with over 500 organizations globally who are collectively raising awareness about the benefits of a neurodiverse workforce.

Anthony Pacilio is an expert in neurodiverse employment and currently serves as the vice president of CAI Neurodiverse Solutions. There, he helps neurodiverse candidates find roles, as well as helps businesses maintain best practices when working with neurodiverse employees. In the past, Anthony has worked in the finance and healthcare industries with similar missions. Reach him at Anthony.Pacilio@cai.io

We assess whether the individual is the right fit for the job, not the other way around. We make sure that the individual coming in is set up for success right out of the gate. And we’re proud to say there’s a 94 percent retention rate within the first 12 months.

There are various methods we analyze and implement to maintain and improve how we develop and retain neurodiverse talent:

Accommodations involve understanding what’s going to make that person successful from an employment standpoint. Do they need noise-canceling headphones? A desk moved from a high-traffic area? A rear-view mirror so they can avoid being taken by surprise? There’s anxiety that goes along with all these things.

It’s also helpful to understand the “red, yellow, green” indicators of emotional wellbeing. When somebody’s in a red status, they’re probably not approachable or not at their desk or, if they’re remotely working, not available, likely because they’re trying to reset themselves. If they’re yellow, they may still be approachable but just understand that there may be a something providing a slight trigger at the moment. A green light means, “Please come talk to me, I’m available.”

We take the onus on bringing in candidates by providing a Talent Discovery Session which essentially replaces the interview process for neurodivergent individuals with a hands-on evaluation. There’s no panel interview. No asking, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” It’s about showcasing their skillsets in a supportive environment. We go through a day-in-the-life of the job—or, more accurately, five days in a life. If the job entails X, Y and Z and their day starts at nine and ends at five, we will simulate that

day for the next five days, observing whether they work better alone or in collaboration with teammates. We have a neurodiversity-certified team lead that accompanies the associate we’re bringing in; making sure that if there are work-related challenges or potential conflicts, that the team lead is there to resolve any of those situations and help the individual succeed.

Ongoing mentorship and coaching are also key components in maintaining high retention. Mentorship is being there and ensuring that someone has potential career mobility. Talking to the individual and seeing how they’re doing on a weekly, monthly basis is huge because it shows you care and are interested in their career path. Coaching is not to be confused with mentorship as coaching identifies opportunities for soft skill development. Email etiquette and collaboration skills are tasks that may come easy to neurotypical people but may be something of a challenge for someone who is neurodivergent.

We supply on-the-job training for neurodivergent individuals. Whether it’s legal work, data analytics, or software testing, there needs to be some sort of mechanism in place to ensure that the task at hand is being tackled. And if aptitude is demonstrated for that, we explore upskilling opportunities. There’s a view among many that someone who’s neurodivergent should be fine with getting paid to do the same repetitive task for 30 years. That is not the case. We want our associates to excel and to move up the ranks. Meanwhile it helps companies’ ROI when every employees’ potential is optimized.

Our clients’ managers also need to be ingrained in our team to ensure that if there’s feedback to be given, the client understands in what form it will be best received. Maybe the individual wants it via phone or Teams or even in person, and the frequency of that feedback needs to be taken into account. Would they like it daily, weekly, or once a quarter?

And by in large the most crucial piece is empathy. It has its own rewards. Nothing serves better in life than trying to understand others, encouraging others, and staying positive in the face of challenges. 

Accommodations involve understanding what's going to make that person successful from an employment standpoint.

Why Should Your Company Care About ESG?

BRUCE WHITE BARNES & THORNBURG

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) refers to the non-financial metrics that businesses and investors use to assess a company’s sustainability, social responsibilityand ethical behavior. ESG factors are increasingly becoming essential considerations for business strategy and reputation management for companies regardless of their size or industry, as consumers, investors and regulators demand more transparency and accountability from companies.

Companies that prioritize ESG considerations in their business practices are better positioned to mitigate risks, build resilience and generate long-term value. However, navigating the complex landscape of ESG can be daunting, with multiple frameworks, standards and metrics to consider, particularly for companies that have not yet fully integrated ESG considerations into their operations.

This article aims to provide a roadmap for those newer to ESG, highlighting why ESG matters, the benefits of incorporating ESG into business strategy and operations and practical steps companies can take to get started, collect relevant ESG data and protect confidential ESG information. Whether your company is a small startup or a large corporation, this guide will help you understand the basics of ESG and why it is critical to the success of your business.

Why Should Your Company Care About ESG?

By incorporating ESG factors into its operations, a company can gain significant benefits, including:

Mitigation of risk: Companies with strong ESG practices are better equipped to mitigate risks and navigate challenges that may arise, including regulatory risks, reputational risks and risks related to sustainability and social responsibility. Government and agency ESG

regulations and standards are rapidly evolving and becoming more stringent, and companies that fail to comply may face legal and financial risks.

Increase operational efficiency to achieve cost savings: Implementing ESG practices can help companies identify and implement more efficient and sustainable business practices, such as reducing energy and water usage, which can reduce their environmental impact and result in significant cost savings.

Improve Supply Chain Management: By working with suppliers who also prioritize ESG practices, companies can ensure that their supply chains are sustainable and that they are sourcing materials and products in an environmentally and socially responsible way. This can help reduce the risk associated with suppliers that may not meet ESG standards and other supply chain disruptions.

Enhance innovation: Companies that prioritize ESG are more likely to create new business opportunities and innovations that can lead to competitive advantages.

Attract investors: Investors are increasingly interested in companies that have strong ESG performance. Such companies are often seen as more sustainable, responsible and transparent; and research has shown that companies with strong ESG practices tend to outperform their peers over the long term.

Enhance reputation and brand value: Consumers are increasingly conscious of the impact their purchases have on the environment and society. A strong ESG reputation can help differentiate a company from its peers and enhance its brand value, which can lead to increased customer loyalty, and value of a company’s brands.

Attract and retain talent: ESG practices are becoming increasingly important to employees, particularly among

younger generations; talented employees are increasingly drawn to companies with strong ESG performance as they value working for a company that aligns with their personal values.

Contribute to a more sustainable and equitable world: Companies that prioritize ESG can play a significant role in creating a more sustainable and equitable world for future generations.

What Can Your Company Do to Get the Most Benefit from ESG Practices?

Some of the steps that a company can take to get the most benefit from ESG practices, and that will be most impactful, include:

Develop a comprehensive ESG strategy: Set specific ESG

goals and establish a clear and comprehensive ESG strategy that is aligned with a company’s values and priorities that provides direction for all ESG efforts.

Prioritize material ESG issues: Prioritizing ESG issues that are most material to a company’s business can help ensure that ESG efforts are focused on areas that will have the greatest impact on the company’s financial and nonfinancial performance.

Conduct regular ESG assessments: Regular ESG assessments can help companies identify areas for improvement and track progress towards ESG goals.

Implement sustainable business practices and technologies: Reducing energy and water usage, minimizing waste and emissions, sourcing materials from responsible suppliers and implementing other sustainable

practices can help companies reduce costs and minimize their environmental impact.

Integrate ESG into decision-making: Establishing clear roles and responsibilities for ESG decision-making, such as a dedicated ESG committee or executive sponsor, and regularly reviewing and updating ESG practices, can help companies ensure that the company’s ESG goals and strategy are integrated into all decision-making processes.

Engage with stakeholders: Engaging with stakeholders can help companies understand their expectations and concerns regarding ESG practices and provide feedback on the company’s ESG performance.

Monitor and report on ESG performance and progress: Regularly monitoring and publicly reporting progress towards ESG goals to track performance and adjusting strategies as necessary can help companies demonstrate transparency and accountability and build trust with stakeholders.

Collaboration with peers: Communicating with peers can help companies develop consistent metrics and reporting standards and learn best practices for implementing ESG procedures.

Implement ESG training: Developing ESG training for employees can help ensure that all employees are aware of the company’s ESG goals and practices and can help to promote a culture of sustainability and social responsibility.

How Does Your Company Collect and Manage the Data Needed to Track ESG Performance?

In order to effectively implement and benefit from ESG practices, companies need to be able to collect reliable ESG data to accurately track and report on their performance and identify areas for improvement in a variety of ESG categories. Collecting this data can be a challenging task, as

it often requires integrating data from multiple sources and assessing qualitative information. To facilitate collection of reliable ESG data, companies should consider the following:

Identify relevant ESG metrics: The first step in collecting ESG data is to identify the relevant ESG metrics that align with the company’s business strategy and stakeholders’ expectations and with industry-specific best practices; as well as metrics for which disclosure may be required pursuant to applicable laws and regulations. These metrics may include energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, labor practices, human rights, diversity and inclusion and executive compensation.

Identify relevant ESG data sources: Identifying the pertinent ESG data sources, such as internal data and analytics, third-party data providers, or industry benchmarks, can help ensure that the company is collecting comprehensive and relevant data.

Standardize ESG data collection and leverage technology: Using consistent data definitions or reporting templates can help ensure data is collected consistently and accurately across all business units. Using technology solutions, such as data analytics software or ESG data providers, will help to streamline and automate data collection and analysis.

Implement data quality controls: Implementing data validation or data cleansing processes can help ensure that the data collected is accurate and free of errors.

There are concrete steps companies can take to identify material ESG issues, collect and protect reliable ESG data, and integrate ESG considerations into their decision-making processes.

Monitor data over time and regularly review and improve data collection processes: This will ensure accuracy, completeness and reliability of ESG data and help identify trends and areas for improvement that are consistent with the company’s evolving ESG priorities and stakeholder expectations.

Use established reporting frameworks: To ensure that ESG data is reported accurately and transparently, companies need to establish reporting protocols that outline the data collection process, quality control measures and reporting frequency. Companies may want to align their reporting with recognized ESG standards or frameworks, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), or the soon to be issued International Standards Sustainability Board (ISSB) Sustainability Disclosure Standards to ensure consistency and comparability of ESG data.

Engage with third-party organizations: Third-party

organizations such as accounting firms, certification bodies, industry associations and ratings agencies can provide independent verification and assurance of ESG data, giving stakeholders’confidence that the reported data is accurate and reliable.

How Can Your Company Protect the Confidentiality of ESG Information?

Implementing ESG practices will involve collection of sensitive and confidential information. To protect the confidentiality of this information, your company should consider the following:

Define information to be protected: Identify and provide written descriptions of the types and categories of information and data that are confidential or privileged, such as legal assessments of regulatory compliance, strategic plans, materiality assessments, supply chain data, trade secrets and employee health and safety and other personal data.

Establish protocols for handling confidential information: Develop clear and comprehensive protocols for collecting, storingand transmitting confidential information, and that explain how the ESG process will address legal issues. Companies should regularly assess the risks associated with collecting and storing sensitive ESG data, and review and update these protocols to ensure that they are current with the latest data protection best practices and regulatory requirements.

Attorney involvement from the outset: In order to invoke a claim of attorney client privilege, communications must be to or from an attorney; and to claim protection under the work product doctrine the communication must be prepared for or in anticipation of litigation. To maximize potential privilege protections, it is critical that in house or outside counsel have overall responsibility for developing, implementing and managing the protocol for handling confidential information.

Bruce White has more than 35 years of experience in the litigation, arbitration and mediation of environmental disputes and administrative permitting and enforcement proceedings. Bruce represents industrial and commercial businesses and governmental entities in Superfund, RCRA/HSWA, TSCA, CWA, CAA and NEPA matters. The majority of Bruce’s practice involves litigating and negotiating settlements for various complex environmental issues, including Superfund sites, multiparty litigation and commercial disputes. Reach him at bruce.white@btlaw.com

Use secure data storage systems: Use encrypted databases, passwordprotected servers and files, anonymization techniques to remove personal or identifiable information from data sets, along with other security measures to protect confidential information.

Limit access to confidential information: To detect and prevent unauthorized use of confidential information, it’s important to limit access to only those who need the confidential information to perform their duties.

Require confidentiality agreements: Require employees, contractors and third-party vendors who have access to confidential information to sign confidentiality agreements that outline the terms of confidentiality and the consequences of any breaches.

Use third-party data processors carefully: When working with third-party data processors, such as ESG data providers or analytics firms, carefully review their data protection practices and ensure that they meet the company’s data protection standards.

Train employees on data privacy and security: For information protection protocols to be effective it is critical to train employees on data privacy and security best practices, including how to handle and protect confidential information.

In a world where ESG concerns are increasingly important to stakeholders, companies that prioritize ESG considerations are better positioned for long-term success and growth. The steps outlined can help companies identify and prioritize material ESG issues, collect reliable ESG data and integrate ESG considerations into their decisionmaking processes. Ultimately, effective implementation of ESG practices can enhance a company’s financial and non-financial performance, bolster resilience and increase stakeholder engagement and confidence – all of which are crucial for companies to remain competitive in today’s rapidly changing business landscape. 

This article should not be construed as legal advice or legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general informational purposes only, and you are urged to consult your own lawyer on any specific legal questions you may have concerning your situation.

Enough is Enough: 5 Reasons Why 2023 Will Be Legal’s Tipping Point

David McVeigh, Axiom

We’re entering the ‘shame on me stage,’ or as I prefer to call it, the ‘enough is enough’ era. For years, in-house legal leaders have begrudgingly stomached increasing law firm billing rates, even as they have watched their own budgets ebb and flow according to marketplace volatility (with more ebbing than flowing).

David McVeigh

David McVeigh, Chief Executive Officer at Axiom, has more than 30 years of experience in business leadership, management consulting, and private equity portfolio company management. Prior to Axiom, he served as Gartner, Inc.’s Executive Vice President, Global Business Sales, and as a member of its operating committee. Prior to Gartner, Mr. McVeigh was a Managing Director at Hellman & Friedman, an Operating Partner at The Blackstone Group, and a Partner at McKinsey & Company.

Overbill me once, shame on you. Overbill me twice, shame on me. We’re entering the ‘shame on me stage,’ or as I prefer to call it, the ‘enough is enough’ era. For years, in-house legal leaders have begrudgingly stomached increasing law firm billing rates, even as they have watched their own budgets ebb and flow according to marketplace volatility (with more ebbing than flowing). Sure, they’ve complained. As far back as 2008, the former GC of Cisco called law firm billing models “the last vestige of the medieval guild system.”

And they’ve reacted. The largest clients have negotiated rate discounts and alternative fee arrangements, while more progressive in-house leaders have built internal legal departments to rival the breadth and depth of external law firms. The former has led to nominal concessions, while the latter has proven to be its own brand of inefficiency given its fixed costs. It has also proven to be a model that’s difficult, if not impossible, to sustain in a cost-reduction environment.

Yet here we stand again, looking at another year of law firm rate increases. This time, however, feels different. This feels like the first-time in-house leaders are actually ready to reject the old binary ‘staff up or send out (to law firms) paradigm’. This time feels like the first year GCs are not only frustrated enough, but also empowered enough, to let their actions do the talking.

But it’s more than a feeling – it’s backed by data and context. There are five reasons why 2023 will become the year that inhouse legal leaders use their leverage to meaningfully transform the traditional legal resourcing model.

Historically large law firm rate increases: According to a Wells Fargo report, 98% of law firm leaders are planning rate increases in 2023. Not only will billing rates continue to rise, but they will do so aggressively. Rates are anticipated to jump between 7-8%, representing the largest increase on record since the report’s inception 15 years ago.

Paying more, but getting less: Law firms, like Cooley, are increasing rates while trimming staff. Addressing the bloat may be nice in theory, but the possibility of accidentally cutting into muscle should be of concern to GCs who are already dissatisfied with law firm response time and attention. Trimming headcount also does nothing to address the fact that outsized associate compensation means that clients are underwriting on-the-job-training for junior lawyers at unjustifiable costs. Increasing rates should correlate to more: More experienced lawyers, more pragmatic counsel, more commercial acumen and more customer orientation. Clients are, instead, paying law firms much more and getting much less in return.

1 2 3

The economic context:  It’s not just the historic nature of the actual increases, it’s the indefensibility of the rate hikes in the context of the broader economic environment. Many GCs are now operating in a cost-reduction environment marked by hiring freezes and CEO-mandated budget cuts. In fact, recent statistics suggest in-house legal departments are being forced to cut 2023 budgets by 5-20%. Law firm rate increases are not only out of step with economic forecasts, but they’re also totally out of touch with client pain points. When the law firm becomes part of the GC’s problem, instead of part of their solution

to tackle increasing workloads and emerging risks, enough starts to become enough.

4 5

The other, empowering, options: Law departments can’t just cut back – they’ve been getting busier and busier. Post-COVID organizational change, evolving labor and employment matters, real estate footprint rationalization, continuing data privacy and cybersecurity issues, business and regulatory risks, and spiraling data volumes are just some of the everyday challenges. Nor can they just hire/ retain their way out of their workload, given the budget cuts and efficiency issues mentioned above. Rather than confining their thinking to the either/or of in-house or law firms, GCs have another option: Flexible legal talent. In-house leaders can effectively use flexible legal talent to decrease and/or transition spend from fixed to variable to better navigate economic turbulence. Instead of ‘staffing up or sending out,’ flexible talent can be used to build a virtual bench of ‘on-demand’ talent that combines elite legal expertise with knowledge of in-house issues. This agile layer of the legal function offers a seamless bridge between internal and law firm options, providing needed flexibility for unexpected matters or surges in workload. It improves risk mitigation by matching legal matters to the right legal talent, right when needed. It extends in-house expertise without adding the fixed costs of permanent hires. And, for the enough is enough crowd, it markedly decreases law firm spend by limiting what needs to be sent to a law firm and when. Flexible talent provides clients with approximately 50% savings as compared to law firms, and with better value for every budgeted dollar.

The talent: Flexible talent providers have been around for 20+ years. So why is now the tipping point? First, while technically categorized as

Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs), flexible talent is no longer ‘alternative’ to clients. Elite providers have now been effectively utilized by legal departments ranging from growing mid-market innovators to more than half of F100. In other words, flexible talent has a proven track record of success and that thing lawyers love above all else: Precedent. Second, GCs have traditionally turned to law firms because that is where the ‘best’ talent is employed. That’s all changed. We’ve long witnessed lawyers’ desire for a new life in law. It’s a trend that’s only been amplified by pandemic-induced career reflection, remote work, and desire for more work/life balance. This isn’t just an anecdotal observation, the stats bear this out. According to the View from Inside Report, most commercial lawyers (57%) are interested in finding another job, with 14% actively searching now. A significant number of those lawyers (40%) cited an interest in joining a flexible legal talent provider in order to gain more control and autonomy over their careers. What’s more, client data speaks to the quality of agile talent: 80% of Axiom clients rate the flexible lawyers with whom they have worked

as equal to or better than lawyers from a law firm. Smart GCs follow the talent, that talent is increasingly making their home with flexible legal providers.

This is not to undermine the value of external counsel or internal teams. Law firms will always have a place in the legal ecosystem for bet-the-company matters. But those matters are rarer than they are commonplace. While many GCs are hiring firms for overflow work or bringing on full-time lawyers to handle emerging specialty needs, GCs aiming to fight budgetary limitations need to know they have options. The right legal resource, when cost mitigation is paramount, is flexible legal talent. By incorporating more flexible lawyers into their resourcing models, GCs can reduce increasingly expensive law firm engagements to those exceptional, high stakes events for which their rates are warranted. But for everything else, enough is enough.

Overbill me once, shame on you. Overbill me twice, shame on me. Overbill me now – when I have a lot more work and a lot less budget – and it’s time for change.

Process-Driven Decisions Fuel Business Success

Jared Applegate, Barnes & Thornburg, Alexandra Guajardo, Shell Global

Jared Applegate

As Chief Legal Operations Officer for the firm, Jared believes in and continuously works to provide market insight, competitive intelligence and innovative thinking to attorneys and clients on pricing strategies and related matter management solutions –which ultimately enhances the value of work we offer our clients and strengthens the relationships we have with them as well. Jared is responsible for managing the law firm’s portfolio of alternative fees, creating innovative and practical pricing solutions and improving firm economics.

CCBJ: Tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you came to know each other.

Jared Applegate: My role is chief legal operations officer at Barnes & Thornburg. I run pricing, legal project management, practice management, and the rates team. Alexandra and I know each other from Legal Value Network and other groups across the country. We’ve spoken together on various panels on this topic and have become close friends.

Alexandra Guajardo: I serve as the pricing and analytics officer at Shell, supporting all of Shell Legal globally. My primary role is to apply a strategic mindset within our legal operations teams to provide effective and streamlined support to our lawyers. I also manage our panel and facilitate the engagement of external counsel at the best value. This does include pricing and negotiations, but my goal is not cheapest, but best.

What are some trends you’re seeing in legal operations/technology that are helping lawyers work smarter?

Guajardo: We’re looking at tools that either streamline our processes or provide us data that allow us to make decisions faster. The problem is that there are about 5,000 new technologies out there. For us, it’s not about just having another tool. We are looking at technology that will make us more efficient and effective.

Applegate: I agree. Over the last five years numerous new tools have come on the market, along with a tremendous amount of seed money within the industry. Some tools solved a very niche problem that didn’t last forever. What I’m seeing in the industry now are people going back to more practical, thoughtful tools as they relate to just doing work better or working more collaboratively. Some of that’s looking at the basics: What is the process problem vs. what is the tool going to solve? I believe people are going back to figuring out what are the top two or three process problems they have, and whether technology can be used to solve them. I know that’s not

revolutionary by any means, but I just feel that the muck and mire of all the software out there is finally starting to get sorted into vaporware, niche, and practical tools usable by attorneys and legal ops professionals.

How can technology free up lawyers to spend more time on strategy and innovation for clients?

Guajardo: I’ve always said it’s not enough to just throw the technology at a problem. It has to be process-driven. Our lawyers have to see it as a tool that helps them be better. If it’s too cumbersome or takes too much of their time, they’re hesitant to even try it or use it on the daily. Then there’s the technology like Outlook that became imperative for day-to-day until it became too much of our day and has been supplanted, to some extent, by collaborative tools like Teams and RFP tools that allow us to incorporate different actions and that collaboration piece. What I see is if the lawyers view the technology as something that can really help them focus on their lawyering, they’ll use it and it’ll be successful. But because there’s so much new technology, it can be a challenge to convince them of that until they incorporate it into their day-to-day work.

Applegate: That’s a good point. From your position at Shell, have you seen firms bring technology to RFPs and pitches that was legitimate and real and augmented work being done by lawyers?

Guajardo: We have seen some, especially in the e-discovery space. When there’s a lot of documentation to go through, doing those first passes is extremely important because our lawyers don’t need to focus on that. Some firms come in and say there’s more value in what they provide because they’re tapping into this technology; that what they’re billing us for is the strategic piece of the work. So it’s happening, but on a case-by-case or firm-by-firm basis. One reason there’s hesitation around technology is because people are not always confident in what the output will be. When we highlight successes via those outputs, then confidence grows. But

Alexandra Guajardo is a Legal Operations industry expert with over 20 years of experience driving operational excellence on both the firm and corporate side. She continues to drive, advance and enhance the Outside Counsel Program at Shell USA, while providing strategic support to all legal departments globally. Her extensive experience in Legal Operations allows her to apply a strategic mindset to the operations of the team, business processes, pricing negotiations and day to day activities to ensure effective and streamlined service is consistently delivered.

Alexandra Guajardo

it’s not always successful. Some of our big firms bring in technology to conduct our large projects and we’ve seen it go very well in some places, but we’ve also seen it come back and be extremely generic and not a great work product. It still needed that human touch.

Applegate: Lawyers need to focus more on the business challenges of whatever practice of law they’re in and how they’re using technology to overcome them. The industry doesn’t do a good job of selling that. Firms have project managers or talent that’s focused on practice systems or practice innovation. But are those individuals going to client meetings and pitch meetings? Are they putting together full-service solutions? Not many are. But I think more firms are going to be thinking about business solutions to the challenges facing their clients’ businesses over the next three or four years.

How can law firms and legal departments build the right mix of people, process and technology?

Guajardo: It’s about having the right people doing the right things. All of our time is limited; that’s the one thing I don’t have a lot of. So making sure that I’m only touching things that I should be touching is important. Internally, we have to ensure our team has the right mix of people. We always look at whether something is not going right and ask ourselves: Is the process flushed out and documented? Have the people been trained in the right way? Are we communicating when things go wrong? It’s a multi-step approach; we want our lawyers to focus on the things only they can do, just as our legal operations people are focusing on doing what only they can do. This ensures that we’re using the right skill set in each place, and then we can work through everything else that comes after that.

Applegate: Building the right mix of people, process and technology starts with strategic planning. Identify the three or four business problems that you have and get everybody at the table to talk about that. The reason things go off the rails is because firms don’t think about how strategic planning can help them align their missions and goals with their technology systems. Too often they try to boil the ocean, whereas just digging into a few problem areas could really yield positive results.

A lot of people want to lead with tech when they should lead with the problem, then “people, process, technology” in that order. Lawyers lean into that as well. They want to lead with tech because they have their iPhone and wonder “Why can’t we be more technology focused?” when in reality their thinking should be more process-focused.

Guajardo: On the subject of strategic planning, I’d add that firms have to know who they are and what clients they’re going after, just like, on the client side, we have to know which firms make sense for us. Not every firm makes sense for us as a company for every case, and we have to know that. As a law firm, when you’re looking at your strategy, you have to know what drives you and what you’re trying to accomplish. If you don’t know that, then how can you successfully deliver?

What is keeping lawyers up at night regarding client communications and client retention?

Applegate: I think just competition in the space overall. The amount of work that’s out there continues to grow, but the competition also continues to grow. Figuring out how to retain a client is extremely important, because it’s so much easier to serve an existing client than to find a new

one. That’s Business 101. So healthy communication is key, and maybe that communication’s a little bit different with each client. Often, law firms only focus on lawyer-to-lawyer communication, when mapping all the client’s touchpoints with the firm would be extremely valuable if you’re looking to improve client retention.

A law firm’s mantra should be “be easier to do business with.” Clients can hire plenty of firms in their market, but they chose you. Was it because you are a great lawyer. Or is it more? Is it being easier to do business with than your competitors? I think getting that question answered is what’s keeping people up at night. Because with competition so tight and excellent legal work now table stakes, these things are key to sustaining your relationship.

Guajardo: From the client perspective, we have to be clear on what we expect from our firms, whether they are working to keep or win our business. If we’re not upfront about what we’re trying to accomplish and what we need from them, how can the firm succeed with us? It’s a relationship, not a one and done, and a constantly evolving relationship. Communication on our end is also important, we don’t want our outside counsel staying up all night, if we aren’t willing to do it for that specific case. Just as they’re investing in us as a client, we want them to know that are also investing in them and see their value. If we’re not honest about what we need and what we’re trying to achieve and what success is for us, how will the firm deliver on that?

Applegate: To circle back to technology, Alex, what are you seeing as the high and right technology you are using now vs. pre-pandemic. What technology has sparked for you?

Guajardo: There was a lot of hesitation about doing many

things electronically. People like to print out and sign and send back documents. But the pandemic has shown us that that’s not always necessary. Cybersecurity has always been a big concern for us, especially from the client side. Is our data protected? Our first question is: Any new technology? Are we putting ourselves at risk by the data we’re exposing or sharing? Before the pandemic, even something as simple as DocuSign was a huge endeavor. Now it’s no big deal and there’s increasing opportunities to deploy new technologies. Privacy of diversity and inclusion data has also always been a big concern; how is our data being shared and safeguarded. Since the pandemic and escalation of remote work, adoption of technology has been unprecedented in pace and scale, and data privacy issues have been addressed across the board.

Anything that allows us to do collaborative work has become more of a need-to-use, almost on a daily basis. Video calling has also become the norm. Pre-pandemic, I had conference calls with my colleagues in Europe all the time and the video was never on. Now it’s the default.

As we continue to navigate hybrid work and make it less messy, there’s going to be a lot more opportunity to bring on technologies that enable us to work more efficiently and collaboratively.

The muck and mire of all the software out there is finally starting to get sorted into vaporware, niche, and practical tools usable by attorneys and legal ops professionals.

-Jared Applegage

Applegate: I think that’s true. On the law firm side, it’s amazing how quickly people adapted to new technology. They always knew how to use applications like Zoom, but almost overnight everybody became somewhat of an expert. My 30,000-foot view is more collaboration tools and moving into the cloud to facilitate smooth communication with clients across the globe. And syncing up systems will continue to be a big theme for firms.

At the micro level, I’m seeing a greater focus on expediting tasks that take a lot of time to complete. For us, it’s using deal-closing software so we can close deals faster. Instead of time-consuming couriers and ink signatures, you can cut out the human element and share documents and collect signatures digitally for a secure, smooth closing. In a contract review, it’s using artificial intelligence (AI) to pull out provisions. It’s collaborating in SharePoint or similar platforms, secure places to store, organize, share, and access information from any device. We’ve seen those, as well as Teams and Zoom, massively increase across our footprint because we knew that, in certain areas, we needed to do a better job of being more efficient, and increased efficiency equals lower cost to the client.

From a wellness perspective, some of these technologies have also been hugely helpful. Putting a deal checklist together or, at the end, a closing binder are things you don’t want to wish on your worst enemy. Trying to collect 50 signatures in a matter of days can drive anybody crazy. So being able to augment those tasks has helped many lawyers step back and go, “Hey, that was a better experience!” and “I can really use this time now to focus on client retention.” Just giving people time in their day back has been a wellness benefit. I know technology and wellness aren’t typically linked, but I really do believe that some tools have significantly contributed to the mental well-being of our lawyers and staff.

Guajardo: On the data front, many firms and clients have been collecting data for years and then neglect to utilize it to make decisions. Data allows both client and firm to take a step back and think about it strategically. Putting it in front of the right people ensures they’re aware of what’s happening in their cases and what’s going on with the day-to-day work or the overall project. There are great tools out there that can visualize data in a way that is extremely helpful. Telling the story behind data helps us do a better job.

Applegate: We’ve also found data visualization and analysis to be incredibly valuable to clients. An example is when you have large-scale engagements and have the ability to create very simple monthly accruals and budgets. Putting that in the inbox of the person that’s making decisions on scope and timeline and saying, “Hey, look: Every two weeks, this is where the budget vs. actual is on this case” is helpful. It’s also the thing we have done at scale that has created the most client loyalty and retention. Clients are like, “Hey, I’m glad you send me this, because then I can make some sort of actionable decision on where the scope goes from here.” It is a heightened level of communication that requires nothing more than popping out the data and then putting an email together that drops biweekly or weekly or monthly, or however often our clients want to get them.

The statements made in this interview are the sole opinions of the participants and not those of Barnes & Thornburg or Shell Global.

It’s not enough to just throw the technology at a problem. It has to be process-driven.

-Alexandra Guajardo

Efficient & Advanced Technology Solutions for the Corporate Law Department

Mark Nastasi, CobbleStone Software

Mark Nastasi is the Executive VP and founder of CobbleStone Software with more than 20 years of professional experience in the industry. He launched the first commercial contract software in 1995 named CMTS (Contract Management Tracking System). He has worked extensively with general counsel, paralegals, lawyers and legal professionals to help manage contracts better.

Please tell us about CobbleStone Software.

CobbleStone Software® was founded in 1995 and we have been offering state-of-the-art contract management systems since then. Our mission is to provide the most advanced, cost-effective, and user-friendly contract and procurement management software applications that enable employees to do their best work.

Through growth and innovation, here are the four aspects of our mission that we have stayed true to:

1. Our software products and staff go above and beyond expectations.

2. We respect our clients, our colleagues and our environment.

3. We exemplify sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom and charity.

4. Our products and software solutions continue to evolve to meet ever changing business.

CobbleStone prides itself on continuous innovation in Contract Lifecyle Management. Please share the culture of the organization and in what way your team is “pushing the envelope.”

CobbleStone constantly strives to keep users engaged and provides multiple learning opportunities throughout the year in efforts to better understand client CLM issues and how to create solutions for such issues. By hosting multiple conferences, webinars, roadshow events and masterclasses, CobbleStone stays connected to current and prospective clients and their evolving contract management software needs. Alongside that, CobbleStone also maintains its’ position as an industry leader by offering efficient solutions, advanced technology and an immersive certification program.

What is VISDOM AI and how are clients benefiting from this product?

VISDOM® is powerful contract artificial intelligence (AI) backed by machine learning. VISDOM AI systematically analyzes contracts

Mark Nastasi

originated by internal or external paper by transforming the documents into building blocks for improved contract oversight, proactive opportunity identification and risk mitigation. Within VISDOM AI, there are several powerful features that clients enjoy using including:

• CobbleStone Auto-Redline can automate the inclusion of clauses from users’ approved clause library - virtually ensuring that favorable clause language is included.

• ConfigAISM provides proactive CLM (contract lifecycle management) field recommendations for metadata fields for contract clauses. This helps streamline contract management software implementations.

• IntelliXtract gives users the power to look into their contracts and agreements to find key terms, legal phrases, conditions and other legal text.

• Theory Calculator provides users with recurring automated data analysis and on-screen recommendations to provide helpful guidance throughout the contract administration process.

How does your organization support clients as they streamline their CLM?

CobbleStone Contract Insight® provides clients with all sorts of solutions to help streamline their CLM. Clients can expect assistance with everything from contract and vendor management to procurement and eSourcing. CobbleStone is constantly advancing to support clients by rolling out features and updates on a frequent schedule. CobbleStone strives to provide an efficient and effective system that business professionals can utilize to its’ full potential. In our most recent update, we brought forth industry-demanded features such as:

• An easily navigable and expandable core user interface.

• A visually engaging contract record details experience.

• A dynamic progress bar to digest page content as the user scrolls.

• A robust user information and account menu.

• CobbleStone Auto-Redline for improved drafting and negotiations.

• Proactive field recommendations for powerful contract clause metadata management.

• Insightful contract data extraction summaries with VISDOM contract AI.

• A concise yet detailed rundown of clause extraction similarity to gauge consistency of language for a given contract clause.

What are some common mistakes that you see among potential clients?

Many clients worldwide face all sorts of issues when dealing with CLM. Some common contract management mistakes include:

• Relying on manual contract management.

• Using simple spreadsheets, locally saved documents and shared drives for contract storage.

• Using a paper-based system for contracts.

• Including inconsistent language and clauses in contracts.

• Missing significant obligations and deadlines.

• Losing track of contract versions.

• Relying on outdated signature methods, including wet signatures.

Please share the KPIs that are critical to designing and continuously evaluating the CLM path.

The three KPIs we recommend clients track are as follows:

KPI #1 – Contract Efficiency

Contract efficiency performance metrics may include contract lifecycle time, customer, vendor or geographic trends, contract value assessments and whether or not milestones are met.

KPI #2 – Contract Efficacy

Contract efficacy performance metrics may include the number of agreements by type of contracts (program, customer or vendor) in one’s contract repository, annualized contract value, the remaining value of a terminated contract, order value variance and historical legacy contract trends.

KPI #3 – Contract Risk

Contract risk performance metrics may include standard clause variance, amount of agreements expiring without renewal dates, missed contract obligations, number of improper electronic signature approvals or vendor authorizations, number of delayed contract approval processes, task completion for terminated contracts and disputes resolved. Leading contract lifecycle management software can provide you with a risk assessment matrix to visually assess risk within a centralized location.

CobbleStone strives to provide an efficient and effective system that business professionals can utilize to its’ full potential.

Practical, Tangible Strategies for Legal Contract Management

Karen Meyer, Contract Logix

As CEO, Karen leads strategy for the company and oversees all aspects of the business. Karen brings more than 20 years of SaaS experience building organizations to scale and drive growth. Prior to becoming Contract Logix’s CEO, Karen led Upland Software’s Global Customer Success organization. She led commercial and customer engagement teams for over a dozen products and played a critical role in driving Upland’s M&A and integration strategies leading to high growth and strong customer retention.

Please describe the company’s history. What does Contract Logix do and who are your main customers?

Contract Logix was founded in 2006 and is one of the longesttenured contract management software companies in our space. A lot of the original contract lifecycle management (CLM) innovators have worked, and still work, for our company. We work with legal, procurement, finance and sales teams in highly-regulated industries like pharma, healthcare and energy, all with complex compliance requirements and agreements, to help them implement an actual contract management process. They use our software to manage the entire lifecycle of their contracts from the moment an agreement is requested all the way through the termination, renewal or amendment of it.

All businesses have hidden risks in contracts, and the risks due to ineffective contract lifecycle management can be small, or they can be massive. Those risks include everything from overlooked penalties to missed delivery obligations, to lost revenue, to unexpected renewals. Our specialty is helping organizations illuminate and articulate, a lot of times for the first time, what their current processes for managing contracts and vendors are and making measurable and meaningful improvements. For companies that already have an understanding of CLM, we usually find that there’s either not a distinctive process in place or there’s a lot of waste and inefficiency in the system. When we begin working with a customer, we partner with them for the long haul, helping every step of the way through onboarding, the design of better business processes, user adoption and ongoing support.

What about your personal background? What experience do you have working with legal teams? Do you feel your earlier experiences translate to your current role at Contract Logix?

My background is in SaaS helping organizations scale for growth. I joined Contract Logix in February 2022 and have been with the company for a year. My role is to drive change, drive innovation,

Karen Meyer

and help customers be productive and grow in their own right. In my prior role, I led commercial and customer engagement teams for more than a dozen products, so I know first-hand what it’s like to be responsible for driving renewals, getting new contracts into place and working with Corporate Counsel to make sure that we’re fully compliant and protecting all of our customer data. We did that without a CLM system and it was very painful and time consuming. Part of my motivation in my current role is understanding that this (CLM) is really a solution that every organization with contracts (i.e. all of them) needs.

Karen, you mentioned that you work with many General Counsel and corporate legal teams. What are they telling you is the biggest challenge they face? Any common themes or insights you can share?

The feedback that we get is pretty consistent. Legal teams KNOW that contracts are the backbone to their organization, but across the board, visibility into what’s out there remains the biggest challenge. They want and need help consolidating and organizing chaos, and we give them tangible advice by sitting down and asking, “Okay, which problem do you want to solve first?”

For example, speaking with senior counsel at some large companies (where you would expect that there might be a lot more maturity around contract management), visibility still remains an issue. If you think about it, it makes sense. It’s so easy to spin up a SharePoint site or share documents via email. These leaders know they don’t have a handle on all of the contracts shared this way, so we help them get that one area under control. We sit down and say, “Let’s centralize all of the contracts you have in a proper digital contract repository,” and then once we have that solved, we move on to the next challenge which might be looking at the actual body of the contracts and helping

to establish templates. The technology is helping facilitate the process, but it’s not just about tech. We’re looking for waste and issues and simply a way to improve them. It’s not super sexy and it sounds simple, but it’s anything but. Once we help them get all these contracts in one place, we can then look at what binds them – is it time, money, etc.? Is there any flexibility to adjust relationships with vendors? What kind of leverage do you have?

For the organizations further along the maturity curve, we’re looking for bottlenecks. For example, a number of organizations will get qualitative feedback from IT that legal teams are taking too long to respond. Legal teams have very few resources. So, we sit down, and again, very practically look at: How many requests is the team getting? What is happening in the stages of review? How long is a review going to take? Then we use that to pull together a consistent set of KPIs and SLAs of how the legal team’s time is being spent and where it can be improved.

We know that time is money for GCs and CCs. If you look at Bloomberg Law’s 2022 Legal Ops and Tech Survey, 86% of respondents cited improving productivity as their reason for using legal tech. As a legal tech company, yes, we’re interested in how they use technology, but what drives us is helping solve the practical challenges of visibility into where the contracts are and then helping our customers move forward along that maturity curve.

Technology adoption is a big focus for GCs and their legal and contracting counterparts in their organizations, but technology adoption is only the beginning. The real challenge has to do with getting that technology operational in a business. What are the biggest issues facing organizations that roll out new technology like Contract Logix?

Many people in the tech industry don’t understand

how to make customers successful after they deliver a product. The technology is just part of the contract lifecycle process. We want our customers to focus on their expertise as attorneys, as procurement professionals and get contracts and processes in place that support the goals of the business. Failures occur when people don’t clearly understand the problem they are trying to solve, which is why some of the advice I outlined earlier about defining problems and solving them quickly may seem common sense, but is still critical. We don’t want our customers focusing or obsessing about technology. We want them to focus on their jobs. In most cases, our customers have never used or implemented software like ours so there is a lot of change management they need to address. Our job as an organization is to help guide them through that process which is key to getting software like ours operational and adopted in a business.

It seems like implementation is more about change management than anything else. What are some practical steps organizations should take? How do you ensure successful onboarding, user adoption and long-term success?

Driving change is truly the hardest aspect of this process because you are dealing with individuals. So make it easy for them to understand. You’re going to want to address these questions:

• Why did we make this technology investment?

• Why do we need to make the process better?

• How is it going to make your life easier?

• What’s in it for you?

When you show how this will help a GC meet their billable utilization goals, improve productivity, you’re showing how

these changes will make it easier to do their jobs and focus on their area of expertise.

This is why we spend so much time with our customers brainstorming and training them on change management. We lean on them to tell us about their specific organizations and their specific challenges, and THEN we work out use cases, implementation plans, configurations and processes, including workflows. We help define how they can measure success and business value.

Our planning process includes making sure that customers pick a problem that is solvable and solve that first. It’s great to have a vision and be future thinking, but you need to do the basic blocking and tackling first. You need to get it right and show progress. So, for example, a problem that can be solved: Are your contracts all in one place? If not, get all your contracts in a single repository. If that’s already done, is there too much customization happening inside your legal agreements? Solve that problem by getting a good template in place and train the organization on how to use it. After that, pick the next biggest challenge which might be something like getting all your approved language in a clause library. These are all manageable problems that can be addressed in a quarter or two and allow you to realize the business value of CLM.

What KPIs would you recommend that organizations track to measure success?

Depending on where an organization is on the CLM maturity curve, sometimes it’s really basic questions: How many contracts do we have under management right now? Vendor contracts, employee contracts, etc.? What is the dollar amount associated with those agreements? What

financial obligations do we have to deliver our services to our customers or partners or to the vendors?

Another suggestion is to quantify risks and terms and to show where there is exposure by not having a NDA in place or updated certificates of insurance, having a handle on limits of liability and making sure you have the right coverage in place to operate a business. As a senior leader, this one is near and dear to my heart.

From a productivity standpoint, you can track volumes of new contract requests, the average turnaround time from new request to execution and storage of the contract, how long it takes to onboard a new vendor or employee, etc.

You can also look at KPIs that track your budget goals and savings. For example, if you’re the GC for a company that runs a hotel chain, you have certain vendors in place to provide services in hotels and want to manage that spend wisely. You’ll want to know what the existing contracts are, when the renewals are taking place and how much leverage you have in negotiating.

Can you provide some quantitative or qualitative examples of ROI an organization can get by implementing CLM?

We have so many great customer stories across industries. One of our oil and gas customers is now able to execute contracts 90% faster using our platform, and another healthcare customer reduced the time spent tracking

We help define how they can measure success and business value.

and managing agreements by 40% in two years. We also work with large tech companies and one of our customers said that contract information that would have taken him three days to find before using Contract Logix is now findable in minutes. Another one of our large logistics customers took a look at their driver contracts and was able to make tangible improvements immediately, improving the time it took to onboard a new driver from four weeks down to two, which is a key factor in shortening their time to revenue.

A great basic example, but one that is super powerful because it quantitatively shows CLM’s impact, is looking at the numbers when an organization just puts all their agreements in one place. In a large organization when

people can’t find contracts, they go to the paralegal, they don’t go to the highest paid attorney. But even the paralegal could be making $100 an hour. If they spend four hours instead of five minutes looking for a contract, in just this example, that’s $400 and can be between $8,000 to $400,000 a year just looking for information. It’s a great example to justify the cost of putting the right technology and processes in place.

Most organizations are at step one of the contract management process, and we understand that managing contracts efficiently and effectively is a key job responsibility. Getting back to basics and helping organizations take that first step is something Contract Logix excels at and is extremely proud of.

10 Effective Outside Counsel Guideline Practices for Strong Operational Relationships

Brenda Hansen, Epiq

For in-house legal departments, relationships with Outside Counsel are integral to the overall management of matters and outcomes. A solid relationship creates synergy and partnership; a dysfunctional one creates frustration and typically increases costs. One of the most common tools to enhance client/firm relationships is setting Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGs).

Maintaining some variation of OCGs is a common practice these days, but setting comprehensive and clear guidelines is less prevalent. Having drafted many OCGs in my career, I have a strong perspective on their purpose and the approach to take. Here are some pointers for drafting effective OCGs:

Brenda Hansen 1 2

Brenda Hansen is Senior Legal Operations Consultant for Epiq’s legal business advisory practice. Brenda has more than 20 years of experience in the legal industry with both in-house and law firm administration experience. She is known for her ability to partner with business leaders to identify gaps and produce solutions that generate new levels of efficiency and productivity.

Use OCGs as an Instruction Manual not an Engagement Agreement: Law Firm engagement agreements and OCGs should work in tandem to establish the relationship with your law firms. Both are documents reflecting mutually agreed upon contractual obligations. However, there should be distinct differences between the two: The engagement letter outlines the terms associated with representing the Company (i.e. conflict process, liability, IT security requirements and pricing); and the guidelines explain what is expected in the operational aspects of the relationship - invoicing, staffing of matters, what constitutes billable work and cost management methods (i.e. accruals, budgets).

Be Clear & Simple: Don’t overcomplicate the instructions. Highlight the most important aspects and provide details of what is required/accepted and what is not for each topic. Focus on areas such as:

• Methods of submitting invoices (e.g. eBilling tool, PO process) and requesting rate increases (specifying timing and limitations)

• Acceptable and unacceptable types of work (e.g. doing research, training, clerical) and billing behaviors (e.g. forbidding block or embedded billing, requiring narratives)

• Staffing requirements (e.g. change notice, alignment of

task/level with experience and matter complexity)

• Non-Billable items (e.g. phone, unapproved travel, online research tools)

• Invoice Requirements (e.g. frequency, format, approved fees/expenses)

• Budgeting Expectations (e.g. by matter, frequency, and updating budgets)

• Accrual Submission (e.g. define accruals, deadlines, and timing, matter vs. firm)

3 4

Be Mindful of Practice Area Differences: Most instructions found in OCGs apply across practice areas. However, sometimes there are nuances, and specific instructions should be provided for practice areas that have the biggest impact on spend. For example, if your department has a lot of litigation or E-Discovery, be specific about how matters should be billed, such as use of UTBMS codes. Also, I recommend requiring the use of approved third-party vendors (i.e. E-Discovery or translation providers), leveraging bargaining power to control costs. No longer should you just accept any pass-through costs. In my experience, the practice areas that may need specific guidelines are Litigation, Intellectual Property and M&A.

Be Mindful of Global Differences: Most instructions found in OCGs apply to U.S. law firms. However, sometimes there are nuances, and specific instructions should be provided for legal services that will be provided by law firms based outside of the U.S. Consider providing instructions related to selection of Corporate Entities, VAT Tax Currency. For example, intellectual property practitioners often work with a network of law firms located around the world –typically in countries where the company files patents and trademarks. In these cases, the OCGs might need to address currency and the cost of currency conversion.

Leverage Company Policies: Don’t re-create the wheel. If your company has travel and expenses policies, incorporate them into your OCGs. Remember, the firms should not be given more latitude than your own in-house team.

Communicate & Train: Communicate to firms early and often when you’re getting ready to launch (or revise) your guidelines. Giving firms enough time to digest, disseminate and implement the guidelines will help ensure their compliance with your expectations. You want to make sure that everyone working on your matters understands the guidelines. Consider hosting sessions for the billing coordinators to highlight key aspects, and maintain the dialogue with occasional update sessions (e.g. quarterly).

Request Value-Adds: Enhance the firm/inhouse relationship by creating opportunity for knowledge sharing and thought leadership. Many legal departments leverage firms to provide CLE programs to new or key legal topics. More advanced vendor management programs have Legal Departments hosting an OC Summit where your top firms (partners and key personnel) come together to discuss business objectives, legal department goals and challenges to the legal landscape. This initiative creates a mutually beneficial opportunity to share perspectives and insights on how best to partner and represent the Company.

5 6 7 8

Enforce & Provide Feedback: Ultimately, the guidelines are only truly effective when they are enforced. To achieve that, all members of the in-house legal team, including lawyers, should be familiar with the guidelines, especially if they are invoice approvers. If you don’t want to be billed in a specific matter, or were charged for something that is not allowed,

provide immediate feedback to the firm. It is helpful to leverage eBilling tools and/or third-party invoice reviewers to ensure compliance to the guidelines. More mature Vendor Management programs feature an annual review with a scorecard-based evaluation that includes scores on compliance to the OCGs.

Learn more: How to Get the Most out of Your Legal Billing Data – Fostering Transparency and Collaboration to Better Align Expectations.

Revisit & Update: OCGs should evolve as your Vendor and Spend Management program matures. For example, you initially might not be leveraging alternative fees (AFAs), but one or two years later you may be (a) leveraging a RFP tool; (b) established a preferred law firm panel; or (c) have adopted software to facilitate the relationship with outside

counsel. Naturally, your guidelines should reflect these new processes, tools and approach. I strongly encourage updating guidelines at least every 18 months.

Set the Tone: The overarching approach to OCGs should reflect your company and legal departments’ goals and culture. They are a tool to enhance the relationship and are not meant to be adversarial. Rather, the OCGs should create an opportunity for discussion and partnership with your firms.

Having an effective OCG process is key to building relationships with Firms and managing spend. Drafting effective OCGs should be a proactive process and opportunity for your in-house legal departments to align expectations with firms and to enhance future business decisions.

LEGAL TECH SPOTLIGHT SERIES

Corporate Counsel Business Journal is thrilled to present our second Portfolio of Leading Legal Technology Startups and Service Providers, selected by CCBJ. This collection is designed to highlight innovative solutions for legal professionals who represent services for various facets of the legal ecosystem.

Featured Companies

Boardspan

Cavelo

Cellebrite

CloudNine

Conduent

Exterro

HaystackID

Henchman

IPRO Tech

Kira Systems

KLDiscovery

Litera

Lupl

Matterhorn

Metajure

MetricStream

Mitratech

Passthrough

Rocket Lawyer

Venio Systems

Verint Systems

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Ten Essential Steps to Successfully Implement a Microsoft 365-Based Document and Email Management Solution (DMS)

Keith Vallely, Epona USA

Keith Vallely

Keith Vallely has started numerous businesses with varying degrees of success, culminating with a multi-time award winning Entrepreneur Magazine HOT 100 business in the technology sector. In 2011, Keith joined Epona USA, as the Director of US Sales, and as their first employee in the United States, to open the USA office and begin the process of spreading the power of SharePoint as a DMS platform for the Dutchbased Epona Legal BV.

You have been implementing and deploying DMS solutions for a generation. Take us through the essential steps to a successful DMS on Microsoft 365.

Keith Vallely: You want people in the organization that have experience with the business to help design an appropriate solution specific to your business. As soon as your team determines a move to a cloud-based DMS like Epona, it’s time to reach out to management and identify your team members and roles.

In my experience, you need a great team to manage the process from beginning to end. Making sure you have the right team is key, including the right number of technical people and subject experts. The team should also include “cheerleaders,” folks who want to take part and are excited to promote the project inside the organization.

Having a solid team is at the heart of every successful endeavor. You stress having internal promotion as a key to a successful project. Why is that?

Imparting clear information when dealing with change in any organization is of prime importance. Cheerleaders support the value of this type of change and what it means for the success of the organization. Communicating new features and outlining the benefits ease concerns of your team. In this stage, focus on understanding your pain points and connecting those with the features that alleviate those pain points.

What are some of the common pain points you run into on a regular basis?

Common pain points vary from no current DMS solution to solutions lacking specific functionality/lack of user adoption to the rising costs without added benefits.

What guidance can you offer as to who should be on your team?

Daily users from key groups are critical to assist in setting up your new environment and DMS testing. For a successful DMS

implementation, gather anyone that has a stake in your enterprise. Then, outline their involvement and roles to assist in setting up your environmental architecture and DMS testing. These should be daily users of integral systems and processes which need to be included in the design of the new system. One or 2 individuals from key groups should be represented.

Gathering those who have extensive working knowledge of integral systems and processes can contribute to a better design of the new system. What’s next in the process?

As your implementation partner, Epona will perform a thorough evaluation of your current system and practices. This stage helps identify any potholes that might pop up, such as preparatory projects (ex: upgrading to 64bit Office software or other network configurations) that may be hiding on the road to a smooth transition.

Ensuring customers’ environments are up-to-date and ready for a new cloud based Epona DMS on Microsoft 365 is invaluable. What’s next?

At this stage, Epona focuses on the 3 most important aspects of your enterprise - People, Processes and Technology. Consultants work with your team to familiarize themselves with new processes and technology such as storing and profiling your content in your security framework and assisting your team in designing the best possible DMS to fit your unique business needs.

In creating the best possible DMS, walk us through the Design phase of a project.

This stage focuses on designing and building the perfect system, allowing users to easily accomplish daily practices

such as accessing, working on and saving their content, as well as easy content searching and filing emails.

Would you elaborate on both the Design and Build phases?

In the Design phase, a representative group of users is brought in to determine best practices for your organization including day-to-day workflows, folder structures, document naming conventions and more. In the Build phase, communication with highly technical members of your team is of great importance. They will assist with providing the access to your environment, current security models to follow, and Microsoft Tenant Managed Add-Ins, among other things.

You have the new solution designed and built to the customer’s specifications. Is there a Quality Control phase and what does this entail?

Upon completion of building the DMS to the agreed design specifications, it is time to perform quality control testing to ensure functionality meets expectations. After the initial design has been tested and approved, we begin testing any migrations and finalize training procedures for the end-users.

What type of end-user training does Epona offer?

Epona offers virtualized training as part of the initial project and/or can provide onsite training (for

an additional cost). It’s highly recommended that organizations consider onsite training as it provides a more intimate and effective method of training for end-users. It allows our trainer(s) to assess and attend to any problem areas more easily while on-site. This is hard to achieve with virtual training for obvious reasons.

Epona end-user training can be extensive in accordance with the customers needs. Training is continuously available throughout and after the project. End-user training is a critical component for user adoption and the success of the project.

Makes perfect sense that onsite training is more effective than virtual. So, you have designed, built, and quality control tested the DMS. What comes next?

Before deploying your new DMS, make sure you test in a pilot environment. This stage will help your project group shed light on any remaining roadblocks or potholes which could impact a successful, seamless transition to your new DMS. The group will be working with Epona to smooth out any speed bumps discovered, as well as determine best practices for the rest of the organization.

Providing a test pilot environment prior to deployment sounds like a great way to ensure the environment is exactly what client wants before deploying. Tell us about the Deployment phase of the project.

The design has been accepted and we are ready to go-live with your DMS organization-wide. Migration finalization, site creation and training plans are completed and scheduled, with all 3rd party integrations completed. Now your Project Group transitions the main point of contact to the Epona support and training team. Ongoing additional meetings can

be scheduled with the project manager if necessary.

Ongoing support will be a critical factor to the success of the overall project success. What kind of ongoing training and support does Epona provide?

Ensuring success will require high end-user adoption. Epona ensures this with training classes online or in-person. Classes include refresher-style training after everyone is upand-running. Epona also provides training documentation, helping new users onboard quickly, coupled with ongoing technical support for any issues that arise. We make certain that everyone understands how to use their new Epona DMS effectively while operating with high efficiency.

It is apparent you have mastered a step-by-step plan to successfully deploy a Microsoft365-based DMS solution. In closing, what are some of the benefits your customers can look forward to by moving to a Mirosoft365-based DMS?

It is apparent you have mastered a step-by-step plan to successfully deploy a Microsoft365-based DMS solution. In closing, what are some of the benefits your customers can look forward to by moving to a Mirosoft365-based DMS?

I called a customer two days ago, who had a disaster conversion from their legacy systems to the Microsoft 365 platform and Epona DMS. It had been 2 years since I last spoke to them. When the Teams video call started, the client’s face lit up and he greeted me warmly. He told me that, although the first 3 weeks after conversion were exceedingly challenging, in the last 2 years the firms’ lawyers have been in love with the new system. This tells me that the Microsoft platform answers the call for the legal profession. My client’s lawyers (his partners) were more productive than before. That says it all.

12 Questions Legal Operations Should Ask When Evaluating DMS Vendors

iManage

iManage

iManage is the leading provider of document and email management for knowledge workers. iManage enables the world’s leading enterprises to manage information more efficiently and securely, and leverage knowledge resources to drive better business outcomes. More than one million users at 4,000 organizations across the globe rely on iManage every day.

Legal operations professionals are continually evaluating new processes and technologies to help their legal departments be more efficient, productive, and secure. One important area of focus is document management – enabling users to save, search and work effectively with the documents, emails and messages that flow through the legal department every day.

Organizations increasingly find that traditional enterprise approaches to document management do not meet the specific requirements of their legal departments. So it’s no surprise that 55 percent of legal operators plan to update, evaluate or implement new document management systems (DMS) in the next 12 months.1

Before making an investment in a legal DMS, it’s important to consider the specific functional requirements of legal professionals and the unique capabilities of leading DMS providers.

How does document management help make my legal department more organized and productive?

A legal DMS works the way legal professionals work. It organizes and structures information so users can find the content they need, collaborate efficiently and leverage existing work product. It saves documents and emails together, in the proper context, organized around the relevant matter, client or transaction. It should also be simple and intuitive to use, so the user can complete tasks quickly and without friction.

How does a legal DMS differ from an enterprise content solution? What additional functionality should I look for?

In addition to organizing information clearly, a legal DMS should provide legal-specific capabilities that match the requirements of legal professionals. For example, legal users need to securely share documents with colleagues and clients and easily manage document changes and revisions. A legal DMS should support this workflow with features like secure collaboration, explicit version control and document histories.

Can the solution manage emails as well as documents?

One of the weaknesses of legacy content systems is they don’t save emails and documents together. A modern DMS must enable legal professionals to manage the high volume of sensitive email they work with by saving emails automatically in the correct location, so their content is searchable and secured. Legal users need to see documents and emails together and in the correct context for a complete picture of the matter or transaction they are working on.

Does the legal DMS make it easy to search and find the right documents?

An IDC study found that knowledge workers spend about 2.5 hours per day searching for the right information. Legal professionals need to find the right document, the right contract, or the right clause, with pinpoint accuracy to respond quickly to client inquiries, identify precedent, or leverage existing work product. A legal DMS must include powerful search capabilities and findability, with customizable search functions and personalized results.

Is the DMS intuitive and easy to use?

Busy professionals have little patience for overly complex or difficult technology. The DMS should work seamlessly with the office productivity tools that legal professionals already use and deliver an intuitive user experience on par with consumer technologies. Successful DMS solutions embrace user adoption and engagement as a vital metric of success. Ideally, the solution will require minimal training and provide embedded learning tools to optimize performance.

Can users work securely outside the office or on a mobile device?

In the new normal of hybrid and mobile work, legal professionals need to access their work securely to be productive wherever they are. Modern document management enables users to work from anywhere on any device, with a consistent interface and user experience. The best DMS solution enables workers to stay productive and responsive to business demands by securely collaborating with colleagues, making revisions or reviewing and approving documents from anywhere.

Does the DMS integrate with other legal technologies?

Legal teams rely on a range of different technology solutions, including matter management, e-billing, case management, contract management and more. Any legal DMS should integrate seamlessly into this environment, with out-of-the-box connections to core systems and efficient tools for extension and customization. Look for a DMS vendor with a robust partner ecosystem that can support implementation and systems integration requirements.

Can the DMS protect our company’s most sensitive and confidential legal information?

Legal departments need the highest levels of security protections for proprietary work product, particularly in today’s era of increased cybersecurity risk. The DMS needs to deliver a multi-layered approach to security that’s both comprehensive and unobtrusive to the end user. Documents and emails should be automatically encrypted, with need-to-know access set at the document and matter level, as well as active threat detection to monitor and flag abnormal activity. Security protections should also include support for defined regulatory policies like GDPR and CCPA, while being fully tracked and auditable.

Can the DMS deploy in the cloud?

Nearly every enterprise is working on advancing their cloud strategy by now. There are clear advantages to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, but some organizations worry about moving their confidential legal content into the cloud. Look for cloud native legal DMS providers with wellarchitected cloud solutions that emphasize performance, reliability, agility, and most critically, security. Check for trusted cloud standards and certifications — ISO 27001 series and SOC 2 Type 2 are the most important.

Does the legal DMS vendor have a comprehensive implementation strategy?

Look for vendors that understand the importance of a seamless implementation process, and have the services, programs, and partner relationships to ensure project success. Vendors should offer comprehensive implementation support that includes project management, risk assessment, data migration, recommended design, with additional assistance to ensure change management, user enablement, and user adoption.

Will our corporate IT team have to spend time maintaining the legal DMS?

The modern legal DMS should leverage cloud service delivery while minimizing the burden on IT. this approach enhances organizational agility with rapid deployment, automated updates, and the ability to quickly add new functionality, while your IT resources stay focused on the business.

Who does the legal DMS vendor work with? How well do they support customer success?

As with any significant technology decision, take care to evaluate the potential vendors in the market against your specific requirements. Look for partners with a proven track record of working with large and complex corporate legal departments in highly regulated industries like banking and finance. Also consider vendors who have a detailed understanding of the unique requirements of legal users gained through deep experience working with global law firms and lawyers. Finally, seek out vendors who have a demonstrated focus on customer success and a history of building long-term relationships with clients.

It’s About Trust, Not Tech

The real reason in-house teams are reluctant to purchase software.

Melanie Shafer, Onit

Melanie is the Vice President of Customer Success and Professional Services of Onit’s portfolio of simple legal tech solutions which include SimpleLegal, ContractWorks, SecureDocs, and ReadySign. Melanie’s passion for managing people, developing employees, and building teams and processes is critical for scaling service operations through significant organic growth.

Budget constraints are the main headline in the SaaS world right now. What impact will that have on in-house legal teams looking to purchase new technology?

Forward-thinking legal teams know that technology, when implemented properly, can be a powerful tool for reducing costs, increasing efficiency, improving communication and ultimately, achieving significant cost savings. Despite this, some legal teams will be forced to prioritize their spending, reducing or delaying the purchase of new software.

Do you think legal teams can find the budget for technology?

Budgets still exist – though they may have taken a hit.

Every day, there’s a headline highlighting another company that’s making double digit workforce reductions. It might sound cliche, and we’ve heard it time and time again, but legal teams will need to do more with less.

That’s where technology comes into play. When a team needs to drive operational efficiencies with fewer resources, they’ll find the budget for the right software that meets their needs.

What advice would you give a legal department looking to take a risk on technology?

Technology adoption, even in today’s climate, doesn’t have to be a risk. Companies that are on the fence about purchasing software don’t have reservations about the technology itself, they have reservations about how the technology will be implemented, if their team will adopt it and leverage the tool to its full potential, and how to show the tool’s value to others across the organization.

Let’s focus on technology implementations for a moment. How can legal teams ensure successful implementations?

I’ve seen thousands of successful implementations – and my fair share of unsuccessful ones. Success or failure comes down

Melanie Shafer

to four key things: Buy-in, data, resources and change management.

1. Buy-in. Having an executive sponsor that will help drive change, as well as “doers” that actually execute the change and understand what’s in it for them.

2. Data. For any tool I’ve ever implemented on the buyer or vendor side in the last decade, data has been the make-or-break variable of whether the implementation is completed on time. It’s critical to have the right people included in the implementation – people who know the details of the business – and enough time allotted to get your data in the system effectively.

3. Resources. Do you have the right people on the implementation team to make decisions? And yep, you guessed it, support your data needs. I’ve seen far too many teams rely on the vendor for details that the vendor would never know, like company specific accounting codes or cost centers when implementing e-Billing. Or even something as simple as the correct approvers associated with a matter.

4. Change management. By nature of implementing a new system, you’re asking someone to change. To do something they did yesterday a different way today and tomorrow. You must be able to articulate what’s in it for them and tie it back to what motivates them, whether you use a carrot or a stick or both.

You also mentioned value. How will legal teams achieve value from their technology the fastest?

What’s the saying? A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.

To make sure you achieve value quickly, ask the vendor for their implementation plan as early in the evaluation stage as possible. It’s just as critical of a component as the features of the solution.

For all of the solutions in our portfolio, we meet our customers where they’re at and provide options to help ensure their success. For instance, with our e-Billing and matter management solution, SimpleLegal, we have 2 implementation options.

The first is a preconfigured implementation. We take as much guesswork out of implementation as possible, set up our most common configurations to get you started, yet give you the flexibility to adjust it as needed. We’ve sourced best practices from hundreds of implementations to build this out and it accelerates time to value for our customers.

If you prefer more of a “blank slate” approach, then our standard implementation might be a better option. We give you the choices you want and write it according to your plan, not ours. Yes, we have a methodology to guide you through, and yes, we’ll make suggestions along the way, but this is more for our customers who know exactly what they want and just need help getting there.

Can you put a timeframe on when a legal department will see value from a solution?

We’ve seen customers get value in their trial period, even before they become customers. It could be days, weeks or months, depending on the product mix or complexity of the organization’s needs. Our goal is to always implement

In my experience, trust is built on how issues are handled when they arise.

as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality, so our customers get to the outcomes they’re expecting.

We encourage a “crawl, walk, run” approach in that we make sure we’re aligned to implement features that will give our customers value as quickly as possible. We work with them over time to evolve in any combination of breadth, depthand frequency of use of those features that will allow them to best solve their business problems.

How do you create trust with your customers?

Everyone has experienced at least one nightmare implementation. As a software vendor, we have to create trust with legal teams, acting as support, guidance and even an advocate. In my experience, trust is built on how issues are handled when they arise. Everyone, for the most part, expects a positive service experience, but relationships are strengthened or damaged based on a vendor’s ability to work through those issues with their customers.

Whether you’re looking for e-Billing, contract management, contract drafting or e-Signature, our tools simplify the complex. We take a “no BS” approach to how we communicate. We have a point of view on legal ops and we focus on delivering tangible results and value for our customers at every stage of their journey with us.

Any final thoughts for our readers?

Now is the best time for legal teams to look for legal tech, even if it might not seem like it.

But in order to succeed, legal teams should be encouraged to look beyond the tech and get to know the team behind it. Standout vendors will strive to know their customers and their business needs, connecting them with not only the features that will help them succeed, but also best practices, industry insights, contacts in the legal ops community they can learn from, and where it makes sense, additional solutions that can provide value to them.

Practical Law Dynamic Tool Set

Sterling Miller, Thomson Reuters

Sterling Miller is a threetime General Counsel who spent almost 25 years in house. He has published four books and writes the award-winning legal blog, Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel. Sterling is a frequent paid contributor to Thomson Reuters as well as a sought-after speaker. He regularly consults with legal departments and coaches in-house lawyers. Sterling received his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis.

When it comes to Practical Law, long-time readers of my “Ten Things” blog know I wear my heart on my sleeve: I believe it is hands down the best tool for in-house lawyers and inhouse legal departments on the market today. This holds true for both small and medium-sized businesses where in-house legal resources are often scarce to non-existent and for large businesses with corporate legal departments that need a sophisticated platform of continuously maintained resources to round out their value proposition.

Armed with Practical Law, legal teams are placed on an even playing field, without adding headcount or busting budgets. Teams of all sizes can easily increase the quality and velocity of their work — smaller companies may even be able to skip the lawyers altogether, while larger departments keep more work in house. The product is that comprehensive and easy to use.

Similarly, it is no secret that I am enamored with the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to dramatically change the legal landscape, in terms of both lowering the cost of legal services and providing tools capable of increasing the productivity of lawyers generally. I wrote about this several years ago in a multi-part series of articles for Thomson Reuters titled “Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on Legal Technology: To Boldly Go Where No Legal Department Has Gone Before”. Since then, I have been eagerly watching legal technology announcements for the next big breakthrough of AI for attorneys. I have seen some interesting things but nothing that got me very excited — until now.

For the past few weeks, I have been privy to some exciting technology from the team at Practical Law. Technology that makes a great product even better. Technology that uses artificial intelligence to make searching the huge amount of Practical Law content, easier, faster and better. I am talking about the new Dynamic Tool Set (DTS). While not all of the new features utilize artificial intelligence, the scope of what is new is like putting a jet engine in a Corvette.

Sterling Miller

This is one of the first truly “turnkey” practical uses of artificial intelligence for in-house lawyers and corporate legal departments.

What is Practical Law?

Practical Law is a highly developed legal resources tool that features content prepared by more than 300 expert attorney-editors and contributions by well-regarded lawyers at name-brand law firms. The content is constantly maintained, meaning Practical Law’s attorney editors are tracking changes to the law and updating everything with the latest developments. In addition to 16 practice areas (from litigation and commercial transactions to capital markets/corporate governance), cross-practice collections (global COVID-19 resources and startups and small businesses), and industry sectors (retail, construction, financial services, technology), Practical Law provides the following:

• Practice Notes

• Checklists

• Toolkits

• Standard Document Templates and Clauses

• In-House Resources Center

• Global Guides and Trans-Border Topics

• “What’s Market”

• And much more

With the assistance of AI serving up the expert legal work of more than 300 fulltime attorney-editors, an in-house practitioner can even more quickly get up to speed on a myriad of legal issues and tasks, such as drafting contracts, preparing litigation pleadings, or detailed summaries of the law. It can turn a single person legal department into a Swiss Army Knife of legal skills, providing expert legal guidance in hours, if not minutes.

What’s new?

While the current version of Practical Law is great, the new Dynamic Tool Set (DTS) makes a great product even better. Before DTS, users would start their Practical Law journey by typing a basic query into the search box and getting a long list of links to Practical Law content back as the result. The user would then scan the links and click on those that seemed the most promising. Enter Dynamic Search.

Dynamic Search

The folks at Practical Law have married AI to its robust search features. With Dynamic Search, when you enter your question into the search box (think “Google search”), not only do you get back the familiar links to Practical Law resources that tie into your query, you also get materials that answer your question directly! In most cases you get:

1. An editor’s summary of the answer (a new Q&A content type drafted by Practical Law’s editors).

2. Up to three AI “answer cards” each highlighting a portion of a Practical Law resource that most directly answers your question.

3. The usual list of links to all of the Practical Law content that may answer your question, including templates, Practice Notes, checklists, etc.

Click Here for an Image of my inquiry about the different types of mergers showing what I mean.

This incredibly powerful combination of AI search and Practical Law content is a winner for both busy in-house lawyers in large law departments and lawyers for small

business owners, a combination providing comprehensive answers to legal issues fast, materials and answers that put the legal department on par with outside counsel.

Knowledge Maps

As much as I love Dynamic Search and its use of artificial intelligence, I think my favorite new tool is the Knowledge Map functionality. Knowledge Maps are data visualizations for lawyers that allow you to enter a search and then visually — and quickly — navigate through the entire Practical Law collection of resources and related topics. Most importantly, Knowledge Maps allow you to see issues you may have missed or not considered when starting your search. For example, I entered a search regarding

the difference between Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service agreements and got the following initial Knowledge Map:

The highly visual map allows me to see at a glance all of the different resources available to me by category, such as Standard Clauses, Toolkits, Checklists, Practice Notes, etc. I can click on a resource and get taken to that content plus see additional relevant content added to my map automatically. Here, I clicked on the Practice Note Cloud Computing: Understanding the Legal and Business Issues and got the following additional content and set of issues to consider:

The map allows me to quickly hop around different related topics and resources while the tool keeps track of where I

have been so I can always select — and easily get back to — the resources I think will best help me solve my problem.

Interactive Matter Maps

With the new Interactive Matter Maps feature, I can create a list of tasks and phases, with links to Practical Law resources, I need to complete a certain type of project from start to finish. I can use preset maps found in different subject categories, or I can now create my own custom Interactive Matter Map. For example, if I use the existing Interactive Matter Map for federal discovery, I get the following

I can rearrange the tiles to fit my particular matter, I can color code tasks, and if I click on a tile I am taken to a list of Practical Law resources; for example, “Issue Document Requests” in column three above takes me to links to templates and other materials on preparing document requests (and I can add other hyperlinks or Practical Law resources to the tiles as I see fit). I can also share this task list with my team and even assign tasks, leveraging the power of Practical Law with basic project management.

Other innovations

There are two other Dynamic Tool Set tools added to the mix.

What’s Market Analytics – The existing What’s Market tool searches public databases to provide users with summaries of contracts and certain contract clauses containing certain language (or not). This allows you to analyze and compare terms or features across multiple deals, along with links to the underlying contracts. From

this you can determine whether something you — or the other side — is asking for in a contract is “market.” What’s Market Analytics adds the ability to instantly draw insights from and create graphical visualizations of the information for a certain sub-set of deals and agreements. I can use these analytics when negotiating contracts. For example, if I wanted to know the range of “break-up fees” in merger agreements I can get this chart.

Quick Compare – With a few clicks you can now create custom charts showing answers to legal questions across several states. For example, you can compare the applicability of Impossibility, Frustration of Purpose and Impracticability of contracts in Florida, New York and Texas

This is incredibly useful for litigation and dispute analysis and you can also use it up front when deciding which state law you want to apply to your contract depending on the legal issues that concern you most.

The power of AI to drive answers

Practical Law puts a tremendous library of resources in the hands of in-house lawyers and legal advisors for small businesses. Not only can you find an amazing amount of content on basic “how do I” questions, but you can now utilize the power of AI to drive answers to your legal questions — crucial for when time is short and the team, or an executive, wants answers now. It will be interesting to see how Practical Law adds to these new tools and how they further innovate the product overall. For example, will Thomson Reuters tie the new HighQ Contract Analysis AI tool into Practical Law? We’ll see. But for now, definitely a “wow moment” from Practical Law with the Dynamic Tool Set.

LEGAL TECH STARTUP SPOTLIGHT

CEO: Christopher J. Weiler

HQ: McLean, VA

# of Employees: 2,855

Market Cap: $55.37M

Enterprise Value: $840.00M

Growth Rate: 2.42%

Description:

SIZE MULTIPLE

KLDiscovery Inc is a provider of technology-enabled services and software to help law firms, corporations, government agencies, and consumers solve complex data challenges. It provides eDiscovery, information governance, and data recovery solutions to support the litigation, regulatory compliance, internal investigation, and data recovery and management needs of its clients. The company offers data collection and forensic investigation, early case assessment, electronic discovery and data processing, application software and data hosting for web-based document reviews, and managed document review services.

Most Recent Financing Status

The company completed a $479.85 million debt refinancing round on February 8, 2021. Blackstone Private Credit Fund BDC, Blackstone, The Goldman Sachs Group, and Blackstone Secured Lending Fund BDC, Wilmington Trust provided a $300 million term loan A and a $50 million delayed drawn term loan, a $69.88 million first lien debt and a $20 million delayed draw term loan to the company. The funds will be used to refinance existing debt obligations with increased capacity and reduced principal amortization, lowering annual debt payments from $17 million to $3 million.