Legal Operations - Above The Law's Legal Tech Non-Event

Legal Operations: Reviewed Products & Services

Filevine

Filevine is the leading cloud-based collaborative work solution for law firms. Powering everything from case management and document management to client communication and business analytics, Filevine’s custom and bespoke tools simplify and elevate practice management and growth.

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iManage

iManage transforms how professionals in legal, accounting and financial services get work done by combining artificial intelligence, security and risk mitigation with market-leading document and email management. iManage automates routine cognitive tasks, provides powerful insights and streamlines how professionals work, while maintaining the highest level of security and governance over critical client and corporate data.

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LinkSquares

LinkSquares delivers an AI-powered CLM platform for legal teams. Customers have everything they need to write better contracts, close deals faster, and understand every aspect of every contract.

For more info, visit https://linksquares.com

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Pramata

Radically Simple Contract Management

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Legal Operations: Additional Products & Services

1Doc
2Agree
A1 Enterprise
Aavenir Contractflow
Abraxio
Actionstep
Anaqua
Athennian
Bryter
Contract Eagle
Contract Logix
DocJuris
HotDocs Ltd
Icertis
Ironclad
Onit
PandaDoc
Pitchly
Robin AI
Superlegal
Trustpoint.One

ATL Non-Eventcast:

Jared talked with Jerry Levine of ContractPodAi about contract lifecycle management.

Highlights

Contract management software – 1:09
Doing it for 15 years – 2:15
A product for legal technology – 2:31
Trying to figure out how to solve a problem – 5:03
Making a discovery – 6:47
A day of discovery – 7:30
What does contract lifecycle management means – 8:22
The three stages of the process – 11:09
Benefits if you’re a firm – 17:57
Working better by adopting technology – 20:53

Jared sits down with Rik Nauta, Will Reynolds, Jerry Levine and Kevin Miller to talk about using contract management software.

Highlights

Who are the guests? – 1:19
What do they do on Halloween? – 3:19
Why is it important for law firms to use contract management software? – 8:07
Once you start automating and start using contract management software, you free up time and are able to focus on other tasks. – 12:08
Features of a Contract Management Software. – 14:03
There’s more focus on collaborative work: Younger attorneys are more open to collaboration. – 20:35
The biggest shift or feature that you’ll start to see is the usability of the product that you want to use. – 22:45
The future of Contract Management Software. – 23:58
Contracts are written for people to understand. – 30:46

Jared spoke with Vishal Sunak of LinkSquares, Colin Levy of Malbek, Daniel Barnes of Gatekeeper, and Shashank Bijapur of SpotDraft, about contract management and the risk management systems, and the best practices for lawyers and law firms.

Highlights

Who are the guests for today’s episode? – 1:25
The icebreaker: What scary animal encounter they’ve had? – 3:23
What risks are involved in the risk management and contract management spaces? – 9:40
How do you build processes and how do you implement them? – 17:56
How can you construct, simplify, templatize, and standardize languages within the contracts? – 28:08
What lawyers don’t know about contract management software is that they should. – 37:35
How to get more information about the guests. – 39:19

Jared welcomes Cain Elliott of Filevine.

Highlights

Who’s the guest today? – 1:11
Outlaw, the contract management platform. – 1:59
Icebreaker: Cain being a skier and a snowboarder. – 3:27
Tips for a young man on his first skiing adventure. – 4:46
Why did he feel it’s important to make the acquisition? – 6:16
Things to look for in a solution. – 10:30
The difference between how to use the product as a legal department in a large company and in an independent law firm? – 12:30
Balancing between ad hoc needs of specific clients. – 15:05
The next evolution that Cain sees in contract lifecycle management. – 16:22
Can contract lifecycle management assist in the staffing crisis? – 18:08
The most important field type that exists. – 20:00
How to get more information about Cain Elliott, Filevine, and Outlaw. – 20:50

Contract Lifecycle Management FAQs

What is contract lifecycle management?

Commonly referred to as “CLM,” contract lifecycle management is the process of tracking and organizing all contractual elements of a business relationship — from contract negotiation and drafting to post-execution storage and analysis.

For example, CLM may start with a sales negotiation, and then include non-disclosure provisions, and then continue to grow in varied areas throughout the duration of an engagement.

What are the benefits of contract management?

The greater the sophistication of your CLM system, the greater the benefits. Even a basic system of organizing your contracts so your team can easily locate them will save tremendous amounts of time for most lawyers.

Once the contracts are organized, however, strategic approaches can unlock myriad advantages for an organization. These may include better sales efficiency, new capabilities to analyze your existing contracts, and even revenue generation.

What should a contract management plan include?

The immediate steps will vary based on each individual organization’s needs, but they should comprehensively address all aspects of your contracts: These include storage and digitization of existing contracts, template creation, compliance, automation, negotiation tools, and post-execution management and analysis.

What can the best contract management software provide?

The benefits include easily locating your documents, knowing exactly what’s in your documents, reducing exposure to risk, speeding up your sales cycle, and even helping generate revenue — for example, by flagging agreements that have expired so the business can adjust accordingly.

Ultimately, however, the best systems will go much further.

Today’s software can leverage machine learning, blockchain, and metadata to bring about transformative efficiencies in contract-related processes, allowing lawyers to focus on high-level decision-making, while law departments operate with far greater speed and ease.

Contract Lifecycle Management

By Jared Correia

There’s a term for when attorneys use Latin and other arcane languages to describe legal processes to consumers: “legalese.”

But there’s no similar term for when vendors use technical and other arcane languages to describe their legal software operations to lawyers.

True, this dynamic may seem unfair. But now we have The Legal Tech-to-English Dictionary to help us cope.

Here, we translate contract lifecycle management topics to plain English.

Contract Lifecycle Management

A comprehensive method for managing contracts in a business or law firm setting via an identified workflow, from initiation to signature and renewal.
The use of software to establish and process through all phases of legal contract management.

Lawyer 1: Can you locate the Vandelay Industries supplier contract?

Lawyer 2: Let me see . . .

Lawyer 1: That doesn’t sound like a ‘yes.’

Lawyer 2: Well, you know what I always say: ‘I have an amazing filing system. But, my retrieval system sucks!’

Cf. “Ratatouille,” when Remy finds the letter indicating that Linguini is really Gusteau’s son, just in the nick of time — the way it happens in every movie. That ain’t real life. And, if you’re not managing each phase of a contract as it passes through your law firm, don’t expect a Hollywood miracle to save you.

Authoring

One of the first steps in the process of contract lifecycle management, when the legal team is asked to draft a contract.
The contract drafting process, including review and negotiation.

Lawyer 1: The sales team is asking for another contract.

Lawyer 2: At least they’re not Googling shit and trying to go rogue.

Lawyer 1: Truth.

Cf. William Shakespeare … or, perhaps not.

Audit Trail

The record of the changes made to a file or document.
The system that captures granular transactions in a specific process, like contract lifecycle management.

Lawyer 1: We’re about to be audited by corporate!

Lawyer 1: I’m gonna empty my bank account. Can you meet me in Botswana in 36 hours?

Lawyer 2: Relax, we’ve got audit trails available for everything we’ve drafted and managed in our contract lifecycle management software.

Lawyer 1: Did I say Botswana? I meant Bertucci’s. For lunch.

Cf. Because you can only explain away so many mistakes, before ultimately tripping on your rug and being hospitalized with a serious neck injury.

Force Majeure

A contract clause that releases a party from its contractual obligations due to an unforeseen event beyond their control.
An act of God.
Like, every single thing that happened over the past 20+ months … or, perhaps not.

Contractor 1: So, I’m here to collect my fee for installing those wheels on the pharaoh’s chariot last week?

Lawyer 1: (Wipes locust from his forehead) Are you kidding me?

Multiparty Contract

An agreement made between a number of stakeholders.
Does this involve blockchain somehow?

Lawyer 1: Hey, you think this guy’s name is really William Buttlicker?

Lawyer 2: Just go with it. He’s gonna be a party to this deal now.

Cf. Multiparty agreements that require numerous signatories can be managed by a contract lifecycle management tool that can track actions across parties, including for revisions and signature.

Jared Correia is the host of the Non-Eventcast.

The Contract Management Topics On Our Readers’ Minds

In curating the Non-Event, we’re lucky to have some of the best data regarding our audience’s general areas of interest. Our top resource is our marketing partner Bombora: the largest B2B data cooperative, where numerous publishers pool anonymized user data to determine areas of reader interest.

Courtesy of Bombora, we bring you the contract management-related topics of interest to Above the Law readers, based on surging interest in October 2021. (Figures will be updated periodically.)