Product Spotlight: LexisNexis CounselLink+ For Corporate Legal

Summary

Enterprise legal management software anchors the foundation of corporate legal departments. Its features include matter management, contract lifecycle management, e-billing, work management, and managing vendors, among other AI-driven applications. LexisNexis CounselLink+ is a leading legal industry ELM solution that delivers a unified workspace as a legal operations hub. Legal departments utilize the software for legal teams, operations teams and outside counsel to create collaboration, improve productivity and enhance efficiency.

What Is LexisNexis CounselLink+?

LexisNexis® CounselLink+™ is a cloud-based enterprise legal management  solution integrating contract lifecycle management (CLM) and exclusive LexisNexis content in a single collaborative platform. The legal team benefits, and outside counsel and other vendors can strengthen relationships by working in the software. CounselLink+ is a legal operations hub fully integrated with contract lifecycle management. It features various AI-driven tools that drive efficiency for all users from the unified dashboard. 

The enterprise legal management solution features matter management, ​financial management, contract lifecycle management, vendor management, and work management applications. The product promotes effortless legal and operations collaboration, workflow efficiency, productivity, and 360-degree visibility into matters, contracts, finances, work, analytics, and vendors. Data-driven analytical reporting with scorecards developed in custom dashboards informs enterprise-wide stakeholders of law department performance, productivity and legal spend. With advanced, AI-driven bill review, legal operations can reduce legal spend with automated invoice review that flags and corrects errors.

Everyone who requires information about the legal department, including general counsel, chief legal officers, legal operations, lawyers, and outside counsel can utilize CounselLink+ to their advantage.

CounselLink+ Enterprise Legal Management and Contract Lifecycle Management Features

Some of the features of CounselLink+ for the legal department include:

Matter Management 

The core of enterprise legal management software is matter management, and CounselLink+ provides a single, cloud-based matter profile that serves as a hub for all matter-related activities. Additional features of the ELM matter management functionality include configurable data fields, screen layouts and matter relationships​; controlled law firm assignment​s for relevant matters; journaling; document management with check-in/check-out and versioning, full-text searching, and role-based security. In-house counsel can invite law firms to consult on matters and submit invoices using the CounselLink+ platform.  

Contract Lifecycle Management

Management of the contract lifecycle occurs more seamlessly with CounselLink+. Contract management integrates within the CounselLink+ enterprise legal management solution. A unique feature is the linking of contracts with matters within the dashboard. Lawyers no longer need to search endlessly to reference the right contract, and this saves valuable time. Compliance and ease of oversight are enhanced, ensuring documentation is accurately aligned with associated legal activities. 

During contract drafting, users can track versions and redline in the Microsoft Word interface within CounselLink+. This creates efficient contract drafting from start to finish with streamlined workflows and enhanced productivity.

Hundreds of contract templates from LexisNexis Practical Guidance® are accessible. Contract clauses, terms and conditions can be stored in the database for use in drafting future contracts. This is helpful in standardizing contracts for key practice areas and also adhering to regulatory and compliance standards. The contract drafting experience  improves regulatory compliance, authoring, negotiation, seamless drafting, and signoff cycle times.

Financial Management

Legal spend is one of the most challenging tasks that legal operations professionals face. Outside counsel partner fees are rising exponentially, and financial management of the legal department budget is critical. With CounselLink+, General Counsel can utilize SmartReview®, an AI-powered advanced algorithm that automatically reviews law firm invoices, identifies errors and corrects them. The billing guidelines established by the legal department are enforced. The legal team saves valuable time as they no longer need to review invoices manually. Errors are flagged and invoices are renegotiated for greater cost savings.

Work Intake Powered by AI

One, sometimes cumbersome, aspect of the legal department is work management and intake. It requires a streamlined approach so that requests for legal help are triaged and managed efficiently.

CounselLink+ utilizes a legal assistant, “Ask Legal” available on Microsoft Teams, to provide AI legal support. AI-generated responses to simple legal questions from business stakeholders are automated, enabling efficient handling of higher volume requests while maintaining service quality. Those requests that need higher-level attention can be added to the queue for legal team management.

Analytical Reporting & Visibility

Data-driven analytical reports are created from custom dashboards and scorecards. The performance and productivity of the legal department team and outside counsel are monitored and reported to corporate leadership and stakeholders. Reports highlight progress, and projects are generated with visual graphics so that leadership has 360-degree visibility surrounding matters, contracts and vendor relationships.

Vendor Management Improvements

Law firms can be invited to collaborate on the CounselLink+ platform to improve matter communication and vendor management with in-house counsel. They can also submit invoices within the environment using established billing guidelines. Shareable documents are provided within the CounselLink+ portal so vendors and the legal team can more effectively communicate and collaborate.

Centralized and Unified Workspace 

CounselLink+ integrates exclusive LexisNexis resources into one, conveniently centralized and unified workspace offering legal and operations teams the opportunity to manage their entire workday. Users have one-click access to the LexisNexis ecosystem so that other solutions are easily accessible.   

Legal departments utilizing CounselLink achieve an average ROI of 13x their CounselLink spend, according to data culled from the 2023 CounselLink customer benchmark database.

LexisNexis® CounselLink® delivers 360-degree visibility to legal departments and their stakeholders. To learn more about CounselLink+ contact us.

TL;DR:

Legal teams in corporate law departments can benefit from enterprise legal management software from LexisNexis CounselLink+. As a leading solution provider, CounselLink+ delivers various applications that make the legal department function more efficiently, productively and collaboratively. The primary features of CounselLink+ are matter management, e-billing, analytics and reporting, contract management, and workflows. One-click access to the entire LexisNexis ecosystem provides additional benefits for CounselLink+ users.