Enterprise Legal Management Software for Corporate Law Departments

Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) software enables the corporate legal department to manage legal spend with vendors and outside counsel; manage work intake; manage matters from start to finish; conduct legal bill reviews with AI; develop data-driven analytical reports for stakeholders; manage the contract lifecycle and create a more collaborative work environment between the legal team, legal operations and the entire enterprise ecosystem. ELM software makes legal operations and legal teams more efficient, productive, accurate, streamlined, and collaborative. Enterprise Legal Management software provides a 360-degree view of the entire legal department from the perspective of legal operations and the legal team.

Selecting Enterprise Legal Management Software

The role of the legal operations professional becomes more challenging by the day, especially when it involves the selection, deployment, utilization, and training of enterprise legal management software. There may be upwards of 10 disparate software solutions used in the legal department, each of them designed to streamline one-to-two things in the workflow.

This can create inefficiencies among all software users, including legal operations, general counsel, chief legal officers, the legal team, and the outside counsel teams that utilize legal department software.  

Legal operations professionals need reliable tools to manage a growing legal department. They need technology delivered by a preferred solution provider to support deployment and scalability. Selecting an Enterprise Legal Management solution can be a challenge for legal operations professionals. Shopping for the first-ever or replacement enterprise solution in a legal department requires homework. Here are several questions to ask when contemplating the addition of enterprise legal management software in the corporate legal department:

• What do customer reviews and testimonials say?
• What features does the software include?
• Are contracts integrated with matters?
• What are the benefits of ELM software not already being realized?
• How helpful are the frontline sales teams?
• Are there product demos that make sense and are real?
• What kind of long-term customer service is included in the deal?
• How is ROI calculated?
• What is the deployment and installation timeline?
• Is there on-demand training for the team?

Reviewing blog posts, like this one, that walk legal operations professionals through the features, benefits and what to look for is helpful in the overall enterprise legal management software selection process. Certainly, changing legal department technology infrastructure likely causes disruption; however, the result is a more streamlined workflow with greater collaboration, productivity, and efficiency…to reiterate what was mentioned in the opening paragraph.

Benefits of Enterprise Legal Management

Enterprise Legal Management software benefits organizations in a variety of ways. In particular, it helps legal operations professionals streamline operations and collaboration with the legal team. Law departments with enterprise legal management software can realize a variety of benefits, that are likely to include many of the following.

• There is improved communication, collaboration, efficiency, and workflow accuracy in daily tasks.
• Noticeably, legal teams find they have more time to practice law instead of managing administrative tasks for the department.
• ELM software helps reduce costs due to AI algorithms in smart invoice review
• Productivity increases because the legal operations team has ELM to manage the moving parts, and the legal team has less administrative work because of the software benefits.
• Legal spend is more controlled with bill review tools that identify errors in invoicing. Law firms that double bill or add unapproved timekeepers to a matter can be spotted right away so that budgets are more controlled.
• Integrated contract management links with matters from one collaborative platform. Contracts are developed in Microsoft Office 365 tools, including Word, and are easily accessible throughout the lifetime of the matter or contractual obligation

Features of Enterprise Legal Software

Many of the following features of ELM software deliver greater visibility for legal operations professionals, general counsel, the chief legal officer, and other stakeholders throughout the company:

• Legal spend management
• Benchmark database with scorecards
• Analytical reporting based on data culled from custom dashboards
• Contract management integrated into a single ELM collaborative platform
• Smart billing solutions that automatically flag invoice errors and correct them
• Work intake with AI capability to reduce the time that the legal team needs to field questions from other parts of the business
• Matter management linked with respective contracts
• Managing vendors’ performance, billings, diversity, and more

Matter Management Software in the Legal Department

Imagine a legal department in a sizeable company without ELM software. Managing matters would require a spreadsheet with each matter, status, dates, the team, progress notes, budget, and so much more. Basically, it would be impossible to conduct manual matter management with all the stakeholders involved.

That’s why a legal team within a law department requires the benefit of enterprise legal management. This software is a cloud-based application that streamlines workflow and bolsters productivity. A variety of tasks can be optimized including:

• Management of each document processed through the legal team. This includes intake and tracking of documents, too.
• The software optimizes scheduling, communication and collaboration, putting everyone touching a matter on equal footing.
• Billing and invoicing are set up per legal department guidelines and enforced so outside vendor invoices are automatically reviewed for errors.
• For the best ELM software, it is important to identify a solution that links contracts with matters. This saves time for anyone touching a matter and/or a contract.
• Analytical reporting becomes more informed with data-driven metrics, and stakeholders receive a 360-degree view of legal department health, performance and productivity.

Vendor Management Software in the Legal Department

It is increasingly clear that corporations prefer a diversified workforce. This goes the same for the corporate legal department and the vendors and timekeepers it hires. Corporations issue diversity guidelines, and the various business units and cost centers must comply.

ELM software vendor management allows legal operations to ask for a diverse legal team from outside counsel or alternative legal service providers. For example, the software includes a questionnaire asking about gender, ethnicity and age, and this can be anonymous. However, the information can be used to report to corporate human resources that the legal department is in compliance.

Financial Management Software in the Legal Department

A significant part of the law department pertains to invoicing, billing and budgets. The legal department is charged to do more with less, and decreasing budgets make that a major challenge. That’s why having useful and trusted financial management software as part of the ELM solution is critical.

When exploring ELM software for large enterprises, look for invoice review software powered by AI. This critical feature within ELM software automatically flags and corrects invoice errors and allows legal operations professionals an opportunity to save costs from erroneous legal expenses billed by vendors. Invoices can be negotiated to the correct amounts and billing guidelines can be enforced.

Moreover, the smart billing solution eliminates the need for the legal team to painstakingly review invoices, saving valuable time in the process. Legal operations staff can also reduce the time they need for invoice review, creating a win-win for the entire department.

Contract Lifecycle Management Integrated with Enterprise Legal Management Software

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) software customarily was separate from ELM solutions. As a single application, it required a separate login, and the two solutions were associated but not integrated. This created workflow issues for the legal department, causing valuable time wasted. Users seeking an advanced ELM solution integrated with CLM should explore cloud-based applications that combine CLM with ELM in a single, collaborative platform.

Not only can lawyers draft contracts in Microsoft Word, but they can also access contracts and matters together with linking ability. AI-powered contract management can help eliminate redlining while providing clauses for parties to agree.

Work Intake Streamlines with ELM Software

An aspect of legal operations that may wreak havoc in the legal department is work intake. The legal team and the legal ops triage team need a system to review help requests from the enterprise. Certainly, ELM software enables a smoother intake of inbound legal work requests throughout the company. Users can complete a form with subtle details of their legal issue and it goes into the queue for management.

A new feature for customers using Microsoft Teams, includes a legal assistant, “Ask Legal.” Stakeholders throughout the enterprise can access answers to their legal questions. If additional legal assistance is required, the help request is forwarded to the legal team to review and manage. This creates valuable time-saving opportunities for everyone in the legal department.

When seeking ELM software for the legal department, buyers should consider all the features mentioned above in addition to the strength of the support team that services customers throughout installation, deployment and ongoing training. To learn more about the capabilities of CounselLink+ ELM and CLM, schedule a demo.