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A recent Gartner study featured in Law.com suggests that general counsels often “doom in-house tech upgrades,” beginning with “failure to unlock value of their technology investments.”
Selecting the right technology for the legal department has much to do with data. Is the data accessible to everyone on the legal team and in legal operations? Is the data clean? Is the department equipped with the proper training to implement the data to improve the value of services? There are key factors in selecting the right legal technology, and they are addressed in this article.
Legal operations directors typically are charged with selecting the right legal technology for the law department. Often, a legal operations director begins discussions with various technology solution providers, like LexisNexis CounselLink, to help with an audit of department needs now and in the future.
LexisNexis CounselLink+ is an enterprise legal management solution with features to unify department operations in a single, collaborative dashboard. Its AI-driven tools enhance automated workflows of matter management, contract lifecycle management, financials and invoicing, vendor management, and high-powered analytics and reporting to document work management.
Contact CounselLink to learn more about enterprise legal management software.
To launch an initiative of selecting the right legal technology, legal operations professionals should consider the following key factors:
Where does the law department and the greater organization sit with change, especially the process of selecting the right legal technology? Legal operations should understand the required structured change management processes, including the RFP process, budget, deployment initiatives, user training, phased rollouts, and ongoing retention and scalability of the software for all users.
The evolution of AI will continue to influence how legal departments select the right software solutions. Staying abreast of emerging technologies and feature upgrades in software and solutions is a critical factor. In particular, trust in the vendor contributes to trust in the vendor’s ability to deliver on AI innovation. LexisNexis CounselLink+, an enterprise legal management solution, is built on Lexis+ AI innovation with continuous AI enhancements to improve legal team workflows.
This is a critical component of any change in software systems across an organization. Perhaps, legal operations can form a task force of key stakeholders from IT, finance and legal (including the general counsel), to organize a collaborative experience and earn consensus about system requirements, budget and scalability.
Perhaps one of the most critical factors in selecting the right legal technology solution is the technology vendor. During an RFP process, legal operations must explore a vendor’s track record, duration in the business, innovation pathways, technology support, and whether there is a professional services team to help develop customized dashboards, analyze data, and implement scorecards for vendor management.
LexisNexis CounselLink has a robust account management and technology support team. Its professional services team continuously innovates with customers to help them with scalability, solution performance, data maturity and decision-making strategy, and much more.
Once the task force agrees on what they need in an enterprise legal management solution, legal operations can dive more deeply into the key factors in selecting the right legal solution. There may be others; however, this list below is a good start.
An enterprise legal management solution like CounselLink+ includes all the features that in-house lawyers and outside counsel need to collaborate on matters. A contract lifestyle management application in the solution links matters to contracts. Law firms submit their invoicing within the financial management dashboard, and everyone collaborates on case management with files review, editing and uploading. CounselLink+ integrates with other legal department software, and the IT support team can troubleshoot API integration for seamless interoperability.
The migration of data should be discussed early on in the process of solution selection. The installation and deployment teams must evaluate how easily data can be transferred from your current system to the new CounselLink+ enterprise legal management.
Scalability is a critical factor. If the legal department grows and the lifecycle of the solution stops growing, the solution becomes obsolete. This aspect of an enterprise legal management solution should be a minimal factor in solution selection because CounselLink is robust and intended to grow with enterprise growth.
A key factor in selecting the right technology for the legal department is the level of customization available. There are large enterprises with their own capable IT departments that can write code to customize off-the-shelf software. ELM software should have that feature incorporated into the solution.
Every private or public organization must comply with regulatory issues, data privacy laws, cybersecurity regulations, and other legal compliance issues. Daily, more data privacy laws are enacted in the U.S. with stricter compliance rules. Those organizations using AI must conform to data privacy, as well, and the AI solution provider should have their own regulations about AI training, data protection and data privacy.
The LexisNexis CounselLink+ dashboard is intuitive for all users. With one click, users get access to the entire LexisNexis ecosystem. Contracts can be written in a Word application directly in the CounselLink+ dashboard interface, and versions are easily controlled. Several hundred contract templates from LexisNexis Practical Guidance are available to CounselLink+ users who can also tap into an approved clause library.
LexisNexis University offers monthly training workshops for administrators and users to improve their basic and advanced knowledge about CounselLink+ and how to employ it for daily legal tasks.
CounselLink+ is a cloud-based enterprise solution with mobile access. Users can access the solution remotely with multi-factor authentication to ensure security.
Above, we mentioned the level of support available to the legal department. Customer support and account management are two important details of LexisNexis CounselLink features. There are solution architects who know the product inside and out and can support customers on their ELM journey.
Product innovation is a necessary requirement of any scalable software. The enterprise legal management solution serves the entire legal department. New product enhancements help the department scale and grow, so replacement software is non-recurring.
Consider not only the initial licensing fee but also maintenance, training, upgrades, and potential integration costs. Evaluate how the investment will improve efficiency, reduce risks, or lead to cost savings over time.
LexisNexis CounselLink+ features AI-driven reporting and analytics, complete with visual snapshots of legal department performance. Leadership has a 360-degree view of matter performance and status, open contracts, budget management, and much more.
The CounselLink Strategic Consulting team utilizes data to drive the analytical insights required by leadership and to develop a maturity pathway for the legal department. Those law departments using data to make informed decisions to achieve strategic goals are more mature and add more value to the enterprise.
Selecting the right legal technology requires months of upfront work to earn consensus about what the legal department needs to succeed and grow. Legal operations professionals typically lead that charge.
For an enterprise legal management solution, like LexisNexis CounselLink+, there are many considerations to review before the selection process. Five considerations are presented in this article.
Once consensus is earned, legal operations can work steadily with the enterprise legal management solution provider and review specifics about software performance for the organization. These factors help legal operations professionals make more informed decisions that align with current needs and future directions of their legal departments.