The obvious benefits of technology for Legal and the business include, but extend beyond: better risk management, increased efficiency through lower cost and time saved, reduction in human error, and the avoidance of fines and penalties by meeting filing deadlines and license obligations. In the case of regulatory obligations, compliance is traceable, trackable and auditable to demonstrate a robust compliance framework. Technology also frees up resources that can be applied to identify and manage the key legal risks, which is ultimately the core function of Legal.
Legal departments own extensive data. Using technology to structure data sets, improve its visibility and share it across the organization can change the perception of Legal from cost centre to business partner. For example, insights derived from an entity management solution may offer the opportunity to streamline the corporate structure, while analytics performed in contract management tooling enable Legal to review contract clauses (for example to take advantage of an RPI uplift), manage the renewal of contracts with harmonized clauses that optimize the contract’s performance for the organization, and eliminate expired contracts. Legal is also better able to manage, defend and exploit the organization’s intellectual property by controlling it digitally.
Today the GCs of high performing companies have built on their traditional stewardship role and they help manage corporate risk and compliance to reduce exposure and add value by proactively contributing to the organization’s strategy and growth. To do this, GCs need to optimize the legal function’s strategy, processes, workflow and tools which involves increased efficiency, standardization, alternative resourcing models including shared services and outsourcing, and technology-enabled tooling.
Technology provides greater transparency into Legal’s operations allowing key performance indicator (KPI) reporting to the C-suite and facilitating valuable business insights to be gleaned from the data available, for example, by drawing on AI-derived insights as to what leads to the best performing contracts from a business perspective. This ability to be sufficiently close to operations to understand commercial objectives enables Legal to give good advice at the beginning of the process, rather than just formalizing the contract or reacting when things go wrong or putting up barriers as a way of minimizing risks. In this way, the organization’s risk management and contractual effectiveness are optimized.
We present to you, “Top 10 Legal Tech Solution Providers - 2021.”
