Legal Leaders Exchange - Podcast episode 23

LegalCollaborator: The importance of early law firm engagement and competitive bidding

Jennifer McIver, our Associate Director of Legal Operations and Industry Insights, is joined in this episode by Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions colleagues Vince Venturella, Associate Director of Technology Product Management, and Lisa Garcia, Associate Director of Customer Experience and User Experience. This discussion is focused on LegalCollaborator, a new offering that facilitates early law firm engagement, as well as competitive bidding by firms, and is integrated with both the TyMetrix^® 360° and Passport^® matter and spend management platforms.

Topics covered in this episode include:

• The importance of the client-law firm relationship and of keeping it beneficial for both parties
• What we have heard from both the law firm and client perspectives on the need for improved collaboration and communication
• How the team approached the design and testing of LegalCollaborator to ensure maximum value and usability
• The advantages legal departments gain by collecting key information from the law firm as soon as a matter is assigned to them
• The benefits of using a competitive bidding, or RFP, process to gather information when selecting outside counsel for a particularly significant matter or case

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Transcript

Greg Corombos

I'm Greg Corombos. Welcome to Legal Leaders Exchange. This podcast series was created to deliver insights on optimizing legal operations for corporate legal and insurance claims professionals. For today's episode, Jennifer McIver, Associate Director of Legal Operations and Industry Insights at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions invited her colleagues, Vince Venturella, Associate Director of Technology Product Management, and Lisa Garcia, Associate Director of Customer Experience and User Experience at ELM Solutions. Today, they will be talking about LegalCollaborator, ELM Solutions' newest innovation that is transforming the way corporate legal departments manage outside counsel engagement and competitive bidding. Their discussion will go from how this solution was born, why it is so important for the relationship between legal departments and law firms, and how it works within ELM Solutions' technology portfolio. With this in mind, let me now welcome Jennifer, Vince, and Lisa.

Jennifer McIver

Thank you, Greg. I am so excited to be here today. This is Jennifer McIver, Associate Director Legal Operations and Industry Insights, Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions. Before we dive into our conversation today, I'd like to first chat a little bit with Vince and Lisa about your roles here at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions. So Lisa, if you could explain what your role is and a little bit about how you got here.

Lisa Garcia

Hi. Yes. Thanks. Jennifer, I am responsible for leading a team here at ELM that focuses on enhancing the overall user experience. We actively involve users throughout the design process by conducting user research and usability testing to help improve and inform the designs of our products. I've been in the field of UX for over 20 plus years, and in this role at ELM for a little over six.

Jennifer McIver

And just curious, Lisa, I mean, what's your favorite part of being in this role? What's the satisfaction that you get from doing your job?

Lisa Garcia

I think for me, my favorite part of this role is being an advocate for the end user and really ensuring that their needs are heard, prioritized and incorporated in all of our designs and through the entire process.

Jennifer McIver

That's great. And Vince, can you explain a little bit about your role here at ELM Solutions and just a little bit about how you got here? Maybe a little on your background of getting into product management?

Vince Venturella

Oh, sure, happy to. It's a long and winding road, a tale as old as time, you know. So yes, I'm Vince Ventrella. I oversee, basically, the application, but I also oversee a lot of our new innovations and things like that. I've had a really great time over more than 10 years at WK, leading a lot of these innovations we brought to market. My background actually isn't in product management. I worked for one of our clients. I worked for an insurance company. I was a Technology Operations Manager. I sat on the other side of the fence and purchased and oversaw solutions like this, and that gave me a unique window into, sort of, what our users were experiencing on a day-to-day basis, the challenges they had and the opportunities that were there. So when the chance came up to join the WK team and start creating my own solutions, I jumped on it and haven't looked back.

Jennifer McIver

That's great. And you know, Vince brings up not being always in product. Lisa, out of curiosity, have you always been in UX/UI?

Lisa Garcia

That's a good question. No, I haven't. I was a business analyst and more on the product side, and I evolved and emerged, over time into UX. So it was a transition from product to UX, actually,

Jennifer McIver

I love it. I absolutely love it. And Vince, thank you very much. I am now singing Beauty and the Beast in my mind, as I'm trying to have questions here, but I want to come back to you, what is your favorite part about being in the role with product?

Vince Venturella

I mean, you get to create things, right? That's what's exciting about this. And you get to make solutions that hopefully improve the lives of users, that change the way they work every day for the better. That's actually really rewarding. I've always been somebody who likes to create things, hopefully useful things, hopefully things that other people find value in. And this gives me a chance to do that every single day.

Jennifer McIver

Well, before we get to useful, I actually want to take a step back and say that I'm really excited. First about talking about LegalCollaborator today, which is a newer ELM Solutions product. And before we dive in, though, I really, really want to talk a little bit about relationship dynamics between in-house legal teams and their law firms. I started implementing e-billing over 12 years ago. And I found myself having a lot of conversations with in-house legal departments about baby step approaches to cost savings through billing guidelines, what requirements, expectations should be demanded upon law firms. Consistently, I would receive pushback reasons, you know, that we can't do this. We can't ask our firms to do this, because we need them, essentially, more than they need us. And there was a lot of conversation about how there was fear of controlling billing situations, whether it was demanding LEDES invoices that would potentially inhibit the services that law firms were going to provide the in house legal teams. Now, fast forward 12 years, and that's likely not even a conversation that is had at any point when you're implementing e billing or invoicing or even matter management solutions. If anything, I feel like it's shifted a little bit,. That power dynamic has shifted, and we're looking at in-house legal teams essentially demanding on law firms certain ways to bill, when to provide rates, and it's really becoming a little bit more one-sided. Now, Vince, I know you said you've been on both sides. I know it's the technology side, but I'm curious in your experience with such a high focus on cost savings by in house legal departments for the last decade, or even more than that, what are your thoughts about that relationship dynamic that's been built between in-house legal departments and their law firms?

Vince Venturella

Yeah. Look, I think it's important to ground this conversation in the reality that exists out there every day in corporate legal worlds. And, frankly, same goes true for our insurance claims folks, as well, in the litigation they do. This is a relationship-driven business model, right? And that's not a bad thing. The way this works in general is people hire firms they know, and those aren't just their friends or somebody that they like. It's people that they've worked with a lot, that have done a lot of past matters or cases for them. It's firms and attorneys there that know their corporate culture, their values and how they work. That's why they're hiring them again, right? When you look at every survey, that's always the preeminent reason why firms are retained, hired again and stay on panels because of how effectively, efficiently and well they know the culture, the values and the goals of the business they're working for, right? So it's more than a vendor relationship is what I'm saying.

Jennifer McIver

It's more than a vendor relationship. I understand that. But do you have any thoughts on the dynamic, potentially, that legal technology has put on that relationship when it comes to cost savings? Do you see it still being, again, putting LegalCollaborator aside, do you see it being still a win/win dynamic? Or do you see it potentially being a little bit shifted in favor of the in-house legal team as they're pushing for certain cost saving methods upon their law firms?

Vince Venturella

My honest answer is, I think it's probably six of one and a half a dozen of another, because the reality is, there has been a lot of push for cost controls. Legal is always under extreme cost pressure, right? We know that that's true. Anybody in a legal department knows that at the same time, a lot of past cost controls simply had a sort of win/loss dynamic for it, right? What I mean by that is like corporate legal department might win, they might save money, but it often put extra pressure for additional effort, work, whatever, on the law firm. And I think that's ultimately why there was that pushback you're talking about. I still see that, by the by, today, because corporate legal departments - you're right - they still do live in a place where they don't want to make their partner firms angry or inconvenience them. They don't want to be the problem client that's hard to work with.

Jennifer McIver

Oh, I was just going to say, I absolutely agree with it. It becomes just more difficult, and the conversations end up being more difficult at that point.

Vince Venturella

Yeah, but they're trying to balance that against the very stark reality that they have to achieve certain cost savings targets. So I think how that's often manifested as, again, in that win/lose dynamic. So it's meant they've gone harder on things like rate negotiations, or they've really looked into a lot of tighter bill review to make sure they're only paying for compliant things. Those are all reasonable, reasonable expectations, by the by, to put on the firms. You shouldn't be paying rates over market value you shouldn't be paying for non-compliant work. And so that's, I think, where they focused most of their attention in the past. Now, hopefully we're going to change some things here.

Jennifer McIver

Yeah, and that's a perfect segue, Vince, and I absolutely agree with you. And attending a lot of events recently, reviewing a lot of surveys and collaboration between in-house, legal teams, insurance departments, claims departments, as well as outside counsel seems to be a huge priority. So I think that really does bring us to LegalCollaborator. And what would be really great is to take a step back. You know, we know we have this product now. But how did we even get here? What started the concept of LegalCollaborator?

Vince Venturella

So I think I'd love to jump in on this one. And the reality is, where did this come from? We have this thing, LegalCollaborator. How did we create it? Did we? Are we such geniuses that we just saw that this was the thing that was needed. No, I mean, I'd like think I'm clever, but not that clever What we did was we listened to our clients, and we listened to law firms and what they were asking for as we were in conversation with them. They didn't come to us and say, build a thing called LegalCollaborator. They came to us and said, "We want better ways to collaborate with our firms. We have this information we need to collect right up front. We want to know more upfront. We want to align more with the firms, work with them in a more predictable and transparent way. We want to use more alternative fee arrangements." That's been something I have heard for years, Jen, I know you've been around for a lot. Well, I don't want to... that's going to sound bad. You've been around, you know, for some years, like me, okay? And you know, just as well as I do. How many sessions, Jen, have you gone to over the years at conferences and such that were like the death of the billable hour, right? Or the rise of AFAS, or using AFAS and getting the most from it, right? This is, this is every conference I've been to over the past.

Jennifer McIver

I swear that it's probably one of the most talked-about problem solving solutions and the least that's acted on in the last 12 years, at least.

Vince Venturella

That's right. And so, you know, we heard all of these problem sets. Now, by the way, there's one other thing I want to mention here, and that is, when we're talking to law firms. I mean, obviously we work with them a lot as well, and when we're talking to law firms, they're saying, "I'm not getting a chance to win more business from the clients I work with, I'm not getting a chance to tell them how awesome we are, to share what differentiates us," that kind of thing, right? Because we do know. I don't think I'm spilling any tea here when I say that some law firms are better performant than others, right? I think we all know that's the case, and yet it's really hard often for those law firms to communicate that back. They wanted more open channels of communication, and by the way, they were excited about more AFAS as well, because it's a heck of a lot easier for them to bill and manage and all of that. So we just had this, this general desire from both sides to increase communication, collaboration, efficiency, and that led to us saying, why don't we have a solution that does all of that? Listening to that problem set is what gave us the idea to build LegalCollaborator.

Jennifer McIver

And let's take a step back on that just a little bit you mentioned, you know, we talked to clients. I've worked for several different products. You know, as you said, I've been around Vince. But in all honesty, in working with those clients, quite often, you talk to your, you know, three noisiest clients, or your four highest annual contract value type clients. So Lisa, just curiously when we're talking about talking to folks about the needs, that really falls into exploratory research, and I'm curious if you can expand on that a little bit, on how we did that research and your involvement with them.

Lisa Garcia

Yeah, so we did listen, and we were able to meet with well over 70 individuals, comprised of not only our clients, but as Vince alluded to earlier in the conversation, we also took a listen to our law firms, and that was a little bit of a different, approach in designing a solution. So we were able to meet with a number of law firms, and we also took that even a step further, meeting with industry experts. So we looked to get a complete end-to-end picture of the process and challenges from all interested parties and using all of that knowledge. And as Vince mentioned earlier, in terms of the law firms, the desires that they have to ensure that I'm heard, that you know who I am. That was a very valuable way to get that information from them.

Jennifer McIver

Now, just curiously, out of all of the feedback from everybody, what was the number one piece of feedback that we received with regard to the need for this product?

Lisa Garcia

I think that from all of the feedback that we heard, 81% of the corporate legal departments that we surveyed said that the greater collaboration and the transparency with the firms where they had no real formal process in place today was really what they were seeking. And I think what sets LegalCollaborator a little bit more apart from of the other solutions that are out there in the market today is that it's a true integration into our platforms. So some of the things that we heard is today, while they may have a tool, there's a lot of manual entry back and forth between the two systems because there is no real integration. And so having everything in one single place was found to be very valuable.

Jennifer McIver

I like that. Now, before we dive in and talk about what actually LegalCollaborator is, for those that don't know, who are listening today, I do want to note that it's not just like we can go out and survey folks and be like, alright, it's going in the product tomorrow. We all know that there's competing ideas, competing needs from clients. So Vince or Lisa, could one of you talk a little bit about what Wolters Kluwer does internally to allow us to maybe elevate certain ideas?

Vince Venturella

I think we both probably have something to say on that, but let me just lay some groundwork with our incubation process. So we have a formal sort of incubation team and discovery process. And as product managers across our organization, as I said, we started by, of course, listening to our clients, exactly as Lisa described. And from there, we take those ideas and formalize them. Individual incubation product managers then sort of work them into what would the product look like, what would it need to do? We then take that and begin socializing that with clients, industry experts, and basically anyone that the thing might touch to collect feedback and continue to shape and grow the idea. And that's really where Lisa's team comes in. I'm not gonna lie. It's really Lisa's team that takes it from this nascent, nebulous idea, and she and her team actually are the ones who translate it into a product. So I should probably hand it over to her to talk about that research phase and the incubation process.

Lisa Garcia

Vince, I think you're being a little too kind. Without you, we would not be able to be where we are today. But actually, yes, listening to our clients, hearing the challenges, hearing the pains, hearing the desires, we were able to conceptualize different aspects and components for not only the clients, but also for the law firms, and sharing those designs, we performed numerous different types of testing. We not only did the initial exploratory calls Jen, as you mentioned, but we also took that a step further and performed usability testing of those designs to ensure not only the intuitiveness and the ease of use, but are the things that we're looking at, planning to develop and design, do they make sense? Are they the right things? Is there something else that maybe was missing or something that is not really necessary? And gathering all of that feedback was very invaluable to creating the solution that you see today.

Jennifer McIver

Perfect and perfect segue, because we've talked elusively about LegalCollaborator here. Let's dive in and let's talk about what is LegalCollaborator, the product. So Vince, do you want to give maybe a high level walk through, maybe a little bit more than an elevator pitch of exactly what LegalCollaborator is.

Vince Venturella

Sure. LegalCollaborator in its simplest form, is a tool that allows for efficient and effective collaboration between the managing attorney within the corporate legal department or the claims handler in the claims group and whatever outside counsel attorney partner they're working with. It presents the user, the corporate legal user, insurance claims user, with a simple form they can dynamically and easily customize to collect a set of information, including but not limited to, things like getting their conflict waiver, their staffing, diversity information, rates, unique value propositions, matter strategies, and, of course, setting up an AFA.

Jennifer McIver

And let me stop you right there, actually. When you say getting that information, just because I want to make sure it's clear with the value of the product here. The information that you're talking about, I'm going to go back to when I was doing implementations, and maybe an attorney would enter a matter. But usually, honestly, the first time a matter would be heard of, sometimes is someone in the law firm would be like, hey, we need to submit our invoices. And so there would be maybe a paralegal, or somebody in the in house legal team that would have to scramble put that information into the e-billing solution, so that way you can then, in turn, post the invoice. And I point that out, because conflict waivers, diversity information, rate, what's approved with rates - that typically was not there, so you're having to run that down. So correct me if I'm wrong, this is taking that away, and it's putting that requirement on the firm to collaborate initially. Am I correct with that? Am I understanding it correctly?

Vince Venturella

You are. But I want to point something out about the fact pattern that you just listed, okay? In the fact pattern, you just said, that was the first time you might have become aware of it, or somebody became aware of it. But there was somebody aware of it already, probably that attorney, right? And what happened in the interim there was, they had a bunch of phone calls or emails, they called up the firm, the attorney heard about the matter, it came in somehow, right? It doesn't matter how it originated. And then they, say, called up their firm. They called up an attorney at a firm, specifically, they didn't call up the building. They're calling, you know, Sarah, or something, specifically, the attorney they work with regularly. And they're saying, Sarah, I've got this new matter. It's this and this and this, can you take this? And then that outside counsel attorney Sarah's like, well, sure, let me look, okay, that looks good. I got, you know, myself, and Jane can do this, and we'll get Steve, the paralegal, and so on and whatever, right? And they had this conversation. Then the corporate legal attorney said, okay, great. And then later that day, they sent him an email with some details. The outside counsel, Sarah, sends back an email and so on. That all happened invisibly. It was on the phone, it was in an email, here or there. It was scattered. Right then, all of a sudden, they just started working, and a month later, they needed a bill, and there was nothing in the system. That's what actually happened. What LegalCollaborator is doing is taking all of that and pushing it up front. So if you're the paralegal, you get word of the matter, or you're the attorney, you get word of the matter, doesn't matter. It's irrelevant who originates it. Instead of needing a phone call and a bunch of back and forth emails and information that's lost and scattered around a bunch of different systems you can't pull together. Where'd that conflict waiver go? What did we agree to for some special rates for this? No. No more is that information scattered now it's on that one simple form that's auditable, trackable, reportable. It goes over to that firm, specifically to the managing attorney in question. So maybe there's still a phone call. You might still call Sarah and say, hey, you okay? Great. I'll send you the LegalCollaborator form later today. Boom. That goes over to them, and they're then populating all that stuff we talked about. So you're correct. It's a law firm, attorney or someone in that building. It could be anybody who's doing it.

Jennifer McIver

All right, let's get Sarah off the elevator. Let's get Steve and Jane off the elevator. Let's go back and talk a little bit about what I think is a second piece of LegalCollaborator. It's probably more than two pieces, but you have the legal engagement, getting that information up front. What's the other big piece? I think it's a big piece for the industry right now, Vince.

Vince Venturella

It is. And the reality of it is, it's competitive bidding, or what might be called RFP, doing an RFP. What we built in here is, sure if you want to work with one firm and just collect this information, you can do that. That's most matters. Okay, that's reality. But there are, within any corporate legal department or claims department's portfolio, some number of matters that are simply higher exposure, higher risk, higher dollars. And when you've got a case that's going to run way up in cost, this allows you to send that same information out to instead of just one firm, three firms, four firms, five firms, whatever you want, and get back a competitive bid. You get to decide what financial arrangement you want them to bid under. So you could have them give you their best flat fee bid, or their best rates, or anything in between, like phase-based billing and stuff like that. There's all sorts of options. But the important part about this that I want to drive home is: it's not just the bid you're getting back. Remember, you're asking them for the staff they're going to use. You're asking them, you're getting the diversity automatically on that staff, and importantly, you're getting back their strategy on that matter. So when you're then making a comparison, you get your answers back from your three, four or five firms, you're not just deciding who's got the lowest price. You'll be able to see what their bids were, but you're making a decision based on who is going to provide you the best value. Who is going to lead to the best, most positive outcome. So you get to make a much more holistic decision on who is the correct partner firm for any particular matter. That supercharges your ability to not only recognize savings and cost controls like driving the price down through traditional competitive bidding, but also very much improving the outcome of the matter, which again saves you more money.

Jennifer McIver

And I think, Vince, it takes us back to what both you and Lisa have said early on about the evaluation process and the research process, and that is law firms suggesting that they want a way to demonstrate their value. And I believe that there is the ability in LegalCollaborator to provide maybe what they do different. How do you differentiate yourself? Because quite often, at least in my experience, you receive RFP questions and they're very, I don't know. It's a it's a closed nation set of questions that you can only answer those that are there, and you can't provide any additional information. I'm correct, right? That LegalCollaborator gives you the ability to at least allow the law firms to differentiate themselves. I like it. And you have great enthusiasm. For those that don't know, we're recording this fairly early in the morning, at least for me, so it's good enthusiasm, and I appreciate that. Vince, taking it a step further, there's other solutions out there that do RFPs, that collect RFPs, that bring in data about law firms. There's other solutions out there that does, I think, some of the intake and engagement and collecting the conflict waivers. What makes it different for ELM Solutions to add LegalCollaborator to our existing products?

Vince Venturella

That's exactly right. And one of the questions we get a lot when we're talking to clients about this - and I know we'll talk more about feedback in just a moment - but one of the most common questions we get is, well, are my law firms going to be okay with this? Is this going to upset them? Are they going to be okay with filling this out? Are they going to be happy, etc? And the reality is, law firms are super excited about this. Why? Because, well, it gives them a chance. It gives them a chance to actually say, this is what makes us different. This is why we're good. This is how we know you. This is how we will live and execute on your values. Importantly, what that's doing for the law firm is it's giving them a chance to expand their footprint within the client, because now they know if they are a high performant firm, if they actually put in the work to know the client well and deliver, they'll win more business. That means real money on their bottom line. So yeah, I mean, they're pretty excited about using it, too. You're right. It's not as though this is the only solution on the market. But what else is out there right now are all what we call point solutions. They can do this. They can collect this information individually. But the problem is, then what? You've got a form? Yep, it's filled out. It's sitting there, and the human has to intervene manually and make sure that every bill matches what you agreed to, make sure that the strategy is what you agreed to. We built this as an inclusive part of a closed loop with our existing platforms. And what that means is that once you collaborate with a firm and reach some kind of agreement, that pricing agreement, that firm, those people, that information is automatically brought back into the system - there's no manual intervention - and importantly, enforced throughout the life of that matter. So if you agree to some financial arrangement, the firm that wins, whether it be in a bidding process, or you just come to a collaborative agreement with a single firm for an AFA, you don't have to worry from that point on, when they bill, about it being right. The system knows and will enforce it from that point forward,

Jennifer McIver

I love that. I mean, I'll be honest. I've been out, I've provided a few presentations, and I love to use the examine, engage, enforce type of process, and it's circular. It keeps going and having all of that information in a single system, essentially it's your single source of truth. Having that all in a single system makes it very easy. And I think what it does, and this is just me going on a tangent here, but attorney adoption is hard with legal tech. And it's hard, I think, because attorneys don't have the information at their fingertips, and what we're doing now, when they're engaging outside counsel, is we're bringing that forward in the same system where the bills are being received, in the same system where you can see the data. So really, the whole picture is there, and it's almost a no brainer of hop in we've got it. We've got you covered. We're there for you.

Vince Venturella

That's right.

Jennifer McIver

Let's take a step back and let's get Lisa back online here, and Lisa, let's talk a little bit about, you know, we've rolled out legal collaborator, but that doesn't mean your job ends. Have you had additional conversations once legal collaborator was out on the market, with some of the same individuals that we talked with early on, or with new folks, and what's been said?

Lisa Garcia

I think I'll allude back to what you guys were just talking about in terms of the integration. I think the key point is that seamless integration. Vince alluded to it earlier in terms of, okay, so you have this form and you fill it out, well, you still got to do something with that form to get it back into your base system. So having the capabilities to be able to auto-populate that information back and to not have to go do the manual human intervention, saving a lot of time from a client perspective, just being able to do those pieces, being able to have that side by side comparison, and being able to actually have a nice, quick, easy view and scan of all of the different responses back. Are things that we're hearing are very invaluable to folks.

Jennifer McIver

Let's switch it up a little bit. Let's be a little vulnerable, or maybe just a little open and transparent here. Have we received any constructive criticism?

Lisa Garcia

Yes, we actually have and that is something from our perspective that we definitely highly value. We don't want to just hear the good, obviously. We want to hear what's not working. And so we took a lot of that information that we heard of maybe what wasn't working, what didn't really seem to make sense. Maybe there was some certain sections or things that we were doing, and it's you may not want to kind of put that type of information there, and we tweaked it. And I think one of the ways that that our clients specifically valued that, yes, I'm giving you feedback, and maybe I don't ever hear what happened with my feedback. But interestingly enough, at our last user conference last year, we performed some lightweight usability testing, and what that is, is giving folks a chance to interact themselves, giving them a few scenarios and tasks and being able to play with the tool. And we actually had several folks comment on the fact that, wow, wait, I gave you that feedback, and you actually incorporated what I gave you. And so there was a lot of excitement that we were not only just listening, but we were acting on what we heard.

Jennifer McIver

I love that. I think, as you know, a user of technology myself, it's really important that, if I have feedback, to see where it is and then to see it in action is even better. You know, I'm just used to seeing it kind of in the work stream, right? But when you're actually able to use it and see your feedback in action, I think that's very powerful. And it really is a partnership between the technology provider and those that will be using it. And we've obviously expanded that partnership, not only to our clients, but also to the end users for our clients. And I think that's amazing. One more piece, though, Lisa, you can answer this or Vince, this can go to you. I know that sometimes, when creating a new product, we go with maybe more of a minimum viable product, or maybe not everything's included after the release of LegalCollaborator. Is there anything else that we're planning on doing right away that maybe we missed or that we found from feedback should be included in order to make the product even better?

Vince Venturella

Yeah, 100%. There were two things that we heard about. The first was, people wanted the ability to do what we call reverse auctions. So that's basically a competitive bid or an RFP, but where you can set a time frame, or where people can sort of actively bid, and that really does have a sort of super charging effect on the on the cost savings. The second thing we heard was, this can sometimes be a lot of information to get back from the firm. Now we have a really nice dashboard that gives everything a side by side, apples to apples comparison. But the reality is, it is a lot of data, The firms are providing you with a lot of information. So this year, we'll be releasing two additional enhancements to the solution, the first of which will be the reverse auction feature. Pretty straightforward. We'll be releasing that so that people can do the competitive bidding, not just on a general time frame, but in that specific way. And also we'll be introducing generative AI summarization. So we call that the competitive analyzer, and that will allow the user who's looking at the law firm responses to sort of summarize, how did the firms respond, where did they do well, where do they have opportunities, and so on and so forth, and get a good read where they can then dig back into the detail afterwards. But they can get a good, high level summary of what's going on out of the generative AI, so excited to have both of those join the product.

Jennifer McIver

I am too. I kind of always have to joke. Of course, I like Gen AI, right? Bad joke for a morning. But Gen AI, reverse auctions already built into a seamless platform, end to end, RFPs. LegalCollaborator, I think, is really going to change the dynamic. We talked a little bit about the win/lose with using legal technology, forcing the billing guidelines and the cost savings. And I think now what we're doing is we're really opening it up and becoming a little bit more transparent with our legal technology between all sides of the parties. So I think we're gonna wrap it up with that. You guys have been amazing. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Vince. And I'm looking forward to more success stories about LegalCollaborator.

Greg Corombos

Those were the words of Jennifer McIver, Vince Venturella and Lisa Garcia, all from Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions. This podcast is hosted by Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions, the market leading provider of enterprise legal spend and matter management, contract lifecycle management and legal analytics solutions. For more information and additional guidance, please visit wolterskluwer.com or call 713-572-3282, Please join us for future podcasts on optimizing legal operations and achieving your legal and business goals