The Current State:
Contract Lifecycle and Legal Information management software solutions are top of mind for many legal teams. Legacy, on-premise systems or tools such as Excel, SharePoint, and shared folders do not offer the automation, contract tracking, collaboration, and self-service capabilities that provide value to an organization. The prevalence of AI in the workplace has further fueled interest for companies to evaluate how to best optimize their tech stack. Teams of all sizes across multiple industries are being asked to share legal information across the enterprise business, driving the growing interest in legal analytics and legal tech.
The need to share legal information out more broadly is the result that the influence and responsibility of the legal team has expanded. Traditionally viewed as the department to protect against and respond to risk, legal now has a key role in strategy and growth initiatives. Many of the areas legal is responsible for – Contract Review, IP, Compliance, Corporate Governance – impact revenue sustainability and offer competitive advantages.
Interacting with the Business:
A common consideration when evaluating a new software solution is how the enterprise, as a whole, can extract the value from it, gain user adoption, and see a positive business attribution. While SaaS tools house comprehensive data, that data often does not get shared outside of those individuals who are day-to-day users on a specific team, leaving a diminishing ROI.
When it comes to legal tech, those solutions that can produce legal analytics for use by the broader business in order to drive decision-making yield the best ROI and help generate better outcomes.
The below are a few examples as to how departments outside of legal need to consume legal data for their decision-making:
- Finance teams rely on contract tracking to audit and validate that agreements have gone through the proper approvals, and evaluate vendor spend by specific contracts. Especially, as it pertains to recognizing revenue, finance will need to ensure certain milestones are being achieved per the contract terms.
- Marketing departments often work closely with legal to validate that the language used within a particular branding camping conforms to company guidelines.
- Human Resource teams collaborate with legal on policy management and consult on employee agreements. Capturing the history of past matters and guidance from legal aid, HR teams in ensure an organization stays compliant.
- Product teams interact with legal extensively in instances where they need to -license the IP (intellectual property) of a third party, will act as a licensor, or explore a channel distribution partnership.
- Sales teams rely on legal to review agreements to drive revenue in the most efficient way possible. Providing sellers visibility into existing agreements can help isolate if there is already an NDA or MSA in place for a prospective sale.
The Legisway Solution:
Legisway by Wolters Kluwer is the vehicle for legal teams to make legal information business accessible through its custom reporting, contract tracking, auto-alerts, KPI tracking, and workflows. Over 1,000 companies worldwide trust Legisway to empower their legal team to become a strategic leader. In addition to being an end-to-end AI-powered CLM, Legisway offers additional modules and legal analytics to help track Entity Management, Compliance and IP affairs. If you are interested in learning how Legisway can enable your team to collaborate and share information out with the business, learn more here.