1. A New Era: Smart Process Apps Are
Re-Inventing How Law Departments Operate
Paul Zengilowski, Onit
Rich Seleznov, 3rd Street Consulting LLC
1

2. AGENDA
• Introduction
− Paul Zengilowski, Onit
• Legal Department Operations
• Discussion of Business Process Apps
• Practical Application
− Rich Seleznov, 3rd Street Consulting
• Closing Comments and Q&A
2

3. WHO IS ONIT?
• 4-year old business process software company
• Focused on legal and compliance departments
• Backed by a top 20 Venture Capital firm
3

4. TODAY’S TOPIC: How to Leverage Business Apps to
Improve Efficiency, Service, and Quality Outcomes
• Todays objective is two-fold:
− Help you understand how thinking about process can
enable you to work smarter not harder, do more with less
and provide increasing levels of responsiveness, quality of
work product and consistently better outcomes
− Discuss how leading law departments are already using
business Apps
4

5. LAW DEPARTMENT OPERATIONS
& TECHNOLOGY
5

6. SINCE 1978…
• …law departments have invested hundreds of millions of
dollars in automation:
−
−
−
−
Matter Management Systems
Spend Management Systems
Contract Lifecycle Management Systems
Project Management Systems
6

7. VIRTUALLY ALL KNOWLEDGE WORK AND
PROCESSES ARE EXECUTED OUTSIDE THESE SYSTEMS
•
•
•
•
Email as the intake and “collaboration” platform
Word documents as the “forms” solution
Excel spreadsheets for tracking and reporting
SharePoint as the document repository
• And these tools are simply breaking down…
7

8. FORRESTER RESEARCH ON SMART PROCESS
APPS
8

9. FOR EXAMPLE
• In 2010, Inside Counsel named
HealthNow New York one of the
years 10 most innovative law
departments.
"We weren't tracking assignments
properly, and we weren't being
responsive to customers," Sodaro
says. "I felt we had to get rid of the
black hole mentality regarding legal,
and one way was to have a better
way to track things coming in.”
9

10. FORRESTER RESEARCH ON SMART PROCESS
APPS
10

11. FORRESTER RESEARCH ON SMART PROCESS
APPS
11

12. SIMPLE SOLUTION – ONIT
12

13. SIMPLE SOLUTION – ONIT
Submit
13

14. SIMPLE SOLUTION – ONIT
Submit
Review & Approval
14

15. SIMPLE SOLUTION – ONIT
Submit
Review & Approval
15
Manage

16. DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT…
Here's what Sodaro had to say about the results;
"It eliminates the black hole issue. People get assignments
in a more timely way. Work is distributed more evenly
among attorneys. Turnaround times improved
significantly. And clients can go in any time and
see where their matters are."
16

17. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
17

18. THE PROBLEM: Growth in the business was leading
to unrelenting demand for urgent legal services
• Highly customized legal services: dedicated personnel to
client teams
− Did not seem sustainable given the high cost of delivery
• Growing work loads leading to stressed lawyers
• Expensive! The Legal team is a cost to the firm
• Email was main communication method and everyone’s inbox
was full
• Legal team’s tracking tool – an Excel tool -- was breaking and
making it hard to track matters
• Legal needs outside of the US caused us to hire attorneys in
India and so the legal team needed to coordinate across
multiple offices and time zones
• Firm ethos – always seeking to lower internal costs
18

19. THE SOLUTION: Restructure the group and adopt
new methods of tracking work and communicating
around matters
• Restructure the group support different functions
−
−
−
−
Client Contracts - Data Privacy
Vendor Contracts - Legal Matters/Dispute Avoidance
HR
- Intellectual Property
Corporate
• Utilize LPOs for routine legal tasks and mark-ups
• Develop offshore contracting support from our India
office
• Utilize RFPs for legal counsel to lower costs of outside
counsel
• Use new technology to track matters, improve workflow
and assist in standardizing
19

20. THE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION CHOSEN: ONIT
• Easy, affordable and fun!
• Two solutions or “Apps” were developed:
− My legal requests App
− Executed Contract App
• “My legal requests” App
− Work flow tool that routes requests to the correct attorney, LPO provider and
other internal work teams depending on the type of request
− Users have a dashboard
− Automated messages sent out
− Virtual “electronic files” allow seamless support globally
• Executed Contract App
− Electronic repository of agreements
− Light reporting
− Fully connected to the underlying request resulting in the final contract
20

21. ONIT HOMEPAGE
21

22. STEP 1: MY LEGAL REQUESTS
• Use “my legal requests” to engage the legal team.
• Then click Next.
22

23. STEP 2: COMPLETE THE REQUEST FORM
• This is the request form. The fields marked
completed in order to send the request.
23
must be

24. STEP 2: COMPLETE THE REQUEST FORM
• Select the type of request
• Agreement is highlighted in this request
24

25. STEP 2: COMPLETE THE REQUEST FORM
• If you are submitting an Agreement, Question, or Other Legal Issue,
a field called Request Detail will appear
• In this example, select
the correct response based
on if the request is for a client
(including TPAs) or a vendor
• Software has its own
category (at the bottom of the
list)
• Client agreement examples
include: Confidentiality agreements
Data Access Agreements (TPA)
SOWs
• Vendor agreement examples
include: Microsoft, travel vendor,
Epocrates, Olson
25

26. ONIT DASHBOARD –
A DASHBOARD OF ALL MATTERS
Onit Dashboard
Each column has a drop down arrow to
sort or filter issues, hover the cursor over
the column heading for the arrow.
26

27. ONIT ISSUE SCREEN
Onit Issue Screen
Click to return to the
Dashboard.
Enter comments here. Select any
participants to send the update via
email. Attach any files. All
comments are stored below.
Add another ZS user to
the Participants list.
27

28. THE RESULT: IMPROVED & EXPANDED
LEGAL SERVICES
• Turnaround times on agreements are faster
• More agreements are being sent to the legal team for the
contracts repository
• Per hour cost to review and finalize contracts cut in half
• New legal issues being addressed
• Easier to find things
• Transparency of status on legal matters for internal
clients
Our internal client feed back:
“The legal team is a competitive advantage”
28

29. QUESTIONS & CONTACT INFORMATION
• Paul Zengilowski, Onit
− paul.zengilowski@onit.com
− 802.734.0500
• Rich Seleznov, 3rd Street Consulting LLC
− rseleznov@gmail.com
− 713.927.1243
29

30. 30