Company legislation departments have elevated the authorized operations occupation lately, making these roles central to their ongoing quest for ever-more effectivity.
With its latest launch of CounselLink+™, LexisNexis has offered a brand new device to assist in-house legal professionals and authorized operations professionals meet these calls for.
The “+” in “CounselLink+” refers to integration — customers of the system now have entry to all of their group’s customizable tech stack, in addition to all the further Lexis merchandise they subscribe to, with one password.
The result’s a complete system with the aptitude to arrange and streamline all points of a company legislation division’s work.
Lexis merchandise are embedded all through CounselLink+ — its Sensible Steering device is built-in into the contract administration system to help with templates and drafting, for one instance.
A streamlined work consumption characteristic additionally permits the legislation division to seamlessly discipline and reply to requests and questions from the complete enterprise.
And Lexis’ proprietary, market-leading AI purposes are thoughtfully embedded all through the system to additional increase effectivity.
These integrations allow customers to share knowledge throughout methods much more simply than they might with a patchwork of tech options in place.
This in flip helps them discover new efficiencies in creating and managing contracts, or evaluating authorized dangers, or managing issues and spending, or fielding and responding to enterprisewide questions, amongst different duties.
The unified system additionally eases the method of monitoring all the legislation division’s contributions — and presenting this knowledge to showcase its worth to the group and refine its operations.
It’s a system that can add conveniences, ease person adoption, and bolster tech-focused authorized operations professionals and end-user legal professionals alike.
For those who’re inquisitive about this product and wish to e book a demo, you are able to do so right here.
Or, first, you may learn on for a tour of choose options of CounselLink+.
Getting Began
The CounselLink+ system’s homescreen offers quick entry to quite a few methods and merchandise.
Internally, one click on will take you to your whole methods — matter or work administration, monetary administration together with eBilling, vendor administration, contract lifecycle administration, organizationwide requests, and knowledge analytics.
CounselLink+ additionally consists of one click on entry to another Lexis merchandise your group subscribes to, together with Lexis+ AI, Law360, Sensible Steering, and extra.
Because of this your analysis system is integrated with your whole different workflow merchandise, eradicating the necessity to toggle between disparate methods.
The Work Consumption System
CounselLink+ is organized into issues, and every matter offers a complete overview of each merchandise to trace — these embrace legislation agency relationships, eBilling, paperwork, and contracts.
Issues will be generated manually or imported from different methods, they usually can mechanically embrace knowledge and paperwork by API performance. The system can also be extremely configurable, permitting every enterprise to customise the KPIs it’s following.
As soon as a matter is created, it takes you to a matter portal that permits you to view all of its associated paperwork and metrics. Tabs comprise exhaustive element on all the pieces from finances in reserve to inside stakeholders.
Issues can be created with the CounselLink+ characteristic known as “Work Consumption.”
The Work Consumption system permits the authorized division to share a customizable type, almost certainly on the corporate’s intranet, that can permit anybody within the group to ask a query or make a request.
It’s a course of that eliminates the necessity to chase down requests within the type of voicemails, emails, and different contacts, as a substitute bringing all of them into one standardized system.
The routing of the shape can also be customizable — employment-related requests can go to an employment lawyer, whereas questions on a vendor can go to the authorized operations workforce, for instance.
Requests could merely be questions which might be requested and answered, or they might be promoted to issues.
However regardless of the end result, the CounselLink system will monitor all the work the authorized division is performing.
Whereas nearly any system will inform you high-level metrics like variety of circumstances dealt with, this technique excels in monitoring all the work a authorized workforce is performing.
CounselLink+ will monitor all the questions that come right into a legislation division — the quantity, the variety of questions which might be transformed into issues, the apply space of every inquiry, and extra.
Along with demonstrating worth, this knowledge additionally provides the legislation division the chance to refine its processes and maximize effectivity.
Work Administration
As soon as the work consumption is accomplished and a matter is created, CounselLink+ will combine its different points into one simple to make use of workspace.
One work administration part permits you to retailer paperwork and contracts in a single location.
They are often imported instantly from e mail, or added by an add type. The system additionally integrates with doc administration software program like iManage, and has check-in/check-out and model tracker capabilities.
CounselLink+ customers can management entry to every doc, sharing solely sure ones with an out of doors legislation agency, for instance.
The matter file additionally tracks workflow with an intuitive calendaring and task-management system.
This permits seamless collaboration with different inside customers and exterior customers. It significantly permits legislation departments to collaborate with exterior counsel inside the similar portal.
Outlook Add-In
At a big authorized division, authorized operations professionals will spend most of their time within the dashboards, digging into each accessible metric to hunt higher effectivity.
Attorneys, nonetheless, are sometimes working in purposes like Outlook, whereas solely often using the complete system.
That’s why CounselLink+ has a characteristic that can meet legal professionals the place they’re.
Any matter created in CounselLink+ will create a mini-homepage that may be accessed in Outlook.
The homepage accommodates all the matter data related to a lawyer assigned to work on it, and it permits legal professionals to simply scroll between issues and discover all paperwork, invoices, and different knowledge a matter consists of.
An “Add Journal Entry” discipline is especially in style amongst CounselLink’s lawyer end-users.
The panel (seen on the proper above) permits legal professionals to incorporate issues like standing updates, assembly notes, or paperwork that can be connected to a matter, in addition to to tag different customers to carry it to their consideration.
The entry can be mirrored in the primary CounselLink+ system, however the end-user lawyer solely must create it in Outlook.
It’s a course of that displays seamless person adoption for any lawyer at the moment utilizing Outlook.
AI-Powered Invoice Evaluate
Whether or not your legislation corporations invoice hourly or by AFAs, CounselLink+ can rework the broadly dreaded activity of invoice evaluation.
To populate the system, legislation corporations can submit invoices instantly by CounselLink+ without charge.
As soon as an bill is within the system, a proprietary Good Evaluate performance will study all the prices.
The system will instantly validate the bill and reject objects like hours billed by unknown timekeepers. CounselLink+ will then evaluation all the objects in an bill, and name out sure ones for added scrutiny.
It flags these things with a evaluation that goes far past simply UTBMS codes — leveraging AI to scrutinize each a part of the cost, just like the date, the extent of timekeeper, the cost textual content, the items, and the speed.
Within the instance above, the system recognized a line merchandise coded for trial and listening to attendance the place its description indicated it was billing for establishing a gathering.
Each CounselLink+ consumer can customise the principles Good Evaluate makes use of in its invoice evaluation. They can be personalized for various kinds of issues — completely different guidelines for IP invoices versus these for litigation, for instance.
CounselLink+ additionally has a Mixed Bill Evaluate performance that enables it to evaluation a number of invoices without delay.
This characteristic permits legislation departments with a excessive quantity of invoices to evaluation all of them concurrently, versus opening and shutting every one.
It may possibly additionally present in-depth spend evaluation on a specific matter — shortly seeing how a lot of a specific matter was dealt with by companions versus associates, for instance.
To handle your roster of legislation corporations, CounselLink+ may also present a 360 diploma view of your legislation agency relationships.
Legislation corporations have a weighted rating — customizable by the in-house legislation division. The system additionally maintains a legislation agency range survey and might monitor timekeeper range.
Every company consumer can go away Yelp-style critiques of their legislation corporations as effectively, to be maintained within the inside system. The inner star ranking will be integrated into the legislation agency rating as effectively.
See for Your self
An article like this may solely scratch the floor of the capabilities of a program like CounselLink+.
For those who’re inquisitive about this product and wish to e book a demo, you are able to do so right here.
And keep tuned to Above the Legislation for our follow-up article, the place we’ll dive into further CounselLink+ capabilities, together with its contract lifecycle administration integration.
