Page 46 - CCCA 243725 Magazine_Winter 2015

{ inside edGe }

tHe digitAl lAWYer:

inCreAsing in-House eFFiCienCY

By Mark Johnson

Like me, you’re probably under constant pressure to do things from our core duties. Consequently, we es-
tablished an easy-to-use database for them.
faster. In a world that demands everything yesterday, fairly or It contains summaries of the major con-
unfairly, the legal department is too often known as the “sales tract terms relevant to the business team
prevention department.” (i.e., not the governing law clause!). We
hired a legal process outsourcer in India
to abstract the contracts and upload the
summaries into the database. The business
doubt we’ll ever be able to change that 2. electronic signatures team can now open the relevant summary
impression; it’s too ingrained, too much This invention is a godsend. Forget about and quickly check the applicable item.
i fun, and too convenient for others. But getting ink signatures—it takes too long!
here are a few little things you can do to Not only can documents be signed elec- 5. Contract fow management
make your life easier. You’ll just need a tronically on computers and smartphones, We regularly received email requests for
little help from IT. but you can also sequence the execution— legal assistance but were given little or no
X must sign frst, and then Y. This dovetails business context to the transaction. We’d
1. document sharing nicely with your approval processes. Also, need to ask basic background questions.
I started practising in the last century, you know exactly when a contract has been Colleagues also wanted to know the status
before everyone in the company did reviewed and signed—no more wondering of agreements and when they would be
their own revisions and margin com- if it is under a pile of papers on someone’s done. A contract fow management system
ments. Version control was much easier desk. We use Microsoft DocuSign. It’s a built out of our CRM tool solved the inef-
then. But things are different now. Dif- quick and easy cloud-based program. fciencies. Requests for legal help must be
ferent versions with different markups made through the system. Certain felds are
fy all over the place. You can avoid the 3. File tracking mandatory, thereby providing us the busi-
time and aggravation of compiling ev- At any point in time, my department has ness context. The status feld is then updat-
eryone’s changes by having a document approximately 50 open fles. It can be dif- ed accordingly—“legal review,” “with the
sharing system. fcult to keep track of fle coverage, work- client,” “approved for signature,” etc. With
In short, the document is uploaded loads and the status of each. To solve this, dashboard views, you have great manage-
to your company’s network or cloud. we instituted an electronic list of legal ment information at your fngertips.
That is the one and only offcial ver- matters that’s accessible to everyone on
sion. Going forward, instead of email- the team. We can all see who is working All of the above can be done in-house.
ing the document for review, you simply on the fle and its status. This solution is They’ll make your life as in-house counsel
send your colleagues the link. They then also helpful later on when someone has much easier—and impress the other de-
make their changes and comments to a question about the fle and we need to partments. Just remember to be nice to IT! ❚
that centralized document. You can see know who worked on it six months ago.
who did what and when. You can select
the changes you wish to accept, lock the 4. Contract terms database Mark Johnson is the General
Counsel of Infusion, a global
document, and then send it out. We use Do you get questions from the business
software consulting frm with
Microsoft’s SharePoint, but there are team about the terms of a contract? We 600 staff in 10 offces across
other solutions available. did all the time, and it was taking us away fve countries.

46 CCCA MAgAzInE | WIntEr 2015 HIVEr