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{ FeatuRe }
“ Law frms, long the default provider, remain go-to sources for that narrow band of high-

value, so-called “bet the company” litigation, transactional or regulatory matters that are
price insensitive and require specialized skills. But for everything else—approximately 85%
”
of total legal spend—legal consumers have viable options that previously did not exist.

In-house counsel are expected to serve a dual role: they are specifc corpus. This reduced the number of
defenders of the company as well as business partners advanc- relevant documents from 100,000 to approxi-
ing its interests. These at times conficting roles have created mately 11,000. Next, Elevate lawyers familiar with
a divergence between in-house and law frm lawyers, placing these types of contracts and the relevant foreign languages ran
corporate counsel in the vanguard of the profession. They training cycles of contract batches, improving the AI tool’s abil-
must identify ways to mitigate an increasing array of risks ity to identify and pull out specifc clauses in those contracts to
while curbing spend and promoting effciency. At the same over 90% accuracy. Finally, the contracts were categorized and
time, they must become integrated with their business clients effciently routed for resolution with the counterparties: either
and actively pursue corporate opportunities. This means that to Elevate lawyers for the high volume of non-business critical
in-house counsel play offense and defense. It is the essence of contracts or to outside counsel and Baxter lawyers for the smaller
the corporate legal challenge. number of customer or business-critical contracts.
The opportunity is that corporate legal departments now This integrated approach, combining process design, le-
operate in a buyer’s market, affording them sourcing strategies gal technology and legal services, saved Baxter more than
that were unavailable when law frms had a virtual monopoly US$500,000 over traditional methods. Even more importantly,
on the delivery of legal services. These options include teaming using a legal service provider enabled the customer’s legal de-
up with non-law frm legal service providers to: partment to meet the de-merger timetable.

● Design improved processes and workfows.
Conclusion
● apply legal technology. The practice of law—core tasks that require specialized legal ex-
● assign work to people with the right expertise, experi- pertise, training and skills—is shrinking, and the delivery of legal
services—the business of providing integrated legal services—is
ence and cost.
expanding rapidly. This distinction informs a critically important
Legal service providers work with corporate legal depart- decision for general counsel specifcally and legal consumers gen-
ments—and law frms—to deliver business impact by stream- erally: engaging the right resource for the right task.
lining the business of law. These new players offer holistic, inte- Law frms, long the default provider, remain go-to sources
grated, multi-disciplinary managed services to legal ops and the for that narrow band of high-value, so-called “bet the compa-
business of legal delivery to enable legal departments to meet ny” litigation, transactional or regulatory matters that are price
and exceed their goals. Their contributions extend well beyond insensitive and require specialized skills. But for everything
budget control—the predictable outcome of a process that le- else—approximately 85% of total legal spend—legal consumers
gal departments seek. They also identify the optimal processes, have viable options that previously did not exist. Those choices,
resources (people and technologies) and providers (the legal notably non-law frm legal service providers, are cost-effective,
supply chain) to perform discrete matters and portfolios in an tech- and process-savvy, and expert in integrated legal delivery.
effcient, process- and metric-driven, secure, and customer- and These new players have emerged in response to a market-
business-aligned fashion. place need for integrated legal delivery expertise. They are a
powerful resource that legal departments should consider when
they distinguish between legal practice and legal delivery func-
Baxter Case Study
When the legal department at Baxter, a healthcare product and tions. They will give general counsel an edge in achieving more
service provider, needed to review up to 100,000 contracts in mul- with less in their challenging new roles. ❚
tiple countries as part of its separation into two companies in 2015,
they turned to a legal service provider, Elevate, to work with the
in-house Baxter legal team and outside counsel, Baker McKenzie. Mark A. Cohen is a global thought leader in the legal industry focused on legal
delivery and education. He is a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Georgetown, a
Elevate designed a workfow and process to split the con- regular contributor to Forbes and a sought-after keynote speaker. He is CEO of
tracts into categories—customer contracts, strategic contracts LegalMosaic ( .legalmosaic.com), a legal business consultancy, and Chairman of
and everything else—and develop different business and legal the Board of Advisors and Chief Strategy Offcer at Elevate.
resolution paths for each category. This process avoided the ex- Liam Brown is Founder and Executive Chairman of Elevate Services
(elevateservices.com), where he helps general counsel and law frm leaders design
ponentially higher cost of outside counsel manually reviewing and implement strategies to improve effectiveness and effciency. Elevate has won
and categorizing each contract while substantially compressing numerous awards and honours, most recently ranking #53 on the 2016 Inc. 5000
delivery time and promoting accuracy. An AI review technology Fastest Growing Private Companies list. Liam is also a frequent speaker at legal
conferences, author of articles about trends in the legal sector, active investor in
was then used to analyze and identify relevant contracts from this emerging legal technologies and executive coach for founders of start-ups.

26 CCCA MAgAzINE | FALL 2017 AutOMNE