Although corporate legal departments are known within the legal community as leaders and drivers of technology and innovation, that reputation doesn't carry so well into the business sector. After all, in many instances, connecting a matter to the legal department is still a fairly low-tech process.

“Managing those requests can be an inefficient, manual process, consisting mostly of email, spreadsheets, and even paper forms,” says Aaron Pierce, director of product management for LexisNexis' enterprise legal management platform CounselLink. “Most legal departments we talked to were managing these types of requests via a mixture of email, SharePoint, spreadsheets, etc.”

In an effort to bring this process into the 21st century, CounselLink released an update including a new “legal request” feature, allowing the business division to automatically funnel legal concerns to the legal department.

Here's a look at the new tool:

Who it serves: Even if your in-house team is still actually using paper forms to manage requests, it's probably time for an upgrade, whether to CounselLink's tool or another. Pierce said CounselLink's tool is especially useful for companies with high volume needs for legal review because the tool integrates with the platform's analytics features and is particularly useful for managing and prioritizing legal requests from multiple sources.

How it works: The tool is essentially a way for the business side of an operation to access and input information to CounselLink without having to actually use the platform. Legal departments can customize the information they need in legal requests, and then that information comes through to the legal department in CounselLink to be assigned and dealt with.

“Multi-step approvals, re-routing of requests, automatic assignment to specific individuals, and communication back to the original requester are all supported,” Pierce said of the tool, adding that the information drawn from the tool can also easily be set up to start a full matter.

Where analytics come in: Sending over new requests from outside the legal department isn't much good without the ability to keep track of what they are, where they need to be, and how much work has been done on them. “The legal request feature in CounselLink provides analytics directly within the application to easily report on the number of requests in flight, who is working on them, how long it is taking to complete tasks and more,” Pierce explained.

Where it stands relative to its peers: CounselLink sits in a fairly crowded field of ELM tools, among them tools like Serengeti, a Thomson Reuters product, and TyMetrix 360, a Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions product. Recent data from the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) finds that, at least where e-billing is concerned, CounselLink is used by less than 8 percent of in-house tools.

That said, few in-house departments plan to use any ELM system “out of the box.” The addition of this feature could be the thing that makes CounselLink seem like the best base platform to work from.

Although corporate legal departments are known within the legal community as leaders and drivers of technology and innovation, that reputation doesn't carry so well into the business sector. After all, in many instances, connecting a matter to the legal department is still a fairly low-tech process.

“Managing those requests can be an inefficient, manual process, consisting mostly of email, spreadsheets, and even paper forms,” says Aaron Pierce, director of product management for LexisNexis' enterprise legal management platform CounselLink. “Most legal departments we talked to were managing these types of requests via a mixture of email, SharePoint, spreadsheets, etc.”

In an effort to bring this process into the 21st century, CounselLink released an update including a new “legal request” feature, allowing the business division to automatically funnel legal concerns to the legal department.

Here's a look at the new tool:

Who it serves: Even if your in-house team is still actually using paper forms to manage requests, it's probably time for an upgrade, whether to CounselLink's tool or another. Pierce said CounselLink's tool is especially useful for companies with high volume needs for legal review because the tool integrates with the platform's analytics features and is particularly useful for managing and prioritizing legal requests from multiple sources.

How it works: The tool is essentially a way for the business side of an operation to access and input information to CounselLink without having to actually use the platform. Legal departments can customize the information they need in legal requests, and then that information comes through to the legal department in CounselLink to be assigned and dealt with.

“Multi-step approvals, re-routing of requests, automatic assignment to specific individuals, and communication back to the original requester are all supported,” Pierce said of the tool, adding that the information drawn from the tool can also easily be set up to start a full matter.

Where analytics come in: Sending over new requests from outside the legal department isn't much good without the ability to keep track of what they are, where they need to be, and how much work has been done on them. “The legal request feature in CounselLink provides analytics directly within the application to easily report on the number of requests in flight, who is working on them, how long it is taking to complete tasks and more,” Pierce explained.

Where it stands relative to its peers: CounselLink sits in a fairly crowded field of ELM tools, among them tools like Serengeti, a Thomson Reuters product, and TyMetrix 360, a Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions product. Recent data from the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) finds that, at least where e-billing is concerned, CounselLink is used by less than 8 percent of in-house tools.

That said, few in-house departments plan to use any ELM system “out of the box.” The addition of this feature could be the thing that makes CounselLink seem like the best base platform to work from.