Contract Management in the New Legal Profession: A Q&A With New Elevate Execs
The legal services group's new vice president of legal services and head of contracts consulting point out some transformations in contract work.
June 12, 2018 at 11:26 AM
6 minute read
Legal services group Elevate last week brought aboard two experts in contract work and alternative legal services. Rebecca Thorkildsen, who will be the company's new vice president of legal services, previously held roles with Elevate and Thomson Reuters where she helped clients design and implement alternative legal services projects. Craig Conte, Elevate's new managing director and head of contract consulting, leveraged technology as part of his prior work as head of contract compliance and optimization services at Capgemini. LTN caught up with Thorkildsen and Conte to chat about their firsthand experience in this changing marketplace. Answers have been condensed for this article. Legaltech News: What are some important factors for companies to consider as they look at potential technology-based legal service models for their legal departments? Craig Conte: When looking at contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools, there are a lot of things to consider, but I think there are 3 holistic questions or factors which should guide the new buyer: Who is going to use this? Is this a tool that just the legal team will use or is it something that the “business” or some other function needs to use too? It's now important that legal buyers think of who else needs or should be involved in the tooling. Where are they going to use it? Think of the contract types and where the tool is most needed. Most legal teams focus on the contract building aspect, and the market shows that there is a clear delineation (except for a few true end-to-end platforms) between tools which are good at the post and which are good at the pre. Additionally, tools in the CLM space generally pick to be better at either sales or procurement contracts. That is not to say that they can't do both (just like I am sure you could write your name with either hand), but you are clearly better at one or the other. What other tools should this integrate with? The walls aren't there anymore, and it's important that tools can talk to each other. Most come with integration maps or full on out of the box APIs to connect with the big players like SAP or Salesforce, but there are still some tools which sit alone and don't play well with others. Think this through. Rebecca Thorkildsen: I would also add that there is often a tendency to over-engineer. While it is best-practice, and now a well-understood tenet of change management, to draw relevant stakeholders into the discussion about requirements, there is a real art form to prioritization and balancing the needs of all users. Too often I've seen functional requirements lists a mile long, and the result is that the complexity and cost drive real progress into the ground. A good system can be simple and deliver quick wins. If an enterprise truly needs to pull out all the stops, it should do so incrementally. LTN: How do you help law departments make sense of what they can and can't expect from artificial intelligence-based technology? CC: AI or machine learning are fantastic technologies, but you have to go into them with open eyes. AI is not magic. It's best to think of AI as machine learning and not some magic supercomputer. The emphasis here is on learning, and we all know that learning takes time. Also, it is easier to learn simple things: Learning your times tables is a lot simpler and faster than learning calculus. Extractions, searching, simple deviations assessments, NDAs—these are things where AI does great things. Outsourcing agreements, negotiations, disputes—not great for AI. The other advice I'd give is to know yourself and know how your organization likes change. Blockchain is a great term and has a very interesting future, but if your organization still doesn't have a set document retention system, then maybe you aren't ready for this step. RT: I've seen organizations make the mistake of thinking the AI tool is a silver bullet that will do all the work. The best results are achieved with a combination of human + technology + content. The technology needs to have the machine learning capabilities certainly, but the humans bring the content (good examples on which the machine can learn) and the expertise to teach the machine. There are still some challenges that machines are not great at solving, such as bad images or document sets that need a lot of organization. LTN: Are there any major shifts in contract work that you think law departments are struggling to make sense of? CC: I think GDPR or data security are the hot topics today and legal departments are grappling with them, but those are sort of the nature waves that come periodically as advancements occur. Fifteen years ago, hosting and co-location agreements were hot, but then cloud happened and changed the game. Similarly, I think that many companies are still a little slow in thinking of the bigger picture that we have switched from a goods-based economy towards a services-based economy. Now, if you say that to a CFO or CEO they will understand that and not be shocked at all. But I think many legal departments, and certainly their forms, still focus on “buying things” as opposed to “using things.” RT: he exciting part (to the extent there is any excitement in GDPR) is that some of the technologies today actually make waves like GDPR easier to tackle. Whereas historically changes such as these required traditional, manual due diligence and contract remediation, today, the tools can help move through these tasks much more efficiently. I'm seeing companies tackle not only GDPR, but also Brexit risk identification in one fell swoop.
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