The legal functions of companies of the past focused exclusively on the best possible legal advice. Today`s legal functions are needed to manage greater complexity and an increased pace of business and regulatory change. Legal functions that are at the forefront of transformation require new roles and skills. The creation of a legal operations function within the legal department and the addition of a legal operations manager can enable a more effective and efficient legal department. Accenture was looking for a modern contract platform – centralized, industrialized, empowered – to drive Legal`s transformation from a transactional function to a data-driven partner that provides valuable advice and better service. At the heart of this transformation is experience – how the legal team works with each other and with accounts receivable teams, and whether the contract application process is efficient and transparent. Can you get help defining the operating model for your legal function or get the most out of the solutions you implement? Contact us to find out more. Advocates General and their operational heads should formulate plans for real legal transformations and avoid relying only on the fruits at hand of outsourcing, which are cosmetically transformed on a piecemeal basis without full corporate effects. With a favorite Spanish phrase, el cambio vale la pena (literally translated as change is worthwhile). Lisa is a lawyer by training and provides legal, regulatory and compliance advice to financial services companies. As shown in the illustration of Accenture`s Legal Transformation Maturity Model below, some legal functions are still in the basic phase, with most legal functions being performed in-house and using rudimentary legal technology tools for managing contracts and regulatory changes, etc.
In recent years, data from our annual legal risk study has shown that many legal functions have become more soluble (maturation through outsourcing of 1-2 non-core legal functions and use of more advanced technical tools and workflows). We find most customers in this happy medium. However, in order to truly support the business and make a living, legal functions should become more informed and predictive by reducing their effectiveness in terms of results achieved (e.g., dollars saved, additional revenue from contracts), metrics (e.g.. Lawyers by subject matter examined) and debit (e.g., contracts processed for renewals). To become more predictive, lawyers need to make greater use of workflow automation and artificial intelligence to improve and evolve their work, as well as advanced analytics tools and dashboards to assess risks or opportunities (e.g., contracts or mergers and acquisitions, due diligence). The Holy Grail is achieved when legal services become truly smart or future-proof by outsourcing multiple non-essential legal functions, integrating tools into platforms, and using advanced logic engines to automate and evolve their work. Even after streamlining the legal function, the team may struggle to keep up. But help is available. Working with a variety of fortune 100 companies and law firms, Accenture understands what it takes to implement organizational change within the legal department. Accenture has the human and necessary resources to support an end-to-end construction from a legal operating model of the target country. From organizational assessments of current processes and strategic attitudes to change management and legal technology improvements, Accenture can support the holistic process to bring about lasting and positive change. Ability to apply analytics to collected data and unlock the value of legal data We offer a variety of solutions to support regulatory remediation and compliance transformation.
These include: How platform-driven financial transformation can help CFOs reshape finance and drive business value across the enterprise. But far beyond this basic functionality, Manage myDeal is a transformative solution with built-in advanced analytics that provides powerful insights into the performance of Accenture`s entire portfolio of contracts. Dashboards track metrics, such as the time it takes to close deals by deal, so teams can identify areas for troubleshooting and improvement and ultimately improve business outcomes. As an example, we can identify how many contracts have exclusivity language that can influence commercial competition. Accenture`s regulatory recovery and compliance transformation capabilities can help financial services companies in the four dimensions of regulation, restructuring, reputation and cost reduction. We help financial institutions with: Many legal functions have embarked on a transformational journey to acquire single-point technology solutions for more than a decade, expecting the tool itself to bring the desired enhancements to address many of the challenges facing legal functions. In fact, the results of our compliance risk study show that legal departments have recently invested in technology solutions in the areas of document management, contract analysis, contract lifecycle management (CLM), corporate legal management, and knowledge management. Expectations for these tools were not met in many cases because these single-point solutions could not be easily integrated with each other, so Legal had to perform manual workarounds or re-enter data from one system to another.
Legal is both a data consumer and a data provider. Whether lawyers recognize it or not, when they provide legal advice, they become corporate data. Accenture is a global services company with industry-leading digital, cloud and security capabilities. Combining unparalleled experience and specialized skills in more than 40 industries, we offer strategy and consulting, interactive, technological and operational services, all supported by the world`s largest network of advanced technologies and intelligent operations centers. Our 506,000 employees deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving customers in more than 120 countries. We harness the power of change to create value and create shared success for our customers, employees, shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at the www.accenture.com. This blog is for general information purposes only, does not take into account the specific circumstances of the reader, may not reflect the most recent developments and is not intended to provide advice on specific circumstances. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Accenture assumes no responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the information contained on this blog and for any act or omission committed on the basis of such information. Accenture does not provide legal, regulatory, audit or tax advice.
Readers are responsible for seeking such advice from their own legal counsel or other licensed professional. According to our recent survey of legal leaders, nearly five in ten respondents said they had recently invested in CLM solutions, a significant increase from our previous study.3 Similarly, nearly half of legal respondents said their company had considered transformative end-to-end CLM initiatives for businesses. They also noted that the reason for this was to streamline processes and tools in law, procurement, finance and business to capture the value embedded in contracts. For example, CLM platforms can unlock hidden value in contracts by discovering lost revenue/leaked incentive payment clauses buried in the middle of a long contract. If the CLM tool is integrated with a downstream revenue billing/accounting tool, it will systematically generate incremental sales invoices to capture these additional revenues. This can facilitate/support end-to-end CLM of businesses and enable CFOs to better manage their company`s costs and revenue tracking. There is a lot of pressure on legal departments to innovate and adapt to the needs of the businesses they serve. The legal department of the future will be very different from what we see today – and many will have a legal operating agent. As legal departments invest more in technology, automate their core processes, and constantly change the way they interact with clients, legal operations agents will be critical to operational change management. Nearly two-thirds of tax functions are already reviewing this step. Frequently moved activities and roles include basic legal research, contract lifecycle management, regulatory reporting of legal entities, and support for e-discovery/litigation management.
Three out of five legal executives surveyed have invested in document management tools 2 Perhaps more importantly, Manage myDeal is not a standalone solution – it`s the legal gateway to a larger IT-created ecosystem that connects other key digital platforms, including Accenture`s manage mySales customer relationship management tool and manage myContracts contract delivery solution. Manage myDeal`s integration with Manage mySales connects critical contract and sales data and provides a clear path for legal support (accessible to all customer teams, regardless of account size or importance) when creating contracts. Beyond sales, the ecosystem extends to tools such as Accenture`s award-winning Legal Intelligent Contract Exploration Tool (Alice), which uses natural language processing and machine learning to generate critical search capabilities for more than one million contracts in 12 languages. To qualify for a complete transformation, a company`s legal operating model should be revised to more closely focus legal functions on tasks that require specific legal skills and to throw overboard tasks that can be better and more effectively performed by other functions. Basic legal processes should be explored to understand inefficiencies and manual activities that could be transformed by workflow automation (e.g., .