Economic Volatility Changing In-House Legal's Role, With Top Talent Securing a Seat at The Decision-Making Table

As legal teams face a perfect storm of increasingly complex workloads and slashed budgets, legal leaders who embrace technology are outperforming peers and growing their influence across the enterprise.

At Legalweek New York 2023, legal tech champion and Agiloft General Counsel, Laura Richardson, joins legal innovation veteran and LexFusion CEO, Joe Borstein, to outline 5 ways in-house legal departments are utilizing technology to become more strategic players for the business and establishing themselves as key contributors at the executive level.

NEW YORK, March 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Agiloft, the global standard in agile contract lifecycle management (CLM), today announced its General Counsel, Laura Richardson, will join LexFusion CEO, Joe Borstein, at Legalweek New York 2023 for an Emerging Technology session that will outline 5 key ways legal professionals can take advantage of the evolving role of legal and technology to drive the business forward and gain a seat at the decision-making table.

"Legal leaders who make the move from identifying risk to managing risk are enhancing the agility of their business and driving real revenue and shareholder value," said Laura Richardson, General Counsel of Agiloft. "That's only possible if they have a complete view of and control over their company's contracts. As a result,  in-house legal teams who have progressed past the efficiency phase of managing their contracts to leveraging the risk management and business acceleration insights available from those contracts can really guide strategic decision-making at the highest levels and demonstrate the value of having Legal at the executive table."

In the presentation, "Five Ways Technology is Helping Legal Ascend to the C-Suite," Richardson and Borstein will explain how technology is both altering and emphasizing the role of Legal in organizations, as in-house teams rise to the challenge of balancing increasingly complex workloads, growing regulatory and contractual compliance obligations, and slashed budgets. The talk will discuss the five points below:

1. Know More - 90% of the information buried in a business's contracts is an untapped risk-management and growth opportunity goldmine. Only 10% of language in contracts is focused on what's being delivered, when, and for how much, the other 90% is a goldmine of business-critical intelligence, dedicated to what happens when things don't go as planned and containing the information that can help companies better plan for growth. Just imagine the possibilities if you unlock that 90% and grant your executives access to the business-critical intelligence it offers. With the correct systems and processes in place, contract data can be transformed into actionable insights that deliver real strategic value. 

2. Share More - Integrations are key to eliminating siloes and being generous with critical data that lives within contracts. Today's General Counsel and legal teams face a perfect storm of increasingly complex workloads, growing regulatory and contractual compliance obligations, and slashed budgets and are increasingly tasked with keeping an eye on regulatory compliance or managing risk across the enterprise while finding ways to accelerate growth. A fit-for-purpose contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution can help legal teams anticipate not only what's coming next but what information will empower other functions to generate new business and operate more smoothly. If a CLM system integrates with the systems that the rest of the organization is using, then contract data can flow freely throughout a company's business processes, enabling legal and business leaders to forecast, drive new revenue streams, ensure compliance, and manage vendors and clients better.

3. Own More – The future of work is smarter, not harder; let technology help you free up more time to be strategic. Legal tech, including CLM, can automate complex and repetitious processes, so legal has time to accomplish more high-value, strategic work with a greater ROI. In addition, CLM tools are more flexible than ever, with much of the configuration and maintenance of platforms being completed by legal or legal operations teams. Also, contract information that once lived and died in one person's computer or inbox is now accessible to the entire company if they have the proper permissions. That way, decision-making becomes a collaborative, holistic process, drawing in the necessary stakeholders across the company. Your CLM platform needs to have the ability to flex, extend, and integrate into and around any business practice. Ensuring users can work on contracts in the systems they want to work in, that they can send contract data where they want to send it, and they can easily connect to the corporate governance systems they need to connect to, ensuring their CLM plays well with existing enterprise systems.

4. Grow More - You are a revenue driver and enabler and CLM can help you show it. Legal leaders can use technology to help their sales teams to do their work better and faster. For example, legal teams can manage and produce easily editable contract templates, which can be standardized and adapted for multiple locations or departments, creating a more seamless experience and reducing the risk of anyone using outdated or non-compliant language (that then needs to be cleaned up by legal).  CLM integrations with Salesforce can provide next-level speed and control, so even when sales needs your team to weigh in on a contract issue, they can trigger reviews automatically from Salesforce. Adopting technology can give your team more time to do higher value work, speeding up sales cycles, minimizing the risk of noncompliance, and improving renewal and expiration management. It can also provide metrics that demonstrate the impact of your efforts. According to World Commerce and Contracting, better contract management can help companies save up to 9% of their annual revenue, and we've seen companies reduce time spent on contracts by 50%, which they were able to measure thanks to their CLM system tracking contract turnaround times.

5. Do More, Better (& Less is More) - Improve customer experience and your company's NPS scores. Successful in-house counsel know that every customer touch point offers an invaluable opportunity to improve and build on a relationship. The contracting process provides important touch points in those relationships. If your contract process is not world-class, you'll be behind before you even get started and your NPS scores will reflect that. Use technology that will simplify and streamline your contracting to improve overall customer satisfaction and ease of doing business with your organization and leave them excited to work with you for many years to come.

Richardson concludes: "As in-house legal teams respond to tidal shifts in operations and economic uncertainty, a golden opportunity exists for legal professionals to elevate their teams beyond efficiency initiatives to provide strategic value to the business with a focus on risk management and growth. With these five critical points in mind, take the opportunity to harness the power of CLM for your organization. It might just help propel you into the next phase of your career, redefine the value of legal, and help your company thrive despite today's economic uncertainty."

A long-time champion of Legal Operations and Legal Technology and a rising star in the legal industry, Laura Richardson brings a wealth of experience to Agiloft as its first General Counsel. Previously, Richardson served as General Counsel at Osso VR and Senior Counsel at Intel Corporation. She is also passionate about sharing knowledge and is often sought out for her expertise in advancing legal departments through technology, innovation, and people.

A veteran of the legal innovation world as well as CEO and co-founder of LexFusion, Joe Borstein has held both domestic and global growth-leadership roles at Pangea3 (via Thomson Reuters and EY). Joe is also a founding member of the advisory board of the University of Pennsylvania's Carey School of Law Institute for the Future of the Profession and is an investor and advisor to numerous legal innovation companies.

Are you going to Legalweek 2023? Connect with Agiloft at Legalweek in NYC.

Learn more about how Agiloft empowers legal teams to drive strategic value at the world's leading organizations here.

About Agiloft

As the global leader in agile contract lifecycle management (CLM) software, Agiloft is trusted to provide significant savings in purchasing, enable more efficient legal operations, and accelerate sales cycles, all while drastically lowering compliance risk. Agiloft's adaptable no-code platform ensures rapid deployment and a fully extensible system. Using contracts as the core system of commercial record, Agiloft's CLM software leverages AI to improve contract management for legal departments, procurement, and sales operations. Visit www.agiloft.com for more.

 Media Contact: Jeffrey Miesbauer, Agiloft, 650-587-8615 ext 4003

SOURCE Agiloft, Inc.