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Legaltech landscape: Difference between revisions
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| {{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Good oversight of process, good [[MIS]]</small> | | {{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Good oversight of process, good [[MIS]]</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': It’s a tech and operational job, but it will span several silos with different owners and conflicting priorities. Design, ownership of and responsibility will therefore be an unholy fight. Ultimately likely to be over-specified, requiring inputs for management gratification that are not on the critical path, so likely to fall quickly into disuse, if it ever gets off the ground.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': It’s a tech and operational job, but it will span several silos with different owners and conflicting priorities. Design, ownership of and responsibility will therefore be an unholy fight. Ultimately likely to be over-specified, requiring inputs for management gratification that are not on the critical path, so likely to fall quickly into disuse, if it ever gets off the ground.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': If it works — ''big'' if — it will | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': If it works — ''big'' if — it will head off an inordinate amount of pre-negotiation faffing, chasing people up for input, and sets a clear business priority.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Disintermediates. Provides simple information inputs and disciplines personnel to follow process. Likely outcome: 18 months of stakeholder distraction, followed by discreet | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Disintermediates. Provides simple information inputs and disciplines personnel to follow process. Likely outcome: 18 months of stakeholder distraction, followed by discreet climb-down and no further mention in dispatches. </small> | ||
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| rowspan="3" style="vertical-align: middle;"|'''<small>Drafting</small>''' | | rowspan="3" style="vertical-align: middle;"|'''<small>Drafting</small>''' | ||
|<small>Template Management</small> | |<small>Template Management</small> | ||
|<small>Centralised templates database or clause library for approving and warehousing approved forms and boilerplate.</small> | |<small>Centralised templates database or clause library for approving and warehousing approved forms and boilerplate.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': Should drive efficiency, but part of that ineffable world of [[legal eagles]] that management doesn’t understand</small> | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': Should drive efficiency, but part of that ineffable world of [[legal eagles]] that management doesn’t understand.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': Quite a lot of implementation, and legal ops will be disinterested. Once implemented, a lot of work to sort and upload templates, compare them, weed them out, and assign owners to them, which | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': Quite a lot of implementation, and legal ops will be disinterested. Once implemented, a lot of work to sort and upload templates, compare them, weed them out, and assign owners to them, which no-one will want to do.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': A useful productivity tool once implemented, saving a lot of tedious bureaucracy, and a good platform for standardisation and quality control later on.</small> | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': A useful productivity tool once implemented, saving a lot of [[tedious]] [[bureaucracy]], and a good platform for standardisation and quality control later on.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Depends''' on how implemented: this could be a fulltime career for a squadron of nosey parkers, or it could be light touch | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Depends''' on how implemented: this could be a fulltime career for a squadron of nosey parkers, or it could be a light touch self-service tool.</small> | ||
|- style="vertical-align: top;" | |- style="vertical-align: top;" | ||
|[[Document assembly|<small>Document automation</small>]] | |[[Document assembly|<small>Document automation</small>]] | ||
|<small>A preconfigured questionnaire to generate first drafts of standardised contracts.</small> | |<small>A preconfigured questionnaire to generate first drafts of standardised contracts.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}} <small>'''High''': This is genuine high-five, look-at-me stuff: potential for handsome [[MIS]] is great. Also, it ''pitches'' really well. [[ | |{{bg|green}} <small>'''High''': This is genuine high-five, look-at-me stuff: potential for handsome [[MIS]] is great. Also, it ''pitches'' really well. [[Legaltechbro]]s ''love'' this sort of thing.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Very high''': requires input from lawyers, legal ops and | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Very high''': requires input from lawyers, legal ops and [[legaltechbro]]s. You have to extract the logic from your templates, code it, and build a machine to make it. Ongoing maintenance a chore, too.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Theoretically high, practically low''': one of those things that seems great in concept, but sucks in practice. User becomes a form filler-outer | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Theoretically high, practically low''': one of those things that seems great in concept, but sucks in practice. User becomes a form filler-outer: no [[legal eagle]] wants that.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': highly likely to take a bad contract situation and make it worse. Maintenance of templates becomes an IT ticket: expensive, slow, and out of lawyers’s hands.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': highly likely to take a bad contract situation and make it worse. Maintenance of templates becomes an IT ticket: expensive, slow, and out of lawyers’s hands.</small> | ||
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|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': What do I care? All the cool stuff is a function of the template management system it feeds off (if you haven’t got one of those, forget about it).</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': What do I care? All the cool stuff is a function of the template management system it feeds off (if you haven’t got one of those, forget about it).</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Assuming you can find the software, it is a straightforward plugin. This is the basic promise of a distributed [[End-to-end principle|end-to-end]] system.</small> | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Assuming you can find the software, it is a straightforward plugin. This is the basic promise of a distributed [[End-to-end principle|end-to-end]] system.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': This is a neat tool that saves time and ensures I don’t forget anything. What is not to like?</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Disintermediates nicely.</small> | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Disintermediates nicely.</small> | ||
|- style="vertical-align: top;" | |- style="vertical-align: top;" | ||
| rowspan="4" "3" style="vertical-align: middle;"|'''[[Negotiation|<small>Negotiation</small>]]''' | | rowspan="4" "3" style="vertical-align: middle;"|'''[[Negotiation|<small>Negotiation</small>]]''' | ||
|[[Document mananagement system|<small>Document mananagement system</small>]] | |[[Document mananagement system|<small>Document mananagement system</small>]] | ||
|<small>A matter management system for creating drafts, storing emails, documents, version controls, and collaborating</small> | |<small>A matter management system for creating drafts, storing emails, documents, version controls, and collaborating.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''Yuuuuge''': This is the daddy. A DMS promises to give the lawyers infinite productivity and workflow, while delivering management total detail about what every lawyer does.<ref>It soundly breaks that promise, though not really by any fault of its own.</ref></small> | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''Yuuuuge''': This is the daddy. A DMS promises to give the lawyers infinite productivity and workflow, while delivering management total detail about what every lawyer does.<ref>It soundly breaks that promise, though not really by any fault of its own.</ref></small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Immense'''. A multi-year project to extract your legal team from infrastructure the rest of the firm uses and put them on a “better” system. And that’s before you try to integrate it into your external spend control regime.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Immense'''. A multi-year project to extract your legal team from infrastructure the rest of the firm uses and put them on a “better” system. And that’s before you try to integrate it into your external spend control regime.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High in theory, low in practice''': [[Legal eagle]]s think this is what they want: when presented | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High in theory, low in practice''': [[Legal eagle]]s ''think'' this is what they want: when presented with the finished article, they find their byzantine folder structure in Outlook PSTs wasn’t so bad after all.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Higher than it ought to be'''. Suddenly there are information security officers, usage monitoring metrics, champion groups and stakeholder surveys</small> | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Higher than it ought to be'''. Suddenly there are information security officers, usage monitoring metrics, champion groups and stakeholder surveys as far as the eye can see.</small> | ||
|- style="vertical-align: top;" | |- style="vertical-align: top;" | ||
|[[Contract analysis|<small>Automated contract review</small>]] | |[[Contract analysis|<small>Automated contract review</small>]] | ||
|<small>AI — call it [[Neural network|neural networks]], [[machine learning]], or some [[Proverbial school-leaver from Bucharest|school-leavers from Bucharest]] | |<small>[[AI]] — call it [[Neural network|neural networks]], [[machine learning]], or some [[Proverbial school-leaver from Bucharest|school-leavers from Bucharest]] with an xml schema — reviewing and marking up standard form contacts.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Because it presents, misleadingly, as low-hanging fruit, legal operations folk glom onto | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Because it presents, misleadingly, as low-hanging fruit, legal operations folk glom onto it as a way of making waves. Plus, the [[General counsel|GC]] hears “[[AI]]” and thinks “[[2001: A Space Odyssey|HAL 9000]]” and not “glamourised [[document comparison|deltaview]] plus temps in Gdansk”, as she really should.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': If you make the mistake of displaying any interest, replying to their email, vendors will be at you like a plague of locusts and will never let you go. | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': If you make the mistake of displaying any interest, replying to their email, vendors will be at you like a plague of locusts and will never let you go. All you need is a playbook and to remember the email address.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': It reduces | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': It reduces [[legal eagle]]s to form-fillers, the form takes too long to come back, and it’s easy just to do it yourself. Full analysis [[Contract analysis|here]].</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': A job your team used to do off the side of the desk now costs £400k | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': A job your team used to do off the side of the desk now costs £400k annually, and requires a weaponised procurement and internal audit system.</small> | ||
|- style="vertical-align: top;" | |- style="vertical-align: top;" | ||
|<small>Manual review assistance</small> | |<small>Manual review assistance</small> | ||
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|<small>Front-to-back onboarding portal for tracking the progress and status of onboarding, with milestones, logging all [[escalation]]s and recording legal reference data.</small> | |<small>Front-to-back onboarding portal for tracking the progress and status of onboarding, with milestones, logging all [[escalation]]s and recording legal reference data.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''Supremely''': this is the holy grail of legal operations: every impulse reduced to a fully trackable and auditable series of numerical data points, suitable for [[RAG status]] indication by [[Microsoft PowerPoint|PowerPoint]].</small> | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''Supremely''': this is the holy grail of legal operations: every impulse reduced to a fully trackable and auditable series of numerical data points, suitable for [[RAG status]] indication by [[Microsoft PowerPoint|PowerPoint]].</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Enormous''': it will involve reimagining the interaction of seven departments, each wedded to its own incommensurable processes built on, variously, [[email]] forms, [[Spreadsheet|spreadsheets]], playbooks, the command prompt and a Wang mainframe that was due for decommissioning in 1983.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Enormous''': it will involve reimagining the interaction of seven departments, each wedded to its own incommensurable processes built on, variously, [[email]] forms, [[Spreadsheet|spreadsheets]], playbooks, the command prompt and a Wang mainframe that was due for decommissioning in 1983 but survived and is now so integral to the firm’s systems than it has its own round-the-clock armed guard.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': Reduces lawyers to disempowered form-filler-outers and button pushers.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': Imposes a mammoth superstructure over something that is ''already'' too elaborate, and ducks the question | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': Imposes a mammoth superstructure over something that is ''already'' too elaborate, and ducks the question ''why'' your credit officers are embedded in a manual process where all they do is push a button. Rather than institutionalising button-pushing could you not rebase your terms?</small> | ||
|- style="vertical-align: top;" | |- style="vertical-align: top;" | ||
| rowspan="2" "3" style="vertical-align: middle;"|'''[[Execution|<small>Execution</small>]]''' | | rowspan="2" "3" style="vertical-align: middle;"|'''[[Execution|<small>Execution</small>]]''' | ||
|<small>Execution approval tool</small> | |<small>Execution approval tool</small> | ||
|<small>Online tool for gathering approvals for execution of documents at completion of negotiation.</small> | |<small>Online tool for gathering approvals for execution of documents at completion of [[negotiation]].</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': Really just an unambitious attempt at an onboarding portal</small> | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': Really just an unambitious attempt at an onboarding portal.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': But mainly because you’ve done a half baked job. You ''claimed'' to have done an entire cross-silo process reimagining, but you haven’t really, have you.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': ''Relatively'' low, perhaps, in that while it will involve a lot of work collating every escalation made over the course of the negotiation and putting | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': ''Relatively'' low, perhaps, in that while it will involve a lot of work collating every [[escalation]] made over the course of the negotiation and putting each one into a digestible approval form, this is nothing really that [[negotiator]]s aren’t obliged to do in a fully manual process. But the potential change in outcome is not nearly big enough to be worth the incremental effort.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': Not an enormous additional burden, but it doesn’t get rid of a lot of of encrusted iatrogenesis in the process already.</small> | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': Not an enormous additional burden, but it doesn’t get rid of a lot of of encrusted [[Iatrogenics|iatrogenesis]] in the process already.</small> | ||
|- style="vertical-align: top;" | |- style="vertical-align: top;" | ||
|<small>Digital execution</small> | |<small>Digital execution</small> | ||
|<small>Creating a means of | |<small>Creating a means of digitally executing legal docs to capture who signed, when, and under what authority, thereby capturing text-encoded final docs (as opposed to scans).</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': Again, it really should be integrated into the approval and onboarding workflow tool. By itself it is fiddly and doesn’t offer a great deal of bang for buck.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': Again, it really should be integrated into the approval and onboarding workflow tool. By itself, it is fiddly and doesn’t offer a great deal of bang for buck.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium to high''': Depending on how thorough you want to integrate the digital execution tool into the firm’s personnel and authorisation database.</small> | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium to high''': Depending on how thorough you want to integrate the digital execution tool into the firm’s personnel and authorisation database.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Once you get over a the small comprehension hurdle, this will be popular. Saves all that tedious faffing around with printers, scanners, incumbency certificates and filing and so on. </small> | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Once you get over a the small comprehension hurdle, this will be popular. Saves all that tedious faffing around with printers, scanners, incumbency certificates and filing and so on. </small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': Digital | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': Digital [[vendor]]s price their services at an outrageous per-usage costs.</small> | ||
|- style="vertical-align: top;" | |- style="vertical-align: top;" | ||
| rowspan="2" "2" style="vertical-align: middle;"|'''<small>Contract Management</small>''' | | rowspan="2" "2" style="vertical-align: middle;"|'''<small>Contract Management</small>''' | ||
|<small>Contract and metadata management</small> | |<small>Contract and metadata management</small> | ||
|<small>Golden source storage system for executed contracts, ideally containing detailed catalogue of material legal and economic terms (this required “metadata extraction” below) </small> | |<small>Golden source storage system for executed contracts, ideally containing detailed catalogue of material legal and economic terms (this required “metadata extraction” below) </small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': To a | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': To a bean-counter who has not apprehended the horror of deciphering a heavily-negotiated legal agreement, a comprehensive [[metadata]] project seems intuitively brilliant. This should really be part of a onboarding workflow tool, though that is fantastically hard to achieve.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': Depending on how you do it, this could be a five-year, $30m project occupying an entire army of school-leaver consultants in Albania, or a metadata-extraction projection by some preternaturally useless [[machine learning]] application for which you will be charged, handsomely, by the document. Neither will deliver in a usable product.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': Depending on how you do it, this could be a five-year, $30m project occupying an entire army of school-leaver consultants in Albania, or a metadata-extraction projection by some preternaturally useless [[machine learning]] application for which you will be charged, handsomely, by the document. Neither will deliver in a usable product.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': [[Legal eagle]]s have ''no'' interest in structured [[metadata]], which they regard as a form of modernist cheating. If you have to understand what is in a legal contract after it is inked — God willing, you never will — there is only one way to understand it and that it by ''reading'' it and then helpfully summarising it in a table, in Microsoft Word.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Low''': [[Legal eagle]]s have ''no'' interest in structured [[metadata]], which they regard as a form of [[modernist]] cheating. Same goes for the senior executives in risk management functions who ask for this kind of data. If you have to understand what is in a legal contract after it is inked — God willing, you never will — there is only one way to understand it and that it by ''reading'' it and then helpfully summarising it in a table, in [[Microsoft Word]].</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Colossal''': This is what rent-seeking was brought onto God’s green Earth.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''Colossal''': This is what [[rent-seeking]] was brought onto God’s green Earth ''for''.</small> | ||
|- style="vertical-align: top;" | |- style="vertical-align: top;" | ||
|<small>Obligation management</small> | |<small>Obligation management</small> | ||
|<small>Taking the material terms of your legal contracts, that you codified in the [[metadata management]] phase, and feeding them into your risk and capital engines.</small> | |<small>Taking the material terms of your legal contracts, that you codified in the [[metadata management]] phase, and feeding them into your risk and capital engines.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': A nice touch, though most risk management functions independently monitor their own risks using existing systems. While of course they should key off a golden source, that assumes you have a golden source and it is reliable. Few live risk metrics key directly off executed legal contracts (as opposed to being reflected by them). | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': A nice touch, though most risk management functions independently monitor their own risks using existing systems. While of course they ''should'' key off a golden source, that assumes you ''have'' a golden source and it is reliable. Few live risk metrics key directly off executed legal contracts (as opposed to being reflected by them). [[Close-out netting]] is a notable exception.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Generally limited to close-out netting, and that will generally already exist, given how important it is. | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Generally limited to [[close-out netting]], and that will generally already exist, given how important it is. But the more information that is designed to feed from the legal database, and the more systems it feeds into, the harder the job.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Saves a tedious job, and triages stupid questions. Happy days.</small> | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Saves a [[tedious]] job, and triages stupid questions. Happy days.</small> | ||
|{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Monitoring will mean someone in risk needs to understand what is going on, but assuming you limit yourself to a small number of key pieces of data, okay.</small> | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''Low''': Monitoring will mean someone in risk needs to understand what is going on, but assuming you limit yourself to a small number of key pieces of data, okay.</small> | ||
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|{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Plays to the “[[high-modernist]], I can control everything by [[data]]” mindset.</small> | |{{bg|green}}<small>'''High''': Plays to the “[[high-modernist]], I can control everything by [[data]]” mindset.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': involves you having implemented a ton of other innovations first. If you have, and they are working, it should be easy enough to generate. But you won’t have, and they won’t be.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': involves you having implemented a ton of other innovations first. If you have, and they are working, it should be easy enough to generate. But you won’t have, and they won’t be.</small> | ||
|{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': if lawyers are allowed to freely interrogate the data. But, being “data” it will be kept at | |{{bg|yellow}}<small>'''Medium''': if lawyers are allowed to freely interrogate the data. But, being “data” it will be kept at arms’s length, owned by someone in IT, and they will have to raise a ticket and wait to days two see any of it, by which time attention will long since have wandered.</small> | ||
|{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': In order for it to be available, let alone working, there must already be a [[military-industrial complex]] of rent-seeking already in place.</small> | |{{bg|pink}}<small>'''High''': In order for it to be available, let alone working, there must already be a [[military-industrial complex]] of [[rent-seeking]] already in place.</small> | ||
|} | |} | ||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||