How did a holding company group in UAE implement Automation in Legal Matter Management?

How a Holding Company Group in UAE achieved Matter Management Automation in Legal Department

• Company’s 50% of legal matters are of court cases

• No proper mechanism to track court cases, documents and hearings

• Different types of court cases handled ; mainly civi cases, cheque bounce cases, police station cases, etc

• It was managed with Excel and Email was the main collaboration tools

• No proper mechanism to track the legal expenses and fee paid to law firms.

• Lot of issues in managing cases, tracking case updates, heavy dependency on law firm, missing case documents, complaints from stake holders

• Implemented SLC

• Court Case management automation implemented – all court instances and hearings are tracked. Lawyers can access system and update directly on engaged cases. With all supporting documents. Expenses tracking with approvals. Documents handling. Case updates shared to stakeholders. Case execution and settlements tracking.

• .Implemented template driven case process tracking.

• Result. Current status – systematic tracking of legal matters, efficient tracking of expenses, court sessions. Task management, everyone knows what to do.

Legal Matter Management are a part and parcel of the portfolio of any corporate legal department today. Every day, a new legal matter invariably comes to them from one or many other departments in the organization. But what if there were no clear processes, and you also do not have the appropriate tools to work with? Invariably, frustrations can start building up, for instance, about the details of the legal matter and the exact details needed in a matter request. It will definitely be frustrating if you have to start asking yourself these questions for each legal matter that comes through to your department.

In short: Handling corporate legal matter is still quite a nightmare for many organizations today. Still, there are possibilities to create added value, for the company itself as well as for collaboration with others.

In this article, we’ll discuss about how a corporate holding company group (name withheld on request), increased both its business and revenues exponentially just by automating the process of managing legal matters.

This company handles several legal matters raised by other ancillary departments daily. In fact, as per their legal staff, nearly 50% of this company’s legal matters are all related to court cases and other court related matters. The legal matter that the legal department handled, were generally of the following types –

• Civil cases

• Cheque dishonor cases, and

• Police cases

Using Legacy tools and procedures

When we surveyed the software and other work-related apps being used for daily workflows, we found that this organization’s departments primarily used Excel as their primary tool for tracking legal matter. Additionally, their main collaboration tool was e-mail. There was no process / tool / software in place to track or manage fees paid to legal firms for their services, or even tracking their multiple legal expenses each month! Now, this practice is quite prevalent in the legal sector, as multiple surveys have already pointed out.

Now, just because e-mails, word processors and spreadsheets are widely used doesn’t mean they’re the best option — especially for complex tasks like managing legal matters. Solely relying on basic desktop software to manage legal matter actually comes with more problems than benefits, like:

• There were multiple issues in managing legal matter

• There was no proper tracking of case updates

• Because the legal department were lacking in managing their own legal matters, it automatically had to rely too much on external law firms, thus increasing costs

• In many cases there were missing case documents related to specific matter, and

• Because of all the above issues, complaints from stake holders were increasing manifold day-by-day

These issues were slowly but surely decreasing the quality of work of the legal department, thus making it more difficult to prove their value as a strategic partner in this organization. In other words, their in-house legal department was floundering!

So, what was the way ahead?

Because of the desperation of losing existing and potential invaluable customers and clients, the organization had a board meeting wherein it was decided that automating the legal request process was the only way ahead for survival in the coming times. The organization conducted multiple detailed surveys and found out that there was a solution in sight – the Smart Legal Counsel automation platform for corporate legal departments, from Beveron Technologies LLC, a Dubai-based LegalTech solutions provider.

The organization did not waste time in contacting Beveron Technologies, and sure enough, after a detailed presentation, along with the Implementation Plan for Smart Legal Counsel, the software was finally installed in the organization’s Legal Department.

What was the immediate impact / change after implementing automation?

Now that the matter management workflow was automated, slowly but certainly, the legal department started noticing differences in the way matter management logjams started easing up and getting more streamlined with each passing day. They also noticed that managing legal matter now became way easier due to the following features baked into Smart Legal Counsel:

• Now, all their court appearance instances and hearings are tracked systematically.

• In-house lawyers can now access their individual Smart Legal Counsel accounts and update matter details directly on engaged cases, with all supporting documents attached to each legal matter.

• The legal department is now able to track each legal expense in complete detail.

• Each legal matter approvals are also tracked end-to-end in the system

• Because of a centralized location, all documents are available anytime, anywhere and on any device.

• Each update of a case / matter is automatically shared with all relevant stakeholders without manual intervention.

• Tracking and handling settlements are all done through the software now.

And what’s the status now?

After implementing Beveron’s Smart Legal Counsel in their legal department, the matter management process has now become leaner and much more streamlined than they could ever imagine!

As per the feedback given by the organization, it now enjoys the following benefits after introducing automation:

• The in-house legal department is now able to track each legal matter end-to-end, systematically, and comprehensively, thus reducing manual work required in tracing and tracking matter details.

• The legal department there is now able to meet (and often surpass!) deadlines, both internal and organization wide.

• The legal department has now significantly reduced their overall legal expenses, thus achieving budget forecasts with more than enough to spare!

• These expenses also are now tracked via Smart Legal Counsel, thus avoiding unwanted costs and overheads.

• Because of all the above benefits achieved through automation, the organization’s legal matters are now tracked systematically, and in real-time.

• The in-house legal department has absolutely no issues now in meeting agreed-upon SLAs with other in-house departments / functions.

Thus, from the above case-study, it can be conclusively proven that the most effective corporate legal departments avoid complications like the ones mentioned above, by using a modern legal ops platform like Beveron’s Smart Legal Counsel. This technological tool streamlines the reporting process and boosts your ability to craft strategic, data-backed recommendations that automatically moves the organization’s business forward.