Legal matters may be an unavoidable aspect of enterprise operations, but growing complexities in enterprise legal management (ELM)—from contract management to regulatory compliance and litigation—are rendering manual efforts and human-driven legal processes increasingly ineffective. This is where enterprise legal management software can help to dramatically streamline and optimize legal processes within organizations.
In this article, you’ll learn about enterprise legal management (ELM) software and why it’s becoming a stringent requirement for the effective management of corporate/enterprise legal affairs.
What is ELM Software?
As a precursor to defining ELM software, it’s worth defining ELM in the context of today’s legal operations. ELM includes the practice management and operations strategy for enterprise/corporate legal departments, and more often includes the underlying technologies that power modern legal operations. As one of these constituent technologies, ELM software refers to a category of solutions designed to help enterprises manage their legal affairs more effectively reducing time-consuming manual processes.
ELM software/tooling includes a wide range of solutions designed to simplify and automate tasks like contract management, matter management, legal spend management, compliance tracking, and risk management, to name a few.
According to the Sixth Edition of Thomson Reuters’ Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index, more than half of the corporate legal departments surveyed deploy and manage different software solutions for various in-house legal team needs. To automate the complexity of these disparate workflow processes, most general counsel in large organizations are looking to transition to some form of ELM tool. Additionally, contract management—specifically contract lifecycle management (CLM)—has become an expansive category unto itself, with functionalities aimed at helping firms manage their entire portfolio of contracts and policies in one integrated platform. Suffice it to say, ELM software and CLM solutions are rapidly evolving with the ongoing digital transformations occurring in today’s enterprise legal departments.
Key ELM Software Features
ELM solutions typically cover a broad range of functions, from analytics, spend/billing/legal budget management, legal matter management, contract management, legal knowledge management (KM), and more. However, despite this wide array of features and functionalities, leading solutions in this category commonly share the following key features:
Contract Management
ELM software typically includes features that enable organizations to centralize and automate their contract management processes. For example, they may enable users to create, store, track, and analyze contracts throughout their lifecycle, ensuring compliance and reducing risks associated with contract mismanagement.
Legal Matter Management
An ELM platform usually includes matter management capabilities for assisting legal departments in organizing and tracking various legal matters such as litigation, regulatory investigations, and corporate transactions. This functionality usually comes in tools for case tracking, document management, collaboration, and task management, enabling teams to efficiently handle legal cases from inception to resolution.
Legal Spend/Budget Management
Managing legal expenses is a critical aspect of enterprise legal operations, allowing for the control of costs and optimization of budget allocations. ELM software solutions typically provide features for tracking legal expenditures, managing invoices, budgeting, and analyzing spending patterns. These features help enterprises achieve and maintain transparency in their legal costs and allow for more informed decision-making and legal spend optimizations.
Compliance and Risk Management
Enterprises across industries must stay continuously compliant in a landscape of evolving laws, regulations, and internal policies. ELM software facilitates compliance management by providing tools for tracking regulatory changes, assessing compliance risk, implementing controls, and monitoring adherence to legal requirements.
Reporting and Analytics
ELM software offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities, allowing users to generate customized reports, dashboards, and metrics to gain insights into various aspects of legal operations. This data-driven approach enables stakeholders to make informed decisions, identify trends, and measure performance.
Benefits of ELM Software
Enterprises that adopt ELM software in their legal operations stand to realize the following benefits:
Increased Legal Operational Efficiency
By automating manual tasks, streamlining processes, and centralizing data, ELM software helps legal departments operate more efficiently, saving time and resources.
Enhanced Compliance and Legal Adherence
ELM software aids in ensuring regulatory compliance and mitigating legal risks by providing tools for tracking, monitoring, and managing compliance activities.
Cost Savings
Through better management of legal spend, optimization of resources, and avoidance of legal disputes, ELM software contributes to cost savings and improved financial performance.
Improved Strategic Decision-Making
With access to comprehensive data and analytics, stakeholders can make better-informed decisions regarding legal matters, strategy formulation, and resource allocation.
In short, ELM tools are an increasingly critical enterprise enabler as legal budgets expand, firms broaden their footprints, and new technologies are introduced on the market. In light of these changes, ELM software serves as a strategic tool for modern firms to effectively manage their legal operations, mitigate risks, and improve operational efficiencies on an ongoing basis. By leveraging the capabilities of ELM software, organizations can streamline processes, enhance compliance, optimize costs, and make better informed legal decisions.
To find out how Ventiv can help supercharge the ELM efforts and processes in your organization, talk to a consultant today.
