ELM19 kicked off in Miami with a welcome and keynote address from Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions General Manager and Executive Vice President, Jonah Paransky. Jonah spoke about the state of the legal operations industry and what we have to look forward to, both in terms of demands on legal and claims departments and the tools that will be available to help meet those challenges. The program also included a panel discussion about contract lifecycle management (CLM) and the presentation of this year’s Legal Innovator Awards to three ELM Solutions clients. Look for more on these subjects soon.

Supporting great decisions 

During his keynote, Jonah announced an exciting new solution that gives legal and claims teams added confidence in making the best possible decisions. Predictive Insights is the world’s first AI-driven predictive analytics module baked into an e-billing platform. With it, clients can more accurately predict case budgets and cycle times and select the best law firms for their matters based on their own data from within our tools.  

Predictive Insights embeds predictive litigation insights into users’ workflows to improve decision-making at touchpoints throughout the lifecycle of legal matters, allowing customers to better manage outside counsel, control legal spend, and realize improved case outcomes. The module puts actionable information at an attorney’s or claims examiner’s fingertips, so they can confidently make decisions based on the criteria that are most important to the organization. 

Change is the only constant 

Jonah also discussed many of the ways the landscape is changing for legal operations professionals, with an overwhelming majority of general counsel now viewed as true business strategists by the organizations they serve. This shift has driven some key changes in how both legal and claims departments staff their work. This has been the impetus for so many organizations introducing legal operations teams that focus on making legal and litigation work run efficiently and deliver high value. It has also led to companies leveraging alternative legal service providers far more often in order to help keep spend down and quality up. 

Processes are also evolving. Companies are adopting more of the technologies that support the business and legal outcomes they are aiming for. Vendors are responding by offering options for more workflows, such as CLM, and by further developing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) that legal and claims teams can use to improve many disparate aspects of their operations. In addition, there is an industry group, of which ELM Solutions is a part, developing a standardized classification for matters that will make it easier to compare matter traits, such as budgets, cycle times, and case outcomes. Some Wolters Kluwer clients have already started to incorporate this standard. 

Legal technology in an evolving world 

Jonah went on to talk about how ELM Solutions is responding to the changes in the ways legal and claims departments work. The customer experience is always the core focus that drives every decision. By integrating our solutions into users’ existing workflows, even into the Microsoft tools they are most familiar with, we help make it easy to get the benefits of our offerings. In addition, we are updating and improving the interfaces within our platforms so that every aspect of users’ workflows makes their jobs easier.  

ELM Solutions continues to build out the technology we offer, as well. Over the last few years, there has been a huge increase in demand for data to support legal operations. As the creators of the LegalVIEW® database, the largest repository of legal spend data in the world with over $130B in invoice data accumulated since 1994, we are uniquely positioned to offer the solutions and services companies need to make the best decisions. 

Total Spend Management is one example of this. E-billing is well-established, and there have been incremental improvements over time. But we have innovated around spend management and brought e-billing to the next level by combining advanced AI technology with our expertise. For instance, LegalVIEW BillAnalyzer, our market-leading AI-assisted invoice review service, takes the burden of invoice review off client organizations, generates key insights into legal spend, and saves up to 10%. 

With so much change constantly impacting the legal operations industry, keeping up can feel daunting. But Jonah made it clear that ELM Solutions is staying updated and leveraging the most valuable developing technologies to ensure that our clients always have access to the best technology to achieve their goals.