1) Legal enterprise management unifies previously siloed information from legal departments to provide greater control over legal operations and costs. It connects information from e-discovery, legal spend management, and matter management. 2) Bringing e-discovery in-house allows for better control over litigation costs and risk compared to outsourcing. Integrating it with legal spend management provides visibility into total case costs, not just outside counsel fees. 3) Matter management automation helps manage workloads and costs. Combining it with other legal data provides valuable context to inform decisions on individual cases.

1. rich hall and Brian Johnson Bridgeway software
Legal Enterprise Management:
A New Level of Control for
Corporate Legal Departments
A
s legal and IT departments face the IT groups with the relevant, contextual information
continuing challenge of decreasing that will enable them to make the business decisions
risk, reducing costs and optimizing necessary for reducing the risk for the corporations
the outcomes of their legal processes, they serve. Historically, e-discovery, matter
what they need more than ever is a management and legal spend management have all
new level of control over the legal enterprise. This been separate, yet fundamental, parts of the legal
control will come through empowering the legal and organization with separate islands of information.
34 Case/Matter Management ILTA White Paper

2. When corporate legal departments bridge model helps to mitigate some risk, it comes at
all their disparate in-house legal and corporate the detriment of cost control and matter analysis,
governance information, they obtain the power as a single processing pass of the data can take
to control in-house legal operations and achieve weeks to complete. With this cost- and time-
a cohesive legal enterprise practice. This is legal intensive model, in-house legal departments
enterprise management, which unifies previously can’t predict the litigation costs associated with
siloed information from across the corporate legal a given case. But by bringing the e-discovery
department with the purpose of allowing the in-house process in house, many organizations have
legal department to leverage their corporate realized cost and risk reductions and gained
information to work smarter, more efficiently and more control over the process.
cost-effectively. The ability of in-house counsel to iteratively
process information using progressive search
eleCTrOniC disCOvery: COnTrOlling terms in days rather than weeks offers a level of
yOur liTigATiOn sPend control over the case that was impossible with
E-discovery is generally defined as the process the outsourced model. In-house e-discovery
of identifying, preserving, collecting, processing, brings an enormous cost benefit, as a company
reviewing, analyzing, producing and presenting isn’t paying for multiple passes over a set of
electronically stored information for legal review. The data. Additionally, there is more time to analyze
stages of e-discovery are depicted by the Electronic the output of your e-discovery efforts, allowing
Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), which offers for better litigation decisions and therefore
guidelines and standards for e-discovery consumers reduced risk.
and providers. Recent efforts around e-discovery While bringing the e-discovery process in
have focused on ways to expand electronic discovery house offers tangible cost and risk benefits to
processes into cost savings and efficiency initiatives, in-house legal groups, e-discovery software
including early case assessment. solutions focus primarily on litigation cost
The current strategy of in-house management management. But there are additional costs
of the e-discovery process is a critical step to legal related to adjudicating a case that fall outside
enterprise management and gives corporate legal the e-discovery processes, such as interaction
groups control over litigation costs while also with outside counsel. This is typically the purview
reducing risk. The in-house e-discovery strategy was of the legal spend management solution.
adopted in response to unpredictable (and some However, by bridging e-discovery and legal
would say runaway) costs that occur when using spend management information, in-house
a service provider in an outsourced, per-gigabyte counsel gains access to all the costs associated
e-discovery model. with a matter, rather than just the outside
Consider the effects on just the processing phase counsel spend or just the litigation spend. This
of the e-discovery process: While the outsourced means that not only does in-house counsel now
www.iltanet.org Case/Matter Management 35

3. • Enterprise Matter
• Electronic Billing
Management
• Timekeeper Management
• Outside Counsel
Collaboration Tools/
Workspace Matter Legal Spend • Rule-based Auditing and
Approval Worklfows
• Document Management Management Management • Budgets and Accurals
Systems
• Alternative Fee
• Metrics and Busines
Arrangements
Intelligence
• Legal Hold
• Entity and Subsidiary
Management • Collection
• Advanced Org Charting • Early Case Assesment
and Reporting Corporate
E-Discovery • Process/Review/
• Board of Directors Book Governance Production
Management/Portal
• Project Management/
• SEC Filing Management Metrics/Business
Intelligence
have control over their litigation costs, but they can With a legal spend management solution in place,
also make more informed decisions on the disposition in-house legal departments can control the entire
of the case. invoicing process (including electronic submission,
approval and payment), time-keeping functions and
legAl sPend MAnAgeMenT: comparative analysis of budgeted versus actual costs.
COnTrOlling yOur OuTside Rule-based auditing and approval workflows save
COunsel COsTs an enormous amount of time by streamlining and
Legal spend management brings together the simplifying their entire invoice process. Sophisticated
technology and best practices needed to coordinate all reporting capabilities improve legal spend analysis,
of the resources, processes and procedures required to helping to identify key cost drivers to provide greater
effectively manage spending on outside legal services. control over expenses.
The specific elements of legal spend management Legal enterprise management takes the
often include processing electronically submitted information inherent to the legal spend management
invoices, managing budgets and evaluating, monitoring solution and combines it with information from the
and measuring future legal spend. in-house e-discovery solution, bridging both pools of
36 Case/Matter Management ILTA White Paper

4. a new level of control for corPoration legal dePartments
information. This is a powerful tool for controlling the The matter management solution is
costs associated with e-discovery efforts. often viewed as the hub from which the
For example, most legal spend management operational control of the legal department
solutions have the ability to automate the rate of is managed. With the right solution in place,
outside firms working on a litigated matter. Through legal departments not only have the ability to
the integration of data, in-house counsel obtains automate the workload of the legal group, but
the ability to automatically enforce rules governing also manage operational costs.
e-discovery spend associated with that matter. Matter management is an important tool in
While this example focuses on the power for achieving streamlined efficiency. However, the
controlling the costs associated with e-discovery in-house legal department also gains immense
efforts, this automated cost control can, of course, be control with the addition of historical and real-time
focused on controlling all of the outside counsel costs. information gleaned from other legal enterprise
applications. This information aids in delivering
MATTer MAnAgeMenT: COnTrOlling context to the matter at hand. By connecting the
yOur OPerATiOnAl COsTs information from the matter management solution
Corporate legal departments use matter with the e-discovery and legal spend management
management systems to manage and control all solutions, corporate legal departments are
their legal matters on a day-to-day basis, including developing a complete, integrated legal enterprise
opening and closing matters, daily matter work, management environment that puts them in
workload assignment, management and forecasting, control like never before.
outside counsel collaboration, and litigation metrics For example, take a matter for which a
and performance measurement. corporate legal group is leveraging information
In addition to the growing cost of litigation, from across the legal enterprise. They can
corporate legal departments are faced with ever- know exactly what their overall spend on a
increasing case loads made even more challenging matter is to date in real time, and compare it
by resource constraints. To meet their growing legal to similar matters that they have worked on in
matter management demands, general counsels rely the past to understand, at a given point, if they
on matter management solutions that provide: are at a higher rate or a lower expense basis.
Further, they can look at how far they are in the
• immediate access to detailed information on any e-discovery process and mark how much more
legal matter, past or present they need to analyze to be complete.
Using knowledge of the current internal
• better management of staff time and resources
expense paired with their outside counsel
expense, they can then predict how much more
• improved control over internal and external matter
the case is going to cost. With this complete
management costs through business rule automation picture, they can start making decisions on
www.iltanet.org Case/Matter Management 37

5. whether to settle or take the suit further. Perhaps they
Top Five Benefits of Legal can negotiate an alternative fee arrangement with
Enterprise Management: their primary outside firm to ensure they stay within
budget while still moving forward.
• Connect the dots: Modular applications
This information — previously disparate — is now
that each deliver high individual value can
consolidated in a way that it can be brought to bear
work together to produce a leveraged effect,
on the case at hand, giving a new level of control for
allowing you to base your decision-making
on information from your entire enterprise. in-house legal departments.
• Control work: Shared information
legAl enTerPrise MAnAgeMenT: The
and insights across your in-house legal
new level Of COnTrOl
department create the connections that
As more general counsel see the real-time benefits
drive more informed decisions.
of reducing costs while decreasing risks through the
• Understand costs: By tying together
bridging of disparate information, they will continue
your e-discovery, legal spend and matter to expand their risk management and cost-saving
management solutions, you have the
initiatives by reviewing contextual information in new
ability to see the litigation costs, the
ways, leading them to effectively manage the outcomes
operational costs and the outside counsel
costs together both in real time and of their legal processes.
against historical data. This gives you Legal enterprise management equips corporate
unprecedented insight and control over legal teams with integrated information that
your legal spend.
incorporates historical and real-time litigation trends,
spend and e-discovery data as they execute their
• Control costs: Once you can see your
costs, you have a basis for reducing them. litigation strategies.
By integrating e-discovery, legal spend and While each of these solutions delivers high
matter management, you have a unified individual value, leveraging them in unison allows
view that empowers you to manage it more
general counsels and their in-house teams to base
effectively, with a clear view of costs across
decision-making on information from the entire
the legal enterprise.
enterprise. General counsels will have a new level of
• Collaborate more effectively: Exchange
performance that provides the power to effectively
information and manage workflows among control all aspects of their legal enterprise. ilTA
both internal colleagues and external
counsel with unsurpassed speed and
ease. Transcend departmental boundaries Podcast: click here to listen as Andy Adkins,
President of Adkins Consulting Group, talks with
with processes that promote seamless
Monica Bay, Editor of Law Technology News,
collaboration. ilTA
about case/matter management systems and a
recent survey.
38 Case/Matter Management ILTA White Paper