Law Department Services

Technology Assessment & Optimization

Law departments need an integrated and holistic technology infrastructure in support of information needs. In performing a technology assessment, Unbiased can design a strategy that best fits your maturity level and anticipated growth. We compare your current state technology against industry “best of breed” tools and innovative practices, providing recommendations in selection and/or leverage of software solutions and cloud-computing environments. Our deliverables include a recommended roadmap comprising project prioritizations and implementation plans that are practical and unbiased.

We are expert in all categories of corporate legal technology, including the following solutions in support of legal practice and business operations:

Board oversight and collaboration is often the responsibility of the General Counsel. Unbiased offers deep insight into tools designed to create board books and meeting documents, manage calendars, support real-time communications, and document voting decisions.

Business intelligence (BI) is a suite of tools designed to capture, sort, consolidate, analyze and present data from many repositories into digestible reports. Unbiased helps to identify, cross reference and develop such reports; these can then be used to glean meaningful insight in support of quantitative management of your teams. In this way, Unbiased helps you identify opportunities to mine and expose data “nuggets” to support operational improvement.

Unbiased has broad knowledge of and deep experience with most forms of legal practice and corporate legal business operations processes, identifying opportunities and executing on solutions that increase efficiency through workflow automation. Cycle time reduction and cost improvements are almost always an output of these engagements.

In today’s highly-regulated commercial environment, it is critical that lawyers assess contracts for potential issues of non-compliance as well as identify areas of opportunity for additional revenue recognition. Using the latest in machine learning, structural analysis, metadata extraction and natural language processing techniques, contract discovery and analytics software can be used to find the “needle in a haystack”, replacing manual labor with cheaper and more accurate automation. Unbiased understands the use of these tools–often grouped under the banner of “artificial intelligence (AI)”–to support contract review and analysis in areas of M&A, accounting requirements, and financial regulation.

Enterprise contract lifecycle management software (or “ECLM”) is used to support cradle-to-grave management of contracts. Unbiased understands the best use of these tools to aid in contract request, authoring, negotiation, approval, automated signature, obligations management, amendment, audit and reporting and renewal. As importantly, Unbiased has the unique ability to bring together different constituencies, e.g. Procurement and Sales functions, in development of a shared vision and a united plan for execution and adoption of technology and process change.

Unbiased is expert in solutions that support both the development of complex contracts and their execution using electronic signature and approval routing workflows.

Deal room and collaboration software allow two or more disparate organizations to work off the same data sets in a secure and easy to access cloud environment. Unbiased is expert in the selection and implementation of these solutions.

Unbiased has spent many years advising clients on solutions that enable quick development of documents using standard legal forms and templates. These automated “assembly” tools provide better self-service capability and greatly reduce organizational risk.

Unbiased consultants support clients in their need to analyze, mark-up, and present changes between different versions of a document regardless of format. This expertise spans decades of team member experience working with document comparison technology.

Document management is a foundational tool within most legal departments. Unbiased brings great familiarity across the spectrum of document management automation, including governance, standards, and best practices. Our consultants are expert in the selection, planning, configuration and deployment of document management systems–both on-premise as well as cloud solutions.

Unbiased consultants have for decades helped clients define information requirements, select software, plan and deploy eBilling and financial management systems at both large and small law departments. Our team also brings knowledge of best practice processes, skill requirements and practical knowledge of market-leading solutions.

Unbiased’s team includes experts with years of experience advising and educating legal departments on EDRM and eDiscovery solutions that span early case assessment, collection, preservation, analysis, review, processing, production, and presentation. Our team also advises on the “front-end” of the EDRM model; processes that, though often ignored, include critical areas of information governance, data mapping and case/matter planning.

Unbiased is often called upon to assist clients with planning and enabling of electronic filings–across courts, venues, regulatory bodies and other entities.

Entity management software allows complex organizations to track structural information about each corporate entity, manage regulatory requirements across the portfolio (e.g., lists of officers/directors and other corporate formalities), prepare for annual meetings, produce minute books, and oversee official legal documents. Unbiased assists its corporate clients to identify information requirements, select products, and deploy automation in support of best practice processes.

Unbiased has significant GRC experience, a fast-growing focus of our in-house legal teams. Software in support of GRC is quickly evolving and our corporate clients look to us to advise them on the automation needed to support internal transformation initiatives and compliance adherence cross-checks.

Unbiased has spent years advising clients on how best to leverage and share knowledge, best practice procedures, general communications and approved templates within and external to the legal function. Intranets and portals are two such areas where we work to articulate and distribute communications and information in support of expertise identification, knowledge sharing, and client self-service.

Unbiased has a long intellectual property (IP) practice history and experience set. We work with our corporate clients to drive electronic change in support of streamlined, automated and consistent practices in patent and trademark prosecution as well as litigation. We have teamed with some of the most progressive solution providers in creation of cost-efficient and sustainable IP best practice workflows. These solutions help lower the effort and cost related to this practice specialty.

Knowledge management (KM) helps law departments support more efficient and effective operation–it is essential to reducing cost while maintaining quality. KM technology aids in capture and sharing of legal expertise, resulting in better team collaboration. Whether you are focused on exploiting institutional knowledge and lessons learned or on information sharing and collaboration with clients and vendors, we have the experience and know-how to help. Beyond document management, the latest-generation KM solutions include use of smart enterprise search, intranets as practice portals, and specialized tools built to take advantage of artificial intelligence techniques (i.e., structural analysis, metadata extraction and natural language processing) as well as machine-learning algorithms.

Unbiased consultants are certified Project Management Professionals (PMPs), highly skilled in how best to apply LPM concepts to legal practice. While we appreciate that LPM extends beyond any single software solution, we understand how to use latest-generation tools to assess incoming requests for legal service, plan for needed resources, execute against agreed scope, monitor and measure progress, and identify lessons learned. Where needed, we can fill any gaps where technology alone won’t suffice.

Unbiased consultants include legal research specialists who know providers and products in depth and can also help re-engineer research processes (and reduce costs). Using technology where needed (including newer cloud-based solutions), our team can help you redefine the legal research and library function to raise efficiency, improve self-service and reduce both dependence and costs.

Unbiased helps our corporate clients capture information requirements, drive the selection process and lead implementation efforts in support of litigation hold best practices. Often, we find we can leverage existing tools (such as the matter management system) to reduce costs associated with litigation hold automation.

Matter management software is a relatively mature technology that has been in use for over two decades. Since its inception, Unbiased consultants have taken an industry-leading role in assisting corporate clients to define requirements, evaluate, select, design, configure, implement and leverage its investment in the technology. Serving as the hub of a matter-centric computing platform, it is critical that the design of the system take into account the information and reporting needs of both the staff lawyer and management team. Fortunately, Unbiased consultants are masters of this art form.

Unbiased has advised hundreds of clients on configuration and use of office productivity tools–including email and word processing. Our solutions include all major third-party platforms; our emphasis on functionality and user experience drives our strategy and advice. Knowing that most lawyers prefer to work from with inside these systems, an information architecture that supports easy access to legal content through these platforms is often essential to user adoption.

Good records management practices help reduce legal risk and lower eDiscovery costs, It includes policies (records policy), procedures (designating record type) and technology (retaining/deleting records per retention schedule). The Unbiased team includes certified records managers (CRMs) who understand records best practices and the various records, email and document management technologies that, in combination, support a good information governance structure.

Litigation workflow typically begins with service of process from a registered agent. Unbiased is expert at using technology to integrate this step directly into the case management workflow, eliminating the need for and potential delays resulting from duplicative data entry and routing of notifications.