This submit initially appeared on Above the Law on January 23, 2025.
Latest CounselLink upgrades combine the complete in-house workflow with the broader suite of LexisNexis merchandise.
Company regulation departments have elevated the authorized operations occupation in recent times, making these roles central to their ongoing quest for ever-more effectivity.
With its latest launch of CounselLink+™, LexisNexis has supplied a brand new software to assist in-house attorneys and authorized operations professionals meet these calls for. The “+” in “CounselLink+” refers to integration — customers of the system now have entry to all of their group’s customizable tech stack, in addition to all the further LexisNexis merchandise they subscribe to, with one password. The result’s a complete system with the potential to arrange and streamline all elements of a corporate law department’s work.
LexisNexis merchandise are embedded all through CounselLink+ — its Sensible Steerage® software is built-in into the contract administration system to help with templates and drafting, for one instance. A streamlined work consumption characteristic additionally permits the regulation division to seamlessly subject and reply to requests and questions from the complete enterprise.
And LexisNexis proprietary, market-leading AI purposes are thoughtfully embedded all through the system to additional increase effectivity. These integrations allow customers to share information throughout methods much more simply than they may with a patchwork of tech options in place.
This in flip helps them discover new efficiencies in creating and managing contracts, evaluating authorized dangers, managing matters and spending, or fielding and responding to enterprise-wide questions, amongst different duties. The unified system additionally eases the method of monitoring all the regulation division’s contributions — and presenting this information to showcase its worth to the group and refine its operations. It’s a system that may add conveniences, ease consumer adoption, and bolster tech-focused authorized operations professionals and end-user attorneys alike.
If you happen to’re interested in this product and wish to guide a demo, you can do so here. Or, first, you may learn on for a tour of choose options of CounselLink+.
Getting Began With CounselLink+
The CounselLink+ system’s residence display gives quick entry to quite a few methods and merchandise. Internally, one click on will take you to your entire methods — matter or work administration, financial management together with eBilling, vendor management, contract lifecycle management, organization-wide requests, and information analytics.
CounselLink+ additionally consists of one-click entry to some other Lexis merchandise your group subscribes to, together with Lexis+ AI, Law360, Sensible Steerage, and extra.
Which means that your analysis system is included with your entire different workflow merchandise, eradicating the necessity to toggle between disparate methods.
The Work Consumption System
CounselLink+ is organized into issues, and every matter gives a complete overview of each merchandise to trace — these embrace regulation agency relationships, eBilling, paperwork, and contracts. Issues could be generated manually or imported from different methods, they usually can mechanically embrace information and paperwork by API performance. The system can also be extremely configurable, permitting every enterprise to customise the KPIs it’s following.
As soon as a matter is created, it takes you to a matter portal that lets you view all of its associated paperwork and metrics. Tabs include exhaustive element on the whole lot from funds in reserve to inner stakeholders.
Issues will also be created with the CounselLink+ characteristic referred to as “Work Consumption.” The Work Intake system permits the authorized division to share a customizable kind, most probably on the corporate’s intranet, that may enable anybody within the group to ask a query or make a request.
It’s a course of that eliminates the necessity to chase down requests within the type of voicemails, emails, and different contacts, as a substitute bringing all of them into one standardized system.
The routing of the shape can also be customizable — employment-related requests can go to an employment lawyer, whereas questions on a vendor can go to the authorized operations crew, for instance.
Requests might merely be questions which might be requested and answered, or they might be promoted to issues. However regardless of the final result, the CounselLink system will monitor all the work the authorized division is performing.
Whereas nearly any system will inform you high-level metrics just like the variety of instances dealt with, this technique excels in monitoring all the work a authorized crew is performing.
CounselLink+ will monitor all the questions that come right into a regulation division — the quantity, the variety of questions which might be transformed into issues, the apply space of every inquiry, and extra.
Along with demonstrating worth, this information additionally permits the regulation division to refine its processes and maximize effectivity.
Work Administration
As soon as the work consumption is accomplished and a matter is created, CounselLink+ will combine its various elements into one simple to make use of workspace.
One work administration part lets you retailer paperwork and contracts in a single location. They are often imported immediately from e-mail or added by an add kind.
The system additionally integrates with doc administration software program like iManage and has check-in/check-out and model tracker capabilities.
CounselLink+ customers can management entry to every doc, sharing solely sure ones with an outdoor regulation agency, for instance. The matter file additionally tracks workflow with an intuitive calendaring and task-management system.
This permits seamless collaboration with different inner customers and exterior customers. It notably permits regulation departments to collaborate with outdoors counsel throughout the similar portal.
Outlook Add-In
At a big authorized division, authorized operations professionals will spend most of their time within the dashboards, digging into each out there metric to hunt higher effectivity.
Nevertheless, attorneys usually work in purposes like Outlook, whereas solely sometimes using the complete system.
That’s why CounselLink+ has a characteristic that may meet attorneys the place they’re.
Any matter created in CounselLink+ will create a mini-homepage that may be accessed in Outlook.
The homepage comprises all the matter info related to a lawyer assigned to work on it, and it permits attorneys to simply scroll between issues and discover all paperwork, invoices, and different information a matter consists of.
An “Add Journal Entry” subject is especially fashionable amongst CounselLink’s lawyer end-users.
The panel (seen on the proper above) permits attorneys to incorporate issues like standing updates, assembly notes, or paperwork that will probably be hooked up to a matter, in addition to to tag different customers to convey it to their consideration. The entry will probably be mirrored in the primary CounselLink+ system, however the end-user lawyer solely must create it in Outlook.
It’s a course of that displays seamless consumer adoption for any lawyer presently utilizing Outlook.
AI-Powered Invoice Assessment
Whether or not your regulation corporations invoice hourly or by AFAs, CounselLink+ can rework the extensively dreaded activity of invoice evaluation.
To populate the system, regulation corporations can submit invoices immediately by CounselLink+ for free of charge.
As soon as an bill is within the system, a proprietary SmartReview® performance will look at all the costs. The system will instantly validate the bill and reject gadgets like hours billed by unknown timekeepers. CounselLink+ will then evaluation all the gadgets in an bill and name out sure ones for added scrutiny.
It flags these things with a evaluation that goes far past simply UTBMS codes — leveraging AI to scrutinize each a part of the cost, just like the date, the extent of timekeeper, the cost textual content, the models, and the speed. Within the instance above, the system recognized a line merchandise coded for trial and listening to attendance the place its description indicated it was billing for establishing a gathering.
Each CounselLink+ consumer can customise the principles SmartReview makes use of in its invoice evaluation. They will also be custom-made for several types of issues — completely different guidelines for IP invoices versus these for litigation, for instance. CounselLink+ additionally has a Mixed Bill Assessment performance that enables it to evaluation a number of invoices without delay.
This characteristic permits regulation departments with a excessive quantity of invoices to evaluation all of them concurrently, versus opening and shutting every one. It will probably additionally present in-depth spend evaluation on a specific matter — rapidly seeing how a lot of a specific matter was dealt with by companions versus associates, for instance.
To handle your roster of regulation corporations, CounselLink+ can even present a 360-degree view of your regulation agency relationships.
Legislation corporations have a weighted rating — customizable by the in-house regulation division. The system additionally maintains a regulation agency range survey and may monitor timekeeper range.
Every company consumer can go away Yelp-style evaluations of their regulation corporations as properly, to be maintained within the inner system. The interior star score could be included into the regulation agency rating as properly.
See CounselLink+ for Your self
An article like this may solely scratch the floor of the capabilities of a program like CounselLink+.
If you happen to’re interested in this product and wish to guide a demo, you can do so here.
Keep tuned to Above the Law for our follow-up article, the place we’ll dive into further CounselLink+ capabilities, together with its contract lifecycle management integration.
