ContractPodAi, the award-winning provider of the AI-powered, contract lifecycle management (CLM) product and ‘One Legal Platform,’ released the findings of its survey on the progress legal departments are making around implementing centralized digital workflow solutions. The findings revealed an uptake of centralized, digital workflows across key areas such as contract management, compliance and more.

The survey, conducted in collaboration with Industry Dive, gathered input from more than 150 legal professionals from May to June of 2022. Of the legal professionals surveyed, the vast majority (96%) viewed a centralized workflow management platform as necessary for their legal department, while 92% believed it would help the department be more productive. Survey respondents cited several drivers for adopting or evaluating digital workflows. They include the ability to:

• Improve document management (36%)
• Empower nonlegal team members to be involved in the legal process (35%)
• Reduce the time attorneys spend on workflow management (33%)
• Better manage risk/compliance (30%)

“There’s a shift in the legal department’s role. A modern general counsel is expected to be more strategic, and at times even disruptive, in nature,” says Jerry Levine, chief evangelist and general counsel at ContractPodAi. “If you’re more productive, you’re able to accomplish more, which includes focusing and aligning with your company’s goals and objectives, providing better strategic counsel to the business, and guiding the organization through rapid change.”

Yet opportunities for improvement remain, even in the most tech-enabled organizations. For example, just under half (48%) of respondents said their organization tracks contracts through an integrated system that provides visibility into relevant issues and deadlines, and 38% said there are blind spots in how information is reported in their contract management system.

Beyond helping the legal department deliver more for their organization, embracing digital workflows can help solve one of the main challenges to profitability: recruitment and retention, according to a survey on behalf of Thomson Reuters and Georgetown Law’s Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession. Benefits such as improved document management and reduced time spent on workflow management are appealing to job-seekers in the market.

“If you can demonstrate that you’re an efficient employer with the right systems and processes, and are a modern, forward-looking organization, then people will continue to work for you or join you,” says Matt Gould, general counsel at ContractPodAi.

A digital workflow solution can also better connect the legal department to the business, which can help to improve the quality and timeliness of support the legal department provides. Based on participants’ responses, ContractPodAi’s survey report ranks the workflows legal departments want to integrate into a centralized digital workflow solution, including:  

• Contract management (53%)
• Corporate governance (47%)
• Compliance (44%)
• General/all legal requests (38%)
• Litigation tracking (38%)

To read more findings from the survey, please click here: https://resources.industrydive.com/how-legal-departments-can-reimagine-their-workflows-with-digitization.