Is your department over-lawyered, under-lawyered, or just right?

For the second consecutive year, in conjunction with General Counsel Metrics, LLC , we are pleased to invite you to take part in the fourth General Counsel Metrics Law Department Benchmark Survey.  It had more than 1,000 total participants last year, each of whom enjoyed access to valuable benchmarking data coming out of the survey.

There’s no cost to participate, and the confidential survey should only take a few minutes.  Simply enter a few facts and figures about your 2012  legal staff and spending (# of lawyers, paralegals, and other staff; in-house and external legal spend; revenue). There are also a couple of technology questions, such as which contract management software you use.  Only aggregated and normalized information is published, such as median lawyers per billion dollars of revenue.

In early June, all participants will receive the first release of the report, which is expected to cover about 300 law departments and include about 60 pages of benchmarking data on legal department staffing, compensation and spending.

Please click here to take the survey.

If you have questions about the survey you can Rees Morrison, President of General Counsel Metrics.  If you'd like more information on Exari Contract Management Software, please visit the Exari website at www.exari.com.

eBook: Contract Management Maturity Assessment

Where is your company on the Contract Management Maturity Assessment Model?

Have you ever wondered how effectively your company manages its documents? At what stage in the contract lifecycle are your processes most inefficient?  And how different are your contract management practices from those of best in class companies?

Our new eBook, Exari Contract Management Maturity Assessment, will answer these and other questions you may have about contract management practices. It will help you to:

• Evaluate the efficiency of your company’s contract management process
• Mitigate risk-prone areas
• Identify quick wins for shortening your contract cycle time

The Assessment Model provided in the eBook outlines the seven stages of contract lifecycle and three levels of contract management maturity: leaders, followers and laggards.

The differences are stark. For example, the document creation process may vary from copying and pasting from old deals manually to using a guided, web-based interview with predefined alternative language approved by Legal.

The first, laggard practice makes it difficult to enforce document quality, consistency, compliance and risk management. The latter process, used by leading companies, allows business people and junior legal staff to lower risk and to create compliant documents up to ten times faster.

To learn more about contract management, please click here.

Mills & Reeve Selects Exari for Document Assembly

Mills & Reeve, a leading UK law firm, has chosen Exari to automate its most-used employment precedent after a competitive selection process.

Exari’s robust and easy to use document assembly software allows both Mills & Reeve’s own lawyers and external clients to draft tailored compromise agreements using the same bank of standard clauses.

Nicola Brown, a partner at Mills & Reeve and a specialist in employment law, said: "We chose Exari because it enables us to present complicated drafting options in a flexible and simple way. The efficiencies we introduce by automating the drafting of compromise agreements include ensuring accuracy and speed of creation.  This is allowing us to further raise our client satisfaction levels.”

“In addition, some of our clients have direct access to the automation.  This enables them to complete the simpler transactions themselves and only refer to us for the more complex cases.  It’s a powerful tool for cementing existing relationships and developing new ones.”

Geoff Maskell, Exari’s Vice President of European Sales, said: "With Exari, Mills & Reeve will now be able to deliver tailored agreements to its clients faster than ever before. By using Exari for contract drafting, law firms can achieve faster turnaround times, improved business focus and produce consistent, error-free documents, which help strengthen client relationships."

We are pleased to welcome Mills & Reeve to the Exari Community and look forward to helping them achieve their goals. To learn how you can streamline your compromise agreements or other document intensive process, please contact us.

The Latest and Greatest Document Assembly

Apologies for the headline, but we're excited about the release of Exari Document Assembly Software Version 6.1.  It's available now and has more than 200 new features that enhance the  system’s capabilities from document creation through negotiation, storage and obligation management.

The powerful combination of patented document assembly and contract management provides document compliance and data visibility for the legal department and sales/revenue acceleration for sales executives.

With this release, Exari continues to deliver on the mission of transforming the enterprise with “intelligent documents.”

 • Legal Departments have the ability to deliver self- service contracts to the business without added risk. Microsoft Word – only systems don’t provide necessary control for self-service or the power to support complex deals. Legal also benefits from automated approval workflows and collaboration tools. Exari offers the power needed to overcome any level of document complexity.

 • Sales Departments benefit from shorter contract turnaround times and the ability to close deals faster, CRM integration, and tailored output – PDF for contracts, PowerPoint for proposals and dynamically generated presentations, and Word for pitch books, letters, and customized documentation.

 • IT Departments appreciate the flexibility and ease of integration with other in-house systems. Vital contract data is accessible across the business and can feed off and into other systems.

Register here to schedule a web-demo of Exari V 6.1

GC Metrics Survey Includes Contract Management Software

In conjunction with General Counsel Metrics, LLC, we invite you to take part in the world’s largest benchmark survey.  More than 800 companies have done so already this year.

For the first time, this year's  GC Metrics Survey will include a question about Contract Management software. Respondents will be able to see how many of their peers have automated their contracts process and which software packages are in use across legal departments.

In early December, GC Metrics will send participants the fourth release of the report, with 25 benchmarks on legal department staffing and spending, as well as compensation data. There is no cost to complete the quick, confidential survey.  All respondents will receive the final report - Click here to take the survey.

Simply enter your six 2011 figures on staff and spending (lawyers, paralegals, and other staff; inhouse and external legal spend; revenue). Only aggregated and normalized information is reported, such as median lawyers per billion dollars of revenue.

If you have questions about the survey you can contact Rees.  If you'd like more information on Exari Contract Management Software, please visit the website at www.exari.com.