With its recent launch of CounselLink+™, LexisNexis has provided a highly comprehensive tool to streamline your law department’s entire workflow.
The “+” in “CounselLink+” refers to integration — users of the system now have access to all of their organization’s customizable tech stack, as well as all of the additional Lexis products they subscribe to, with one password.
Perhaps the biggest “+” of the new additions, however, is the full integration of Lexis’ contract lifecycle management system into CounselLink’s Enterprise Legal Management solution.
Before CounselLink+, the system’s CLM component was a loose integration — it linked out to the Parley Pro CLM system, and then to its successor, CounselLink CLM.
Now, contracts are directly integrated into the matters CounselLink manages, creating one unified system for all aspects of your law department’s operations — from work intake to bill review to performance tracking.
We recently explored some new capabilities surrounding work intake, matter management, integration with Microsoft products, and other areas in a previous article.
If you’re curious about this product and would like to book a demo, you can do so here.
Feel free to read on for an overview of the CLM and data reporting features of CounselLink+.
Starting Out
To begin, the CLM system populates a legacy dashboard that includes every contract in the system, divided by executed contracts and in-progress contracts.
If you drill down on the in-progress contracts, you’ll find numerous metrics.
These include how long they’re taking to negotiate, where they are in the process, which ones involve which companies, and which ones are most active.
The executed contracts dashboard, meanwhile, keeps up with all of the milestones in these documents.
For example, a “renewals approaching” section will show how far off all of the renewals are and flag approaching deadlines.
Users can then drill down into specific executed contracts, and CounselLink+ will track numerous data points.
For example, in this near-expiring sample contract, the system shows which stakeholders will be getting automated emails about upcoming renewals.
Negotiating Online
Without a cutting-edge CLM system, negotiations will typically involve the cumbersome process of sending a Microsoft Word draft of a contract to a counterparty.
You would then need to receive a redline from your counterparty, reconcile various versions, send back your revisions, and repeat the process until you can agree to a final version.
Now, you can simply invite counterparties into the same system, and you can collaborate on changes in real time. (CounselLink+ does also support the traditional redline method.)
A click on the “in-progress” contracts tab will provide an overview of all of these files, including which ones are being negotiated as redline Word docs and which are being negotiated through the online system.
For contracts negotiated through its system, CounselLink+ provides an intuitive interface and comprehensive audit trail, saving the time and confusion that can result from the traditional redline process.
If you open a file for a contract being negotiated online, you are taken to a view of the current version of the contract, with conversation markers that appear anywhere any text has changed at any time in the negotiation process.
An audit trail is available to show all revisions and who made them.
If you want to find out who is responsible for specific language in a three-year-old contract, you can access the full trail with the click of a button.
There’s no longer a need for the time consuming task of hunting down several versions of the document and then comparing them to figure out what happened.
The platform also integrates with the major online contract execution platforms. It can also integrate with Salesforce, allowing the sales team to directly initiate contracts from templates in the system.
Custom Powered Templates
As with just about any CLM system, the organization can upload its various contract templates and store them there.
But CounselLink+ brings a new wrinkle. It incorporates Lexis’ Practical Guidance — a proprietary legal AI tool that provides practice notes, contract templates, and other data-driven guidance to subscribers.
This means that if you need a custom template for, say, a certain type of lease agreement, you can use Practical Guidance to create one and pull it directly into your system.
A CounselLink+ subscription includes Practical Guidance access in its contracts tool, regardless of whether the organization otherwise subscribes to Practical Guidance.
Tracking Your Data
While the integrated CounselLink+ system will track unprecedented amounts of data across department functions, its reporting system will allow you to leverage it efficiently for your business and legal needs.
The system is organized into matters, which can all be accessed in one screen. You can generate lists through customizable filters.
Need to compile all of your current litigation matters for a company meeting? You can export these into a spreadsheet, and share over email, with a few clicks within the system.
For more in-depth data analysis, the system contains an embedded business intelligence tool leveraging all the data in CounselLink, populated with roughly 80 different reports.
Many CounselLink+ users customize their reports, leveraging these templates to track the ideal metrics for their organization. If you’re using a separate business intelligence tool, the data can be exported from CounselLink using an API.
CounselLink+ also leverages this data into high-level interactive dashboards. These are set up upon purchase of the system, but they can easily be customized to your organization’s needs.
The result is one place where your lawyers and legal operations professionals can access a tremendous amount of organizationwide data — matter intake, contracts, invoice review, tasks in progress, vendor performance, and more.
One popular feature is the benchmarking dashboards, which allow you to compare your organization’s metrics with CounselLink’s benchmarks.
Users that opt to allow their data to be used will have access to the benchmarking system. (All data is anonymized.)
Need to know the going rate for a Biglaw partner or associate in Chicago? CounselLink+ can provide you with this type of information.
The filters allow a level of granularity that can provide meaningful comparisons for just about any firm.
CounselLink+ subscribers receive access to this tool at no additional cost.
See for Yourself
An article like this can only scratch the surface of the capabilities of a program like CounselLink+.
If you’re curious about this product and would like to book a demo, you can do so here.
And if you’d like to explore its additional features, you can view our previous article here.
