Robert Ambrogi Blog
It is a busy day for contract lifecycle management technology. First came the news that enterprise CLM company SirionLabs has raised $85 million in a Series D funding round, and now LexisNexis Legal & Professional says it has acquired the CLM platform Parley Pro as part of a broader set of enhancements to its CounselLink enterprise legal management platform.
LexisNexis says that the addition of Parley Pro’s CLM capabilities will strengthen the CounselLink platform, providing customers with a cohesive CLM, legal spend and matter management experience.
“Combined, CounselLink and Parley Pro will deliver greater overall value to and actionable insights directly into in-house attorneys’ contracting workflows, enabling them to draft better contracts faster and negotiate more effectively – thus reducing organizational risk and the growing workload burden placed on corporate legal departments,” a LexisNexis spokesperson said.
Olga V. Mack, a former corporate general counsel who has been Parley Pro’s CEO since 2019, joins LexisNexis as vice president and CEO of Parley Pro.
New Workflow, Automation Features
News of the acquisition comes as CounselLink releases a new version of its ELM platform that includes new features focused on work intake, task automation, and enhanced reporting.
Among the new features included in this release:
- Enhanced work intake system. A new legal services request feature adds capabilities such as the ability to create distinct request forms, manage user groups, manage request flow and allow external user requests, such as outside counsel and vendors.
- System-triggered events. Users can now build rules that automate actions and next steps, such as assigning a matter to an individual based on matter type, adding a task set when a matter is created and other pre-defined activities.
- Expanded work intake reporting. User can generate reports on data such as request volume (to help measure volume, frequency, and type of service requests) and assignments (to help understand staff resource capacity and matter or activity work status).
- Related matters. This adds the ability to search for and link one matter to another within CounselLink, create matter pages and pre-populate information in new matters based on the original.
“Now more than ever, corporate legal departments need advanced work intake tools and automation capabilities to manage the huge influx in demand for their services stemming from increased legal and regulatory obligations, pandemic-related issues and requests to support more non-legal business functions,” said Aaron Pierce, CounselLink’s vice president of product management.
“The new tools and capabilities we’ve added into CounselLink will help legal departments work more efficiently and effectively and give them big-picture insights to better manage demand, allocate resources, control costs and plan for future needs.”