Chapter 1

Deploy new technology

Enhance your efficiency and effectiveness through strategic use of technology solutions.

By utilizing new technology, and effectively integrating it into workflows, legal teams can move faster. Take the example of reviewing and generating contracts. By deploying sophisticated automation and contract-management and analytics technology, contracts can be created and reviewed faster and more accurately than they can by lawyers. It can also flag potential anomalies for supervisors to scrutinize.

But technology by itself is not enough. Strict governance around how the technology is used must be established to maximize the benefits. The technology must also integrate with wider workflows, such as how the legal team receives instructions from the business.

Get this right and technology can deliver tremendous benefits. For example, by installing and heavily customizing a legal technology platform, a telecoms company that the EY organization worked with managed to reduce average contracting time from 45 to 31 days, customer churn by 7% and bad debt by a third because it was better able to enforce its contractual positions.

Speed and accuracy aside, this technology lowers costs and frees up lawyers’ time for more complex, high-value and ultimately fulfilling work. These benefits should not be overlooked. The majority of TMT legal departments face challenges in attracting and retaining top talent.1 This is, in part, because around a quarter of lawyers’ time is spent conducting routine compliance and low-value tasks. Automating these tasks can therefore go some way to overcoming legal departments’ talent challenges.

Many general counsels (GC) are already aware of the tremendous improvements that technologies like this can deliver, but they have not yet fully deployed them. Indeed, 63% of TMT businesses say that the legal function has not benefited from innovation as much as other functions.2

Budgetary concerns can be a major obstacle to technology investment. It is therefore up to the GC to make the case to senior leadership that technology can deliver significant value for the entire business.

Chapter 2

Find the right person (or machine) for the right job

Ensure that your talent is deployed in ways that is rewarding for them and your company.

As mentioned earlier, around a quarter of legal teams’ time is devoted to routine activities that are way below the pay grade of highly qualified lawyers. In addition to automation, these lower-value activities can be outsourced to alternative legal-service providers or contract specialists who are experts in this area. This type of work can also be consolidated into a shared or managed-services delivery model. In addition to saving money, these approaches can improve speed and consistency.

The EY organization has recently helped a telecoms company do exactly this. The business was experiencing frequent bottlenecks in finalizing sales and procurement contracts because many were bespoke. They also lacked a structured contract-review process, which added complexity, inconsistency and, ultimately, delays that led to a loss of business. After learning about the client’s business requirements, we helped redesign and simplify the contracting process before going on to serve as the point of contact for internal business stakeholders. Over time, we’ve further customized the process and undertaken similar work for other types of contracts.

The result? Through outsourcing this type of work, the client reduced average time to contract to one day for nondisclosure agreements and three to five days for more complex contracts. It also cut costs associated with this process by 65%.  

Chapter 3

Unlock the hidden value in contract data

Deploy intelligent analytics to uncover the rich insights that help drive growth.

Many GCs would be content if they managed to improve speed, enhance accuracy and cut costs by using technology and outsourcing in the ways described above. But they can go a step further. Genuinely pioneering legal leaders have realized that there is tremendous value to the business in the data that are stored in sales, supply and other contracts that are at the legal team’s disposal – and are exploring ways to extract it. The TMT sector in particular is replete with complex business-to-business contracts with significant revenue under contract, so having on-demand insight into contractual obligations and opportunities is critical for driving business value.

For providers of cloud services, for example, contract analytics on service-level agreement provisions can provide legal and business stakeholders with insights into service-quality obligations and incentives, including the financial risks and rewards associated with their performance across their customer base in real time. In the event of an outage, a capability like this allows for rapid assessment of the financial impact to the company in the form of rebates or service credits, an exercise that might otherwise take days or weeks of manual effort.

Mature processes and robust technology can also enable legal teams to spot patterns in their contract negotiations and identify opportunities to remove friction from the deal process. If a template position rarely makes it into a final contract intact or its negotiation is shown to be consistently slowing down deals, it may signal a need to revisit the starting position or align more closely with the business on pre-contracting go-to-market activities.

By utilizing data that they already have, these legal teams are not only accelerating contracting speed, but also adding value to the business in previously unimagined ways.

Chapter 4

Choose the right international partner

Pick a partner with the expertise to empower your global expansion.

Many TMT companies are aggressively expanding into new markets, acquiring new businesses and divesting non-core assets. In order to seize these opportunities, legal teams need to move quickly. This means working with partners that have expertise in a number of key regions.

Not doing so can result in local laws being overlooked (e.g., data-privacy regulations, which slow down the pace at which companies can begin operating in a new market). A lack of local knowledge could also lead to revenue leakage or increased risk exposure if change-of-control implications in consumer or supplier contracts are overlooked following a merger and acquisition event.

It’s also beneficial to work with partners that have a broad range of skill sets, especially covering legal and tax. For instance, some TMT businesses are shifting the location of their intellectual property in response to heightened geopolitical tensions. There are important tax and legal implications in doing this that need to be considered carefully.