Bressler Risk Blog

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, Intapp is highlighting an upcoming event sure to be of interest to every customer that has yet to migrate from on-premises to cloud: “WEBINAR: OnePlace Risk & Compliance: Partner perspectives on navigating the cloud migration journey”

Event Description:

• The cloud offers significant advantages for Intapp customers. Don’t miss this session if you’re looking to migrate on-premises Intapp software, business processes. and data integrations to the cloud — or to better understand key steps your organization should be preparing today to smooth an eventual migration down the road.
• This webinar includes a panel of independent experts representing three key Intapp consulting partners. Each of these partners has executed several cloud projects and will share their experience, advice, recommendations, and tips for navigating the journey ahead, including the following discussion topics.

Panel Discussion Topics:

• Success stories: Lessons and learnings from successful Intapp cloud migrations
• Technology preparation: Query integration-to-data sets, API conversion, premigration system updates, data integration re-architecture, and other critical tech concerns
• Strategy and planning: Making the case to management for investment, including incremental approaches

Speakers:

• James Edwards, Director of Client Experience, Intapp
• Shalaka Natu, Director of Product Risk Solutions, Intapp
• Samantha Kobak, Risk Solution Engineering Manager, Intapp
• Curtis Russell, Chief Operating Officer, Aurora North
• Jeff Armbrecht, Vice President, Services, InflectionIT
• Eric Mosca, Director of Operations, InOutsource

Learn More and Register Here.

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, Intapp is highlighting a recording of their recent webinar on their latest innovation and success on client intake, conflicts and more.

Event Description:

• Join us to explore how firms effectively leverage OnePlace Risk & Compliance to thoroughly evaluate new business, quickly onboard clients, and easily monitor relationships throughout the client lifecycle.
• During this webinar, you will hear from our guest speaker and Intapp client, David Monteiro, Senior Manager, Risk and Intake, Goulston and Storrs. Learn how his firm turned their risk and compliance management issues into a competitive advantage with OnePlace Risk & Compliance solutions.

Of particular note the conflicts and compliance nerds out there — [I don’t know if Intapp wants me saying “nerds” on their sponsored post, but I’m saying it, with deep affection of course] — there’s some in depth content and demonstrations of their Interactive Conflicts Report (ICR) feature and their latest enhancements to watch lists and monitoring.

I’m always a stickler for customer references and proof points. And this one delivers, with Dave Monteiro from Goulston & Storrs sharing his story. He reports:

• They’ve been using ICR for over 36 months
• They have a 100% lawyer adoption rate
• That’s 200 lawyers
• An average of 450 ICRs generated a month
• An average duration from creation of ICR to matter opening of 30-40 minutes

Access the Complete Video Recording: Via this link

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, Intapp is highlighting their upcoming webinar on managing client and vendor commitments with Intapp Terms.

Date & Time: June 9, 2022 | 8–9 a.m. PT/11 a.m.–12 p.m. ET/4–5 p.m. BST

Registration: Via this link

Event Description:
It’s imperative that firms develop a comprehensive strategy for managing client commitments, as well as provisions within that strategy to mandate efficient management, provide visibility and insights, ensure compliance, and maintain customer satisfaction. That strategy must ensure thorough management of vendor agreements — and that the commitments within those agreements don’t conflict with client commitments.

Join this webinar to learn how your firm can ensure compliance with client commitments using new vendor terms functionality in Intapp Terms. This feature will give your firm a holistic understanding client commitments and gain visibility into vendor terms — a critical part of that understanding.

As part of new vendor terms functionality in Intapp Terms, firms can leverage 17 out-of-the-box templates and create custom documents. You’ll gain the ability to streamline vendor management, including:

• Uploading signed vendor contracts
• Ensuring users see only documents and terms relevant to their work
• Curating summaries of key contracts information

For more details and to register: “Intapp Terms Webinar: A Holistic Approach to Managing Client and Vendor Commitments.”

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, Intapp is highlighting a webinar case study showcasing how Hogan Lovells is using Intapp Terms to manage Outside Counsel Guidelines, engagement letters and other contractual/professional obligations.

I actually attended this session and found the real-world story and perspective shared by Thomas Patteson (Hogan Lovells Conflicts Client Engagement Attorney and Manager) to be quite engaging indeed. (Pun intended. Sorry.) He described the firms vision and progress in streamlining this increasingly complicated but vital risk responsibility, and shared some stats including:

• Total number of documents stored: 42,000+
• Total number of terms: 1.2 million+
• Total number of activate templates [or categories] (standard and custom): 107
• Percentage of documents categorized by AI: 99%
• Document types uploaded:
  • Outside counsel guidelines
  • Engagement letters
  • Secondment agreements
  • Business association agreements (BAA)
  • Non-disclosure agreements (NDA)

And he details the journey, strategy and path the firm has taken to achieve (and build on) its success with the product.

For more details and to download the on-demand recording: “User Community Event Series: OnePlace Risk & Compliance for Legal — Intapp Terms.”

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, Intapp is highlighting new resources on risk assessment, anti-money launderings and client due diligence:

WEBINAR RECORDING: “Intapp Risk and Compliance Roundtable: An Expert Panel Discussion on Risk Assessment, AML, and CDD” —

• “One of the many ever-increasing challenges firms currently face is ensuring proper due diligence while managing their risk assessment processes. Firms are constantly seeking out new ways to address this issue and implement best practices for conducting necessary checks throughout the client and matter opening processes.”
• “on March 3, WE will SPOKE with two leading subject matter experts on risk-related issues such as Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) expectations and expanding risk awareness.”

UPCOMING WEBINAR: “The Intapp Advantage: Streamlining Risk Assessment and AML Processes” —

• “As a follow-up to our March discussion, on April 21, 2022, at 2 pm BST, 9 am ET we will be hosting a webinar to demonstrate how Intapp Intake for AML Compliance will support your firm’s anti-money-laundering processes and provide you with a comprehensive, configurable, and integrated AML solution.”
• “Firms continue to struggle with the challenge of managing their risk assessment processes in this post-pandemic environment. The past 2 years have seen a steady increase in the growth of fraud cases and data breaches — a trend that’s expected to continue into 2022. European Union anti-money-laundering (AML) legislation and Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) expectations have raised the imperative for firms to expand their risk awareness.”
• “At this webinar, you’ll learn how Intapp can provide your firm with an AML solution that integrates with your key systems as well as third-party data and a reputable ID verification partner to enable seamless, efficient, and accurate intake and AML compliance processes.”
• “This session will highlight:
  • Conducting AML compliance with prebuilt configurable forms and workflows
  • Integrating the Intapp AML solution with key firmwide systems, third-party data, and a reputable ID verification partner
  • Generating an AML risk score based on key inputs and firm business rules to quickly assess risk levels and escalate or resolve the risk
  • Streamlining documents delivery and managing client interactions using a secure external client portal
  • Automating real-time monitoring and notifications that may impact the risk assessment”
• Register Here

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, Intapp is highlighting two resources on lateral hiring: a blog post summary and a recording of their earlier product demo webinar. (I attended that webinar live and could not remember the last time I attended a session that had such a high level of audience Q&A participation…)

Blog post: “Integrated Onboarding and Conflicts Clearance” —

• “Although lateral hiring and onboarding workflows vary significantly across law firms, most of these processes share one thing in common: they’re hampered by an inability to quickly capture data. As firms face the most active period of lateral lawyer movement in history, firm leaders must consider investing in technology that can help them create faster, more seamless processes that also protect them from potential conflicts.”
• “During a poll, a majority of the webinar attendees reported that their firm’s onboarding success rate had been negatively impacted because of lengthy workflows. Additionally, as Bowen revealed, risk and compliance teams are facing increasing pressures concerning firm expansion, finances, strategic alignment, complex regulations, and client demands. Bowen explained that, without the proper technology to holistically evaluate risk and onboard laterals, firms will soon find themselves overwhelmed.”
• “‘Beyond analyzing whether a firm can take on the business [that lateral bring with them], firms are actually starting to assess whether they should take on the business,’ said Bryn Bowen, Practice Group Lead for Legal Risk at Intapp. ‘To make these decisions, firms need to communicate effectively, with all relevant background information at hand. The need to onboard these laterals quickly, efficiently, and in a compliant matter compounds the stress.'”
• “‘We’ve worked with our clients to develop a solution based on best practices across the industry,’ said Bowen. ‘The lateral hire solution is an out-of-the-box, low-impact, implementation-friendly tool for efficiently evaluating and onboarding laterals. Our lateral hire clearance solution provides … a central place for all the firm’s internal stakeholders and decision-makers to view and evaluate the full package of information.'”
• “‘The tenant is independent of your environment, allowing you to invite external users to come in, fill out a form, and give you the information required,’ said Kristian Uggla, Senior Sales Engineer at Intapp. ‘It will go through integration points and push that data into your environment. External users will feel like they’re in your environment, but they will in fact have no access to your information whatsoever.'”

For the video overview and product demo, see: “Expediting Lateral Hiring: Integrated Onboarding and Conflicts Clearance” —

• “To streamline these processes, Intapp offers lateral hiring and onboarding tools as an add-on to Intapp Conflicts and Intapp Intake. The software provides a prebuilt, configurable, internal and external workflow that helps firms onboard new candidates and clear portable new business.”
• “This session will highlight these new lateral hiring and onboarding features:
  • Lateral Submission — Let lateral candidates submit their history and verification information and documents securely
  • AI-Assisted Conflicts Clearance — Streamline the onboarding team’s review of the AI-categorized search results to clear or resolve potential conflicts of interest
  • Sponsor and HR Review — Help the firm sponsor or HR and recruiting professionals review the candidate and clearance information using an interactive workflow
  • New Business Intake — Prepopulate new business intake forms with cleared portable client and matter details integrated with the FMS”

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, Intapp calls out a recent article from its consulting partner Aurora North, who shares their perspective on best practices for managing OCGs, framed with a client case study in: “Taking Control of the OCG Treadmill: From Technology Potential to Practical ROI” —

• “In recent years, outside counsel guidelines (OCGs) have expanded so much in scope and complexity that law firms often find themselves in a treadmill of playing ‘catch up.'”
• “Many firms still lack a central repository for clients’ OCGs and other client engagement terms — and even the ones that do often find it challenging to track every component. We often hear from firms that negotiating and managing OCGs and enforcing compliance can feel like an “all or nothing” mountain to climb, but it doesn’t have to be.”
• “This article explores how firms can start small in building more systematic OCG compliance, drawing on the experience of an Am Law 100 firm that has been successful in taking an iterative approach and demonstrating clear ROI along the way.”
• “In the case of the Am Law 100 firm we worked with, the Finance and Risk teams started by defining critical questions they wanted to address:
  • How can we share knowledge and distribute information on OCGs and client terms within a firm with over 1,000 attorneys?
  • How can we monitor OCG compliance internally and fix any issues quickly — before a problematic invoice reaches the client and results in write-offs?”
• “The firm’s key priority initially was to take steps that would immediately help reduce write-offs — so we agreed to focus our efforts on improving the visibility and enforcement of client billing restrictions. In other words, the firm decided from the outset to take a more focused approach that would demonstrate ‘quick win’ results.”
• “Another project we worked on focused on making client-specific staffing restrictions more visible to lead attorneys, to prevent them from assigning first-year lawyers, for example, to a client matter if it was explicitly disallowed per the client’s OCGs.”

Read the complete article here.

Read more about Intapp Terms here and how it helps organizations: “Gain visibility into increasingly complex and demanding client terms of business to promote enforcement with confidence. Intapp Terms centralizes and streamlines storing, categorizing, and approval-routing of client mandates, enabling your firm to effectively deliver on the promises it makes.”

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, I’m pleased to highlight an Intapp webinar I’m already signed up to attend: “Risk Management Staffing Strategies to Optimize Post-Pandemic Business Agility” —

• “The COVID-19 pandemic made 2020 a very challenging year, as law firms were forced to quickly pivot from an in-office environment to a remote work model. Our newly released edition of the Intapp Risk Staffing Survey builds on our earlier surveys, and investigates the true impact of the pandemic’s global disruption.”
• “In this year’s survey, we aimed to provide more-detailed insights into the breadth of risk services, staffing by function and firm size, and metrics for risk activities.”
• “Our report tells an encouraging story, illustrating how key factors — the ever-increasing professionalization of risk teams; flexibility, creativity, and resiliency of risk managers; and investment in supporting technology — supported a successful transition to remote and hybrid work.”
• “Join Intapp as we discuss the survey results and cover a wide range of topics, including:
  • Pandemic-driven impacts on risk management activities and staffing
  • Increased range of dedicated risk-management staffs
  • Ongoing risk-management challenges
  • Key risk-management staffing and business-agility metrics”

Looking forward to hearing from their expert panel:

Learn more about this even register at their website.

In this month’s sponsor spotlight, Intapp would like to invite and welcome the community to attend its Connect21 user conference.

This is a virtual event (November 17-18), with no charge to attend. (I’m already signed up. So if you spot me in the virtual hall, please feel free to say hello.)

The conference legal track offers: “insights from the legal industry’s top experts on leveraging technology to enhance relationships with clients from first touch to final outcome.” And there’s a specific session sure to be of interest to anyone managing lateral activity:

• Integrating Processes: Modernizing Lateral Onboarding
  Nov. 17, 2021 | 10:30–11:15 a.m. PT/1:30–2:15 p.m. ET/6:30–7:15 p.m. GMT

  What if you could manage your lateral partner onboarding lifecycle — from recruiting to conflicts review to intake — in a collaborative, automated environment? What if the result were vastly improved speed and efficiency of conflicts clearance, partner review, and client and matter onboarding, resulting in a positive experience for incoming partners and their clients? What if these improvements left your firm more time to focus on integrating and setting up new partners for success? Join us to discuss how firms are building competitive advantage by modernizing their lateral onboarding processes.

Learn more about Intapp Connect21 and register at their website.

In this month’s sponsor thank you, Intapp opted to once again share the spotlight with its consulting partners.

Audit letter response poses a compliance conundrum for many firms. Organizations need to address their professional and client obligations, while navigating significant process complexity and staff/lawyer overhead.

Today, several firms are taking advantage of their existing (or new) investments in the Intapp platform to achieve a more effective and efficient approaches. Read more:

From InOutsource comes a printed case study: “Ballard Spahr — Automating Audit Letter Responses with Intapp” —

• “Responding to audit letters is a professional requirement for every law firm. When clients get audited, the auditor confers with the client’s attorneys for feedback on loss contingencies, including any pending litigation, claims and assessments which might impact the auditor’s assessment of the company’s financial condition.”
• “The InOutsource team conducted an assessment of the firm’s existing process for responding to audit letters along with recommendations for how Ballard Spahr could automate key steps and streamline the process.”
• “‘We started looking at possible solutions. It turns out that, although every law firm deals with audit letters, there is no tool on the market that is built specifically for audit letter responses,’ says Nicholas Weeks, Director of Risk Management, Ballard Spahr.”
• “‘We have virtually eliminated paper,’ says Lisa Waldron, Risk Compliance Manager at Ballard Spahr. ‘Going electronic has saved us so much time. We send an electronic link to the responsible attorney and to the committee and they click on a link and review it that way.'”

And from Aurora North comes a webinar recording highlighting their own client success story. In the case, a firm that integrated Intapp workflow and DocuSign document assembly software to automate its audit letter endeavors: “FOCUS ON: WilmerHale’s Audit Letter Response Workflow Automation Solution” —

• “Finalists for ILTA’s ‘Transformative Project of the Year 2020,’ the team at Wilmer Hale joins us to present an in-depth overview of their innovative workflow solution.’
• “They shared how they designed and implemented a solution to automate this burdensome process (using existing internal tools), with software-driven document creation and process workflow management (notifications, reminders, tracking, and reporting).”
• “We explored the client and regulatory rules driving the need for consistent, comprehensive process execution (no matter the overhead involved). And there will be plenty of time for audience Q&A.”