Presented by Rich Lee, May 16, 2018, at the Institute for the Future of Law Practice.

1. Future of Law Practice
Contracting
Rich Lee
General Counsel | Civis Analytics
rlee@civisanalytics.com
@RichLTweets
richardtlee

2. Forget Case Law
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
Organizations don’t care about things like...
⦿ Mailbox rule
⦿ Parol Evidence
⦿ “An act or forbearance”
⦿ Unjust enrichment and restitution
*these were the first four “1L contract terms” I could remember…
Offer, Acceptance and Consideration don’t drive business

3. Forget Case Law
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
They do care about:
⦿ Revenue
⦿ Speed
⦿ Costs
⦿ Revenue
⦿ Revenue
⦿ Revenue
Offer, Acceptance and Consideration don’t drive business

4. Forget Case Law
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
Don’t get in the way of revenue.
Offer, Acceptance and Consideration don’t drive business

5. Forget Case Law
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
Enable it. Grow it.
Offer, Acceptance and Consideration don’t drive business

6. Philosophy On Risk
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
⦿ Organizations don’t grow if they don’t take risks.
⦿ An organization can’t fully assess the value of an opportunity if they don’t understand the risks
involved.
[Value] = [Benefits] - [Risks]
⦿ Legal’s role is never to eliminate risk, but to help the clients understand the risks and identify
the better risks worth taking.

7. Your Objectives
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⦿ Measure and Report
⦿ Collaborate, train, and empower other departments
⦿ Consolidate and Optimize
Building a better, faster, more cost-effective contracting function

8. Measure & Report
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
⦿ Push the information; don’t make colleagues request it
○ Who’s it with?
○ What’s causing delays?
○ What do you need from business?
○ Estimated time for completion
Report -- Bring transparency to an opaque process

9. Measure & Report
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
Report -- Bring transparency to an opaque process

10. Measure & Report
Accountability
Efficiency
Scalability
Scalability | Contracting Spend vs. Growth in Revenue
● How is your department growing with the business?
● Are you keeping up, scaling, or falling behind?
● Include all contracting-related costs for accuracy
Accountability | Time w/ Legal vs. Time w/ Business Owners
● Collaborate with sales leaders to drive cross-functional accountability
● Legal reviews contracts, moves back to business team
● Business team responsible for client follow ups and moving to signature
● Indicator to explore holdups in other departments
Efficiency | Contracting Time by Category, Vertical, and $ Amount
● Granular visibility = opportunities to fine-tune
● Identify potential trouble areas with specificity
● Identify opportunities to save time
● Experiment, test, iterate
Measure - Decide what matters to your company, then track it
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary

11. Collaborate, Train, Empower
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
⦿ Legal can’t do its job alone; the nature of legal and compliance is that it’s a
cross-functional effort.
⦿ A big part of your job as an attorney is to make everyone around you more
risk-aware and better at their roles in legal/compliance efforts.
⦿ The better your colleagues are at their roles, the better the lawyers will
be.
Give ownership to other departments

12. Consolidate & Optimize
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
⦿ Tie it all together so legal always has the big picture
○ Without this, legal is unable to be strategic
⦿ Delegate responsibility (and empower) to other departments, as needed
⦿ Be creative -- Deputize others, alternate staffing
⦿ Make technology your friend
○ Automation/Collaboration -- Document generation, signatures,
contract review; build syncs between tools to create automated
workflows
○ Analytics tools -- surface deficiencies, identify root causes, predict
problem areas
Legal & Compliance may be a team effort, but legal should still run point

13. Consolidate & Optimize
Civis Analytics | Confidential & Proprietary
⦿ Building a Scalable Team
⦿ Hiring -- Time and people are your most precious resources
⦿ Develop your team, raise their profile, grow their careers!
⦿ Don’t be complacent; Delegate; There are always new initiatives
⦿ Outside Resources
○ Law firms (must understand your business)
○ “New” law firms (e.g. Axiom)
○ Non-legal vendors/resources (e.g. CEB/Gartner)
Legal & Compliance may be a team effort, but legal should still run point

14. Thank You; Questions?
Rich Lee
General Counsel | Civis Analytics
rlee@civisanalytics.com
@RichLTweets
richardtlee