Swiss Re, Hearst and Priori Legal, Sanofi and Persuit,

UnitedLex, IEEE, Legal Operations Consulting, and LexisNexis Parley Pro win the

2022 Legal Procurement Awards

for the Best Industry Initiatives

October 19, 2022

The Buying Legal® Council, the Educational Institute for Buying Legal Services and Legal Technology, announced today the winners of the 2022 Legal Procurement Awards at the Buying Legal® Legal Procurement conference.

 

The five winners are pioneers in Legal Procurement. “Our goal is to identify and acknowledge best-in class leaders in legal procurement,” says Dr. Silvia Hodges Silverstein, founder and CEO of the Buying Legal® Council.

“Each award winner not only succeeded in their respective area, but also surpassed the current status quo of the discipline. These leaders in Legal Procurement are at the forefront of new developments. They are setting the stage for sweeping transformation of how legal services and legal technology are bought and used. Their advances inspire all of us and we all do well learning from them.”

 

  ESG AWARD

   Swiss Re

To drive sustainability across its supply chain and to enhance transparency of its vendors’ ESG initiatives, Swiss Re launched a Vendor Development Program (VDP) as a pilot in a small area of legal spend. This pilot consisted of dialogues with select legal vendors on their current ESG and sustainability efforts and was followed by an assessment through Swiss Re. Swiss Re’s legal procurement team measured and monitored progress of vendors that had not reached a “green” evaluation initially to improve each legal vendor’s sustainability risk profile. Following great success in the legal category, Swiss Re then rolled out the program across all major categories of third party spend.

 

It is quite unique that the legal spend category spearheaded a successful strategy in improving its ESG targets based on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework. We salute Swiss Re to this great success!

 COLLABORATION AWARD

 Hearst and Priori

To determine the right providers for its different legal matters, Hearst worked with Priori to achieve an ambitious agenda: Identify specific expertise and experience of lawyers at preferred firms; Distinguish which firms/lawyers had met Hearst’s criteria (including in areas such as diversity and pricing); Understand engagement and relationship history with the respective firms; and Create an outside counsel performance feedback cycle. Priori’s system Scout was used to identify and capture the most impactful data, to display and update that information, and to integrate with existing law department and firm systems. Together, Hearst and Priori workshopped product, design and data decisions to ensure that Scout would satisfy the needs of both in-house legal teams and procurement stakeholders. They developed robust search and filters, customizable attorney and firm reviews, a diversity and inclusion strategy, as well as processes to partner with law firms and build integrations with matter management systems.

 

This collaborative approach now provides Hearst’s in-house lawyers with comprehensive transparency to make sound data-driven decisions about which law firms and lawyers to select and it enables law firms to showcase their expertise, experience and diversity in a user-friendly, searchable database. As a result of this collaborative approach Hearst was able to reduce friction in the legal procurement process. We salute Hearst and Priori to this great success!

 TEAMWORK AWARD

  Sanofi and Persuit

To increase Sanofi’s ability to control and predict spending on outside counsel, the company wanted to simplify and centralize its process for outside counsel engagement. Instead of relying on individual in-house counsel’s relationships to choose outside counsel, every legal matter should be managed using a transparent process that leverages the strengths of Sanofi’s procurement, legal operations, and in-house counsel. A team of Sanofi’s procurement and legal divisions gathered buy-in from senior leaders in legal, legal operations, finance, and procurement. The procurement team then collected information about the legal team’s existing partnerships, creating a list of preferred suppliers that were key partners for Sanofi’s legal team. Together, legal operations and procurement then designed and launched training for a new, centralized buying process where each legal matter would be managed through the PERSUIT software platform.

 

As a result of this teamwork, this new process is now used for all of Sanofi’s legal matters. In addition to helping Sanofi lower its legal spend and streamlining its operations, this project was the first major collaboration between two functions that until recently did not work as a team. We salute Sanofi and Persuit to this great success!

 OPERATIONS INNOVATION AWARD

  UnitedLex

To maximize productivity and customer experience through new ways of working and technology UnitedLex' Client [CONFIDENTIAL but known to the Buying Legal® Council], sought to optimize its legal department’s operating model. The Client worked with UnitedLex to build and implement a Contracting Center of Excellence. They centralized global demand for above market and English language procurement and business function agreements, emphasizing work in high-value areas, providing resource flexibility, and delivering greater service to the business. The strategic approach re-engineered the Client’s contract intake system and integrations, driving substantial volumes to automated, wizard-based, self-service templates. They launched UnitedLex's platform, Vantage, integrating all data systems used by Legal to bring a comprehensive and aggregate view of the Legal function. And they used data to resource teams and geographic coverage plans with the right level of talent and seniority.

 

This optimization process provided transparency and reporting for the Client and helped transition resources to a variable cost vehicle and produce vital data previously non-existent for the Client. As a result, UnitedLex' Client is now able to access and analyze operational and transformation metrics about proactive risk and customer account management. We salute UnitedLex and Client to this great success!

 

 CHANGE MANAGEMENT INNOVATION AWARD

  IEEE, LEGAL OPERATIONS CONSULTING, and LEXISNEXIS PARLEY PRO

IEEE is one of the world’s largest professional organizations. To streamline its contracting process and manage the full contract lifecycle with complex workflows, allowing real-time collaboration, and integration with Salesforce, DocuSign, and Oracle for 3,000 staff and volunteers, 1,000 counter parties as well as third-parties that represented the client and volunteers, IEEE worked with Legal Operations Consulting (“LOC”) to implement a new contract management solution. LOC used LexisNexis Parley Pro to create processes and tools to simplify, save time, and enable greater financial and contract visibility for the end user to improve business insights, workflow, and decisions. Input from key stakeholders and volunteer champions was sought to be incorporated into the plan. Over a period of two years, an entirely manual process lacking consistency and transparency was fully automated. The impressive change management project included a sophisticated communications program to communicate and update on progress and milestones. Videos were produced to socialize the project with staff and volunteers and articles were published to share and prepare the organization for a new Contract Management System.

 

As a result of this change management project, all 4,000 users are now integrated with real-time collaboration between all parties. The consolidation to a single repository brought an incredible 100% compliance and contracts are now created up to 85% faster – on average from 60 to under 10 days. It allows transparency in milestones, sign-offs, and deliverables as well as simultaneous approval of workflows and seamless collaboration in real-time. We salute IEEE, LOC, and LexisNexis ParleyPro to this great success!

WATCH THE AWARDS CEREMONY: