Canadian Lawyer InHouse

NOVEMBER 2017 38 INHOUSE L a w D e p a r t m e n t M a n a g e m e n t to think about things in a way they weren't thinking about them before." When deals can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, Good says the stakes can be high for potential cost overruns. "This kind of planning is more proactive from the beginning — you can have conversations about where you are at with certain parts of the deal, for example, around environmental- or employment- related issues. And I can keep the business folks informed in 'real time' so there are no surprises," she says. Good says it can bring more transparen - cy to the business and management teams, providing some level of certainty in terms of what they are paying for legal fees. "I can hold the law firm to a level of account- ability that they might not have had be- fore," she says. It also provides a basis internally for the legal team to conduct after action reviews and determine how to approach things dif - ferently on future matters. "I would think those conversations with external counsel improve as you're each learning from one transaction to the next," she says. Kathuria says about 45 per cent of matters done through the project management tool are transactional and 45 per cent are in litigation. "What we find is the transaction ones are shorter and litigation is longer, but when we create project plans, we have templates that we use and it's all part of the Cael function - ality that makes it simple for lawyers to use it," he says. Pratik Patel, vice president of innovation and products at Elevate Services, says the tool was first built for law firms to deliver the func - tionality they needed to provide estimates to clients as well as status and risk updates. "We built the product to be law firm fo- cused with the aim that once we got them comfortable we would say to the law firm community the next step is to open it up to law departments and open the kimono a little," says Patel. "We also knew we would be delivering this to corporate law depart - ments — knowing there had to be a good way for law departments to collaborate with us and then create a knowledge bank for best practices." In May, Elevate announced it was extend - ing the service it first launched to law firms to corporate legal departments. Cael Proj- I can keep the business folks informed in 'real time' so there are no surprises. JENNIFER GOOD, CRH Canada Group Inc. CORPORATE COUNSEL Connect with Find almost 4,000 corporate counsel and over 1,500 organizations along with fresh editorial content, information on deals and links to important resources. Lexpert.ca/ccca Untitled-3 1 2017-10-04 1:59 PM

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