The Future of Enterprise Legal Teams: A Game-Changing Partnership with Justin Silverman & Andy Wishart

Made with speech-to-text software, so a few words may be off.

0:00You're listening to the Contract Heroes Podcast, your one-stop shop for all things contract management. And now here are your hosts, Marc and Pepe. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes live at CLOC. During today's conversation, we're gonna be doing something that we've never done here on Contract Heroes, and that is discussing a new partnership between two organizations that was announced during our time at, uh, at the event. So joining us from MitraTech is Justin Silberman. He's the senior vice president of product management and product strategy. And joining us from Agiloft is Andy Wishart. Andy is the chief product officer at Agiloft. So gentlemen, thanks so much for being here.

0:47We're extremely excited to, to talk about this partnership, not only what it means to both your organizations, but what it means to those that are customers or those that are thinking about being customers. So let's go ahead and dive in. It's great to be here. Thanks, Pepe. Great to be here. I'm a big fan of the podcast and I'm, I'm really pleased to be here finally on, on Contract Heroes. We've been talking about this a lot of times, right? We have. So this is going to be phenomenal because we have, like, a new release and, I mean, we've been talking a lot of, of Agiloft su- success cases, but Justin, can you give us just, like, a brief introduction about MitraTech? Sure. Yeah. It's really great to be here. Thanks for hosting us today. So MitraTech is a leading provider of software to help corporations drive efficiency, to manage risk, and to deliver great outcomes in kind of their core corporate functions. And we focus mostly on legal, risk and compliance, and human resource functions in particular. So most relevant today, obviously, is the stuff we do in the, in the legal space overall. Awesome. All right.

1:48So Andy, let's start with you. Okay? So can you explain, like, how this partnership with MitraTech aligns with Agiloft overall strategic plan, and are there specific goals you hope to achieve through this collaboration? Sure. So I think we have a vision for what we believe the future of contracting will look like and, and that vision is one where we'll see contract processes that are more connected, they're more intelligent, and there's greater automation in those processes, and that's gonna help drive greater value and efficiency within organizations. So our strategy to execute on that vision, it requires us to build the most connected CLM in the marketplace, and that's the journey that we're on, one where we will see data flow seamlessly across the enterprise and, and I think that's so critical for establishing these sort of interconnected systems for the stakeholders that are involved within contracting. So from that, it makes a ton of sense for us to be integrating the leading CLM solution in the market with the leading ELM solution in the market with MitraTech so that legal teams can see that flow of data between contracts and matters.

3:11They've got greater visibility on that data. So yeah, this is, this is a natural partnership for us on the execution of our, our, our vision for creating the most connected CLM. Yeah. And you know, I mean, just yesterday just talking to a bunch of people that are at the conference, I mean, that's, that's gonna be the way that everything wants to go, right? Everybody wants everything interconnected and wants it to be something that, that they can use in their ecosystem. So I think it's fantastic, you know, and I think all of us are excited about this. And you know, Justin, why did you guys choose Agiloft out of all the CLMs that are out there to, to kind of partner with? Yeah. You know, for us it's a really natural fit overall, and I think there's really... I think there's three things that really stood out. One is the te- the technology piece for Agiloft. It's just so well aligned with what MitraTech does and the strengths that we bring to bear. One is around the configurability there, just a super configurable system.

4:02That's what TeamConnect is for MitraTech, enabling us to support the largest, most complex organizations as well as mid-size organizations as well, and that's exactly what we see in Agiloft. Well, a highly configurable system that really can cater to what companies need. Along that technology side, you also see a real focus on integration capabilities and a strong capability there with the integration hub that Agiloft's launched. And then the third piece there within the technology segment is just a really strong cutting edge focus on things like AI and driving that forward, and so just really strong technology alignment was number one. Number two, we went and looked and said, "Who are really able to deliver in this space?" And what we saw from Agiloft from talk- talking to partners, from talking to companies out there, was just an ability to deliver. And you know, CLM's a space where you hear about a lot of challenges in implementation, and we just didn't hear that from the companies we talked to, the partners we talked to about Agiloft, just really strong success. And then the third piece that aligned so well with us was just the mindset and the people, just really customer success driven. How do we make customers get great outcomes from working with that?

5:03And so we combine those three things, it just was a great fit with the way we approach the market and the way they do as well. And just to add to that, and it's been really satisfying for both Justin and I to watch our product teams come together in short order and in working with customers, working with partners to develop this. It's been fantastic to see. Pepe, you asked earlier about, you know, what are some of the specific goals that we're looking to achieve from this collaboration, and I think there are probably two things that are top of mind for me. One is obviously we want to drive adoption of these integration capabilities in our co-customers, in, in customers that b- have both Agiloft and MitraTech. So getting, getting the integration capabilities into the hands of those customers. That's our first goal. The second, and it, it ties back to Justin's point around, you know, these are two-... highly configurable platforms. The second goal is that we want to learn from those customers.

6:00Our teams have established what we believe to be the most valuable use cases in the integration between CLM and ELM, but we want to hear from customers as well, like, what other areas in that flow of data and those workflows between contracts and matters are most valuable to them. And, you know, that's the second goal, to learn from customers, to iterate on this, to develop new capabilities and use cases going forward as well, and we're really committed to that. Yeah, and you know, I, I think it's, obviously we, we know Agiloft's side of, of the customer base, but so is the plan to, to kind of roll this out to, you know, to your current customers and your current customers where you'd like to introduce this partnership and, and see if you can kind of sell this solution to everybody that's in that ecosystem? For sure.

6:45And also, you know, there will be organizations here at Clock this week, legal operations leaders, who haven't yet established processes and tools across their legal department, that are out there searching for solutions. And there isn't a single solution that does absolutely everything across ELM and matters and spend management and contract life cycle management. So we're trying to make it easier for them to work with us both. You know, we're teaming together, going in together into, to those opportunities to make it easier for legal operations teams to navigate the legal tech landscape. Yeah, I think, I think this is just the connection that we've built here has a opportunity for legal departments to really transform the way they operate, the way they interact with the rest of their organization, the way they interact with law firms around legal matters and contracts. And so we've already, as we've started to, to discuss this with the market, seen tremendously positive feedback, and we've seen it from a couple places.

7:45We've seen it from joint customers that we already have together, where we can now connect those systems in a way they haven't been connected. We've seen them from customers that one of us has and the other may not, where they're trying to advance their ELM or trying to advance their CLM and they see this is an opportunity to do that in a way that's really connected. And quite frankly, we've seen it already with some customers out there who are looking to completely change what they're doing, that may not have really a great system in place for either of these, and it's a great place for them to start and have that roadmap where they know they're going to be launching with, with both the MitraTech platform and Agiloft kind of from the beginning or as they transform overall. So I think all three of those scenarios are really attractive and, and have a, a chance for these companies to, to really transform what they're doing. Right, and from our perspective as implementers, we've been a part of over 150 implementation, and one of the things that all of, of our customers are looking for is exactly that flexibility. Because every company have, like, different processes, and when you see them, like, on different verticals, right?

8:44A biotech company has a completely different, you know, re- requirement for a company th- that does real estate. And I think that this integration makes a lot of sense because it's not just about how to automate contracts or documents, but it's the whole legal team. They have a lot of things. They have, they, they, they have to work with things about HR. They gotta work also with legal matters, how they are spending the money with external consultants, with, with their law firms. And I was thinking, like, you both said, that this integration promises a more stream-like processes for operations, but Andy and, and Justin, th- this is for the both of you, like, can you give us, like, some example of the expected impact of this on the day-to-day operation of a typical legal department? Yeah. I think that's, that's a great intro. You know, we've, we've started out by defining a set of use cases that we're supporting from day one, but as Andy talked about, we're really open to hearing from customers what's gonna drive the most value for them.

9:41And given the configurability of the integrations, the capabilities of the product, I think that's gonna evolve dramatically over time. But to start off, we've come up with a couple areas where we're really focused. One is on this legal intake portal. The concept here is, is that MitraTech offers what is in the market the leading tool and platform for legal departments to provide a portal for their, all the employees of an organization, to request support from legal. And that support could be a question, it could be an issue they have, it could be a contract they need. Those business stakeholders don't need to know what system they go to, who they go to. They just have one spot where they can do that. So what we've done here is we've supported connecting that legal intake portal with the Agiloft system, so that if it's a contract that needs some work, that can automatically route it to the contract administrators within the Ad- that are working in Agiloft. They get it in their queue, they can execute on it seamlessly, get back to the person that's requested it. And so that's number one. It's that connection into that legal intake portal.

10:37Second use case we see is that there are sometimes contracts that require the legal department to really dig in, and often to use an outside law firm to execute on it. Maybe it's a new IP licensing agreement that the department doesn't do themselves often. And so what we've done is we've connected Agiloft into TeamConnect within MitraTech such that very quickly you can assign a law firm, you can track, and that law firm can bill against that. And normally that was a very slow manual process to get that set up. We streamlined that completely. Yeah, and I mean, I'm excited about this, right? This is the first time that I'm hearing about this, and we hear from our customers that they want a singular portal that they can go to legal through, right? Obviously Agiloft has the end user portal for contracts, but I mean, I'm excited because I think this is gonna be a great partnership, and I, I think this is something that, you know, Agiloft partners or, or customers need and, and our customers want as well. So that, Justin, that, that sounds awesome. Yeah. I think that legal intake one's gonna be probably the most visible one because it just impacts the entire organization to be able to get that all into one spot.

11:37So I think, I totally agree, and I think that's a critical piece, and that's a very configurable process that companies can set up in the way that they, they set up that intake portal. I'll hit one more area and then, Andy, I'll turn it over to you. But I think the third one here that I think I wanna call out is, you know, there are times when contracts result in, in some sort of matter that results in it. Could be a litigation that comes out of it. And right now there's not really visibility into how that's happening and where that, those connections take place. So by connecting the systems there on both sides, you can see when there's matters that arise out of a contract and connect all those documents together so there's one source of truth- Mm-hmm... to connect it all together. Yeah. So that's the third one I wanted to hit, but yeah, I think that legal intake one is, is really gonna be very visible. I agree with you, Justin, on the, the legal intake, that single front door, I think is really im- important in helping Legal operations professionals sort of continue on their elevation within the organization of being seen as that strategic business partner across the organization as a whole. So we're, we're really excited to see the uptake of that single front door for both contracts and, and matters. Again, thinking about the impact, ultimately this is about faster cycle times and greater efficiencies.

12:46But with the integration between contracts and matters, it's also ensuring that data is synchronizing between those two solutions, that you're avoiding all of the risks related to manual entry or re-entry between different platforms. So, so I think the, the outcomes, the benefits to legal operations professionals can be huge here, transformative. Yeah. And this year, I, I think we're seeing that, you know, people are trying to make a decision. You know, do we hire people to do this, or, or is there a partnership out there that... You know, before this, I don't know if it existed between two different types of solutions that, that integrate so well, where maybe they don't need to hire somebody to manage this data, right? Because they, they work together so synchronistically. Yeah. There is nobody out there in the market that has a best-of-breed offering in this core enterprise legal management capability along with that CLM contract management capability. There just isn't.

13:41And so these are two fundamental parts of what the legal department needs to do, and connecting them together is different than anything else you'll see out there in the space. So, I mean, this partnership promises to simplify the complex tech stack. You know? Like, this is what we, what we've been talking about. So what do you think are the key challenges, if there's any, that you guys an- anticipate in implementing this, and how are you preparing to overcome them? Yeah, maybe I, I could talk to that, Pepe. The integration is really straightforward to set up. You know, I know that you and your organization are really familiar with Agiloft. You've worked on- Right... hundreds of implementations. On the Agiloft side, we're utilizing the integration hub that we launched last summer, so that contains the, the recipes for the trigger points of integrating data between contracts, Agiloft, and MitraTech. So they're available out of the box, right? That's really, really simple to set up.

14:37Then we have, they're making use of the APIs on both sides, and Justin talked about their tap product as being the workflow solution for that front door. So there's some work to be done on the implementation, but it's a natural part of what is being done within the implementation of CLM and ELM already, so perhaps some data mapping. It's just all common process stuff, right, that is a, a natural part of that implementation. So, you know, we share some common partners. We've got partners that are really interested in, in what we built here, and our own teams are all going to be on hand to assist customers on, on this integration. But really straightforward stuff. Yeah. I mean, it sounds great, right? And, and I, I think that everybody out there should be excited about, you know, what this partnership is, is able to do. And Justin, I'm, I mean, how do you-- Do you see it the same way? Do you have customers out there that are asking about CLM and, and want something that integrates with your platform? Yeah.

15:34Part of driving this is, is speaking to the, to customers and, and chatting with them about what's most important, and we absolutely hear from them that they want to see an off-- They want a capability that allows them to support the critical pieces that legal needs to do and that it cuts across that core enterprise legal management, that matter management, that e-billing components, the legal hold with the contract piece, which is so fundamental to what a legal department needs to get involved with. So really this is a response to what we're hearing from customers about wanting these things to connect and have a- Mm-hmm... a common way so they're not retyping things. They're not risking, you know, the inefficiency of sending things back and forth via email or retyping things. So Andy talked about some of the benefits, and that's why customers have been asking for it, and that's what we're responding to with this. And how do you see, you know, this interacting with other departments beyond legal? Mm-hmm. How is this gonna make their life easier, too? I think it comes back to that legal front door, that single point of entry for anyone out in the business to be interacting with legal, whether they're requesting a contract, whether they have a, a legal issue that needs answering, so creating that common, simple user experience for those in the business.

16:39Andy talked about Agiloft and that connected ecosystem, and I think that's really fundamental for what MitraTech's doing as well. When we think about our roadmap initiatives, I really like to focus on collaboration, on the way that a legal department collaborates with the different people within their organization. In the context of contracts, it could be collaborating with a sales organization or procurement organization. It could be collaborating with their outside law firms that they're using. And so that ability to connect with those different departments in as automated a way and as easy to use way as possible, allow people to see where things are in the different parts of the process, check on status of contracts or different matters, is really a big focus for us from an organic investment perspective, and I think is a big step forward with this integration as well. And I think you touched on something there that, you know, I think is important now because w- we see contract management, uh, the procurement team, right? They're, they're very heavily involved. W- we're seeing deals being driven by the procurement team.

17:30So I, I'm just curious, you know, if we focus on them and how they're going to engage with this, do you see them using the system at all, or is it, you know, them working with legal through the system? But I guess from an intake perspective, right, they're, they're gonna be able to go through the, that end user portal to submit contracts? I think it depends on, like, if we think inside of that procurement function, you're going to have sophisticated contract managers that are responsible for those relationships with the suppliers. They're going to be in Agiloft day on day, right? They're unlikely to be using that front door experience because they're contracting professionals. So their work is, is within Agiloft. But at the point whereby, for example, they're working on a third-party agreement for a huge sort of sourcing issue or an IP licensing issue that is not the bread and butter of what- That procurement team are doing, even with their own in-house legal function day to day, and they need support from outside counsel. That connectivity between contracts to initiate from inside Agiloft the creation of a new matter, to engage outside counsel, and to synchronize that data back into Agiloft, I think that's going to be the impact for them.

18:48Now, there will be perhaps other individuals that within the organizations that are in functions that are, that they need a new supplier or they need a new contract with a supplier, they're not working inside Agiloft every day. They could be... Their point of entry would be that front door. Right. And also working with the, with the sales team, right? You, you gotta close all, all those cycles faster, and you just need to... You know, I really like about this front door term because it's like it's the one place where, where you can have access to the legal team, right? And now I'm just gonna act like a legal ops consultant or CLM consultant, you know? Because we have a lot of customers that are asking for a lot of things besides contracts, right? So how, how do you envision partners with MitraTech or Agiloft working together so they can offer these services to their customers?

19:42Because I think, like, one of the main things about being in a consulting is, like, you gotta be, you know, specialized in different verticals, right? I mean, you can be an expert with, uh, specific kind of contracts, but let's think about now that we have, or you could have opened the space with the ELM. Like, how do you guys think partners are, are going to also benefit about this partnership and, and how they can offer that to their customers? So for partners like you- Yeah... Pepe? Yeah. Coming back to the point that I was making on the implementation, it's straightforward. We're, we're providing out-of-the-box recipes within Integration Hub. We've got the connectivity between the core contracts and the matter records within TeamConnect. But I also talked about every customer's implementation of CLM and ELM is unique, whether that's by vertical or, uh, type of organization. So there, there may be some data mapping exercises on those integration points.

20:46So that's one thing. Then the other is to think about the user experience of that front door. Like, that user experience has to cater for a lot of variability between questions that are typically answered by the legal team. There may be some patent requests that are going to create a matter within TeamConnect. There will be contract requests that are going to flow through into Agiloft. So there's work to create those guided workflows within that front door, within the tap workflow product. So there's opportunities there for partners to be helping teams with thinking about the way in which a user flows through that, that front door wizard. Right. So, and you know, ChatGPT is all over the place. AI, you know. I mean, I'm a huge fan. I use it every day.

21:35Every single day I use artificial intelligence just to ask them, you know, random questions and just learn about more about what's going on in the market, what's going on with specific solutions. Do you have anything or how AI or the Convo AI is gonna be integrated into these new type of solutions, and how, uh, legal ops staff is going to be... I mean, we are focusing on streamlined processes, but now that you, you have AI there, like, how do you think this is going to benefit all the, the customers? It is a really exciting time right now. We're seeing a transformation that I think in 10 years' time we'll probably reflect back on 2023 as that was the time that ChatGPT was launched. What were you doing around that time? In the same way that we think about in the late '90s, when Google had indexed the entire internet in a really simple way for people to find that information. I think we're going to reflect on 2023 in a similar way.

22:38Um, as you know, Pepe and Marc, we launched back in the early part of this year our Convo AI conversational search capability within Agiloft that utilizes large language models to help customers and users find the information that they're looking for in their repository of contracts using natural language questions, and follow-up questions as well. That's the start for us, right? That is just the beginning of where we are with large language models within Agiloft. We've got new capabilities coming out very shortly with helping teams train AI using a really simple user-friendly interface. But we've also identified, you know, dozens of use cases across the workflow, across the workflow in the contract side from initiation all the way through to execution, and we're exploring those within our teams as well. I think for me, the natural language search and that chat experience I think is really important from providing just new ways for users to interact with data, and we're really excited about the, the opportunity and potential.

23:50Yeah, I think it's similar on the MitraTech side of the house, where we've launched what we call Invoice IQ, which is a machine learning-driven capability to analyze legal invoices to help corporate legal departments save time and allow them to focus on more value-added work than, than the detailed line item review of invoices. And also to, to save money in terms of making sure that they're paying for the right type of work through their legal counsel. We have capabilities in other parts of our Mitra organization leveraging some of the document summarization capabilities, so that when you get large documents, new regulations that come in, you can much more efficiently see what's relevant and get a synopsis of what's there. And just like Andy, I think it's just the start. It really is a transformative period of time. We're working through different use cases, how we bring that out across, across the ELM segment overall, and I think you'll see over the course of the next six to 12 months a series of different use cases that we start to support using that new capability. And the speed of transformation in this, in this area is just almost unheard of, really, in terms of the speed at which it's advancing. Yeah, you know, I, I think this year has been interesting, right?

24:54I, I think we're seeing a lot of people be more cautious with how they're spending money, and I think that this partnership could be great for organizations that are more cautious, but want to make sure that they're putting the right technology in place to make sure that they are spending their money wi- wisely. And I guess a, a question that I have is, for those companies out there that, that are being more cautious about how they're spending money, how do you see this partnership working for, for them that maybe aren't in, in this space yet, right? They- they're... It's a legal team that doesn't have technology, and working together to show them an, an entire platform that they can use that's going to be an end over end solution that, that they can implement all at once. You know, I think what it comes down to is companies have to make decisions on how they best allocate the funds that they have, and I think putting the right software in place, automating the right capabilities, ultimately is a key step forward to optimizing the way an o- an organization works. And if that is often about freeing up time for people to work on the highest value things, that's what it can, what it can be. Yeah.

25:52And I think the combination here of a best in breed enterprise legal management with the best in breed contract lifecycle management capabilities gives customers that option of kind of deciding how they wanna optimize their spend and where they wanna automate and where they wanna put those resources, and it just gives them a chance to do that in the most efficient way possible. That's what's key. And, and I know we keep touching on this, right? But you want legal to spend their time where, where they are the most effective, right? 'Cause they're, they're expensive. Mm-hmm. So you want them to focus on those things that they are the best at and that they need to focus on. So I, I... Justin, I think that's a, a great answer. Yeah. And one of the things that I forgot, uh, before that we were talking about AI, I think this front door also makes a lot of sense because when you... I mean, right now, with how LLM models work is that you need to feed them with information, and the legal team, they always have, like, memorandums about specific things. They have, like, you know, frequently asked questions for the sales team, for procurement team, and you can use this type of technology in, for them to have access to that information without having the legal team to spend time, you know, with explaining what do you need to know, what are the risks for certain types of contracts.

27:02And I'm thinking this as an analogy with a legal team having standard contract templates. This is what you need to do. This is the clauses. Maybe you can have like a, you know, playbook with some fallback provisions, but if you have this type of information and have them as a template, you know, with these frequently asked questions on how the sales team can just get some answers about, uh, some of the legal risks about, you know, maybe negotiation a term, a credit, or loan, or, uh, any other legal binding commercial relationship, this is going to be awesome because they, now they're gonna have a robot, if you, if you, if you wanna call it like that, having all the information from the legal team in one place, in the front door. And this is going to make a complete change in the market because now they're gonna have all that information, and you can continue feeding with more information, right?

27:57And it's, it's going to become even smarter than when you started. Pepe, I love your enthusiasm, which is phenomenal. It is just amazing. I tell you, I'm a big fan. Um, so if we think, like, breaking this down into that experience on the legal front door, which will be a point of entry, and, you know, the question that you might ask a user, the first question is, "What do you need today from the legal team?" And, and there will be options around the type of thing, you know, is it a piece of advice, they have a contract that needs to be reviewed. So it's going to be a guided process to, to take them through the options to then determine where we're going to route that request, whether that's going to be routed through into TeamConnect or routed through into Agiloft, and it has to be a guided process. You're having to provide guidance to the business user to help them make the decisions as we gather information about their, their request. I think, interestingly, we're going to be storing a lot of that data.

28:58Is there ways for us to aggregate and use that data to help predict in the future ways in which users are going to navigate through that? I think that is a really interesting potential use case as well. And I think that takes us back to just the beginning of our conversation, right? This new partnership and, and how it's going to integrate. How, how is it gonna help the end users at organizations? Because that's really what, what we're trying to do, is enable them to, to make their life easier, make the legal team's life easier as well. So guys, this has been a great conversation. I, I mean, I could sit here on this couch and probably talk about this all day. But thank you so much, Justin, Andy, for, for joining us. Uh, this has been a great conversation. Really excited to see where this partnership goes. And thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for hosting. It's been, it's been a fun conversation. I think this, this partnership with Agiloft is gonna be a real game changer, and I'm glad we got a chance to discuss it today. Yeah. Thank you, Pepe. Thank you, Marc. It's great to be here finally on Contract Heroes.

29:55Hopefully, you're going to invite us back again sometime soon as well. I think so. I think so. That'd be great. This has been great. Well, thanks everybody for listening. This has been another episode of Contract Heroes. This episode of the Contract Heroes is sponsored by Koho Consulting. Koho helps organizations of all shapes and sizes find, implement, and manage their chosen CLM tool. Whether your project is buy or sell side led, Koho can help you navigate the waters of the CLM space to make sure that you're getting a product that's going to fit like a glove for years to come. If you'd like to learn more about Koho, visit their website at C-O-H-O consulting dot com.