<i><b>Case Study</b></i> Aon's Matter Management Solution

Aon experienced significant growth in the 1980s and 90s, both organically and through a series of strategic acquisitions. The growth brought about tremendous business gains, but created operational challenges that lingered for many years. One of these was the legal department.

Aon had expanded its global legal staff to more than 100 attorneys and an equal number of support staff to manage its growth and meet an ever-changing and complex regulatory environment. Each new acquisition that expanded our reach into a new market brought a host of new legal questions. However, by the mid-2000s, each of our legal offices were using a different system to manage documents and legal processes. We sought an enterprise class legal document and matter management system that would standardize the department's processes and also give us company-wide visibility into legal matters, spend and liabilities, as well as compliance and regulatory issues.

Out with the Old

The company had been using a company-designed Lotus Notes-based application to manage legal matters. As our operations grew, the limitations of that application made it increasingly inefficient and lawyers and staff began adopting their own systems. Eventually, our legal department operations had become a hodgepodge of in-house applications, Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, e-mail messages, legal pads, sticky notes ' the gamut. And because different offices used their own organizational formats, compiling company-wide reports became a significant challenge and limited visibility across the enterprise. The disparity in tools used also presented security challenges when legal matters reached a sensitive stage. Settlement information, for example, must be kept confidential and accessible to a limited number of professionals. Because the various systems employed didn't provide the necessary levels of access control, settlement documents were being managed separately by the select lawyers and business unit managers with required access.

Clearly, our legal tools had fallen out of synch with the processes the company had come to demand. We decided we needed a single platform that could manage all aspects of legal matters and would be accessible by all of the company's global legal staff, as well as outside counsel law firms, key business unit managers and other outside partners.

Realigning the tools with corporate processes, while planning for future demands, required the adoption of a comprehensive matter management platform. The goal was to work with as few different applications as possible to lower the overall administrative overhead and simplify the processes. A study of how our legal issues had evolved in just the few years prior to the project signaled that we needed technology that would adhere to our needs, rather than require us to adjust to the design. This was particularly important because the legal department employees were dispersed throughout 22 global offices and we had to take into account international, systemic differences as well as cultural interests.

TeamConnect

We decided to work with Mitratech's TeamConnect matter management platform. The solution came with a series of individual out-of-the-box applications that were fully integrated and built on a framework we could leverage to customize key functionality and edit over time. The deployment four years ago took nine months, but the process of adjusting and expanding the capabilities of our chosen technology solution to meet our changing requirements and conditions continues today.

We needed a centralized database of secured information to ensure consistency and confidentiality with so many locations, individual departments, and outside counsel law firms participating in the process. Further, we wanted a platform that could reach across the enterprise, to include representatives from the IT, risk management, procurement, finance and human resources departments, as well as the executive suite. Adopting an integrated matter management platform has enabled us to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively, while ensuring all legal information is gathered, stored, controlled and shared uniformly across the enterprise.

The use of an integrated platform improved our process for managing the highly confidential litigation settlement process. Prior to TeamConnect, lawyers in charge of matters that had become contentious would gather and record relevant case information ' allegations, arguments for and against, findings and determinations, relevant statutory references, etc. If necessary, they would also develop a settlement memo using various office productivity tools that would document settlement terms and methodology. This was done, in most cases, on paper and the documents would be distributed by hand throughout the legal department and the impacted business units for review and approval.

Our lawyers now manage this entirely within the TeamConnect platform. Case information, from the history to final approvals, is stored within the system. The managing attorney, or “Main Assignee,” creates the matter and then enters his or her case notes electronically using a standardized format. Pull down menus, such as “offer/demand date” and “offer/demand type,” simplify the record-keeping process and preserve the matter's start and end points. When it comes time to draft settlement documentation, the attorney creates the material in the system but then utilizes access controls within TeamConnect to designate specific individuals with the required level of privilege, enabling only some people to view sensitive materials.

Using the comprehensive tools in TeamConnect also dramatically simplified the legal holds process. Our department receives a significant number of third-party subpoenas each year because a major part of the company's business involves serving as an insurance/reinsurance broker. We needed to track and manage witness and documents requests, interviews and information sources, but we also wanted to track these activities and materials by the entity that had been subpoenaed. Managing the legal hold process is now straightforward using TeamConnect's matter management approach, in which everything is linked to its originating matter. This has helped simplify the process and limit the amount of time our attorneys or support staff spend inputting third-party subpoena information. And the access controls within TeamConnect ensure the process is managed confidentially.

Finally, the platform has dramatically simplified our governance, risk and compliance (GRC) processes. The legal department, working with risk management, plays a key role in monitoring and enforcing the company's compliance initiatives. We're regulated by a number of government agencies charged with enforcing brokerage and insurance regulations. We also operate in 120 countries, so the number of foreign government bodies and agencies with which the company must interact is quite substantial.

Electronic Records

For GRC management purposes, it's integral that we record and track every inquiry the company has received and how the company responded. A systematic and repeatable approach to addressing compliance is also paramount should we ultimately face a government audit or litigation. We have to demonstrate that we've made all attempts to comply with regulations and document how we addressed any gaps in the systems. Mitratech's TeamConnect provides a centralized platform where one of our attorneys can quickly create an electronic record should an informal inquiry come in or a formal government audit or investigation is launched. With the tools for capturing and collecting that information, including what triggered the event and how it was resolved, we now have a much broader understanding of our overall risk portfolio.

Being faced suddenly with the capacity to do just about anything with a new technology posed an interesting challenge. We staged a number of dialogues within the legal department and among key business units to explore how the technology was to be implemented. The struggle was in setting and holding limits on how we were going to utilize the new platform. The range of possibilities was so immense that the project risked being slowed by analysis paralysis.

Once we established the deployment parameters, the greatest challenge was addressing global differences; from the way the lawyers themselves communicated in other countries, to governmental security requirements for IT, to simple bandwidth limitations. We also had to take into account how the user interface would have to adhere to local nomenclature. In the U.S., for example, the word “litigation” is used quite freely and refers to a wide range of activities, while in other countries, the word refers to specific steps and the matter overall is called “contentious.” Rather than force professionals working in global offices to conform to a single standard, we customized the platform to match local terminology.

Since the platform was deployed, we have continued to evaluate how it was being used and to make alterations to meet changing needs or evolving best practices. As we became more adept at utilizing reports, for example, the legal department repeatedly revisited how it captured activities and costs to create new views and analysis. Earlier this year, we deployed the contract management module from TeamConnect, which integrates automatically with the system. Then in August, we deployed the TeamConnect Legal Hold module to take advantage of broader functionalities specifically designed for that process. Our future plans include implementing a process for tracking timekeepers in multiple rates and currencies and early case assessment management tools.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the platform solved a significant problem up front, but it also enabled us to continue to address problems, head them off or simply adjust the tools to meet changing processes. The decision to move onto new technologies is usually driven by the need to solve a problem, but the solution needs to solve problems not yet visualized or foreseen ' the kind that pop up three or four years after the purchase.

Aon experienced significant growth in the 1980s and 90s, both organically and through a series of strategic acquisitions. The growth brought about tremendous business gains, but created operational challenges that lingered for many years. One of these was the legal department.

Aon had expanded its global legal staff to more than 100 attorneys and an equal number of support staff to manage its growth and meet an ever-changing and complex regulatory environment. Each new acquisition that expanded our reach into a new market brought a host of new legal questions. However, by the mid-2000s, each of our legal offices were using a different system to manage documents and legal processes. We sought an enterprise class legal document and matter management system that would standardize the department's processes and also give us company-wide visibility into legal matters, spend and liabilities, as well as compliance and regulatory issues.

Out with the Old

The company had been using a company-designed Lotus Notes-based application to manage legal matters. As our operations grew, the limitations of that application made it increasingly inefficient and lawyers and staff began adopting their own systems. Eventually, our legal department operations had become a hodgepodge of in-house applications, Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, e-mail messages, legal pads, sticky notes ' the gamut. And because different offices used their own organizational formats, compiling company-wide reports became a significant challenge and limited visibility across the enterprise. The disparity in tools used also presented security challenges when legal matters reached a sensitive stage. Settlement information, for example, must be kept confidential and accessible to a limited number of professionals. Because the various systems employed didn't provide the necessary levels of access control, settlement documents were being managed separately by the select lawyers and business unit managers with required access.

Clearly, our legal tools had fallen out of synch with the processes the company had come to demand. We decided we needed a single platform that could manage all aspects of legal matters and would be accessible by all of the company's global legal staff, as well as outside counsel law firms, key business unit managers and other outside partners.

Realigning the tools with corporate processes, while planning for future demands, required the adoption of a comprehensive matter management platform. The goal was to work with as few different applications as possible to lower the overall administrative overhead and simplify the processes. A study of how our legal issues had evolved in just the few years prior to the project signaled that we needed technology that would adhere to our needs, rather than require us to adjust to the design. This was particularly important because the legal department employees were dispersed throughout 22 global offices and we had to take into account international, systemic differences as well as cultural interests.

TeamConnect

We decided to work with Mitratech's TeamConnect matter management platform. The solution came with a series of individual out-of-the-box applications that were fully integrated and built on a framework we could leverage to customize key functionality and edit over time. The deployment four years ago took nine months, but the process of adjusting and expanding the capabilities of our chosen technology solution to meet our changing requirements and conditions continues today.

We needed a centralized database of secured information to ensure consistency and confidentiality with so many locations, individual departments, and outside counsel law firms participating in the process. Further, we wanted a platform that could reach across the enterprise, to include representatives from the IT, risk management, procurement, finance and human resources departments, as well as the executive suite. Adopting an integrated matter management platform has enabled us to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively, while ensuring all legal information is gathered, stored, controlled and shared uniformly across the enterprise.

The use of an integrated platform improved our process for managing the highly confidential litigation settlement process. Prior to TeamConnect, lawyers in charge of matters that had become contentious would gather and record relevant case information ' allegations, arguments for and against, findings and determinations, relevant statutory references, etc. If necessary, they would also develop a settlement memo using various office productivity tools that would document settlement terms and methodology. This was done, in most cases, on paper and the documents would be distributed by hand throughout the legal department and the impacted business units for review and approval.

Our lawyers now manage this entirely within the TeamConnect platform. Case information, from the history to final approvals, is stored within the system. The managing attorney, or “Main Assignee,” creates the matter and then enters his or her case notes electronically using a standardized format. Pull down menus, such as “offer/demand date” and “offer/demand type,” simplify the record-keeping process and preserve the matter's start and end points. When it comes time to draft settlement documentation, the attorney creates the material in the system but then utilizes access controls within TeamConnect to designate specific individuals with the required level of privilege, enabling only some people to view sensitive materials.

Using the comprehensive tools in TeamConnect also dramatically simplified the legal holds process. Our department receives a significant number of third-party subpoenas each year because a major part of the company's business involves serving as an insurance/reinsurance broker. We needed to track and manage witness and documents requests, interviews and information sources, but we also wanted to track these activities and materials by the entity that had been subpoenaed. Managing the legal hold process is now straightforward using TeamConnect's matter management approach, in which everything is linked to its originating matter. This has helped simplify the process and limit the amount of time our attorneys or support staff spend inputting third-party subpoena information. And the access controls within TeamConnect ensure the process is managed confidentially.

Finally, the platform has dramatically simplified our governance, risk and compliance (GRC) processes. The legal department, working with risk management, plays a key role in monitoring and enforcing the company's compliance initiatives. We're regulated by a number of government agencies charged with enforcing brokerage and insurance regulations. We also operate in 120 countries, so the number of foreign government bodies and agencies with which the company must interact is quite substantial.

Electronic Records

For GRC management purposes, it's integral that we record and track every inquiry the company has received and how the company responded. A systematic and repeatable approach to addressing compliance is also paramount should we ultimately face a government audit or litigation. We have to demonstrate that we've made all attempts to comply with regulations and document how we addressed any gaps in the systems. Mitratech's TeamConnect provides a centralized platform where one of our attorneys can quickly create an electronic record should an informal inquiry come in or a formal government audit or investigation is launched. With the tools for capturing and collecting that information, including what triggered the event and how it was resolved, we now have a much broader understanding of our overall risk portfolio.

Being faced suddenly with the capacity to do just about anything with a new technology posed an interesting challenge. We staged a number of dialogues within the legal department and among key business units to explore how the technology was to be implemented. The struggle was in setting and holding limits on how we were going to utilize the new platform. The range of possibilities was so immense that the project risked being slowed by analysis paralysis.

Once we established the deployment parameters, the greatest challenge was addressing global differences; from the way the lawyers themselves communicated in other countries, to governmental security requirements for IT, to simple bandwidth limitations. We also had to take into account how the user interface would have to adhere to local nomenclature. In the U.S., for example, the word “litigation” is used quite freely and refers to a wide range of activities, while in other countries, the word refers to specific steps and the matter overall is called “contentious.” Rather than force professionals working in global offices to conform to a single standard, we customized the platform to match local terminology.

Since the platform was deployed, we have continued to evaluate how it was being used and to make alterations to meet changing needs or evolving best practices. As we became more adept at utilizing reports, for example, the legal department repeatedly revisited how it captured activities and costs to create new views and analysis. Earlier this year, we deployed the contract management module from TeamConnect, which integrates automatically with the system. Then in August, we deployed the TeamConnect Legal Hold module to take advantage of broader functionalities specifically designed for that process. Our future plans include implementing a process for tracking timekeepers in multiple rates and currencies and early case assessment management tools.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the platform solved a significant problem up front, but it also enabled us to continue to address problems, head them off or simply adjust the tools to meet changing processes. The decision to move onto new technologies is usually driven by the need to solve a problem, but the solution needs to solve problems not yet visualized or foreseen ' the kind that pop up three or four years after the purchase.