Integreon Earns Chambers Top Alternative Legal Service Provider Ranking in Three Categories
Chambers ranks Integreon Contract Lifecycle Management and Litigation Services in top band for fourth consecutive year and Asia-Pacific Region ALSP for second year in a row June 20, 2023 –– (FARGO, ND AND LONDON, UK) – The newly released Chambers Alternative Legal Services Provider Guide 2023 (“The Guide”) placed Integreon in the top band for Contract Lifecycle Management, Litigation Services, and ALSP services in the Asia-Pacific Region. Chambers rankings are considered a mark of excellence across the legal industry and are based on assessment criteria that includes technical legal ability, professional conduct, client service, commercial astuteness, diligence, commitment, and other qualities valued and articulated by interviewed clients. The Guide provides decision-makers and other customers with information and insights to enable informed judgment on ALSP vendors. For the fourth year in a row, Integreon received a band one ranking for its Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Services. During the interview process, a contract management client relayed that “Integreon is at the heart of many of our complex negotiations. They support legal review in over 100 countries and support 20-plus languages.” Integreon’s Litigation Services also took a top ranking for a fourth consecutive year. A client commented, “Integreon know their business and focuses on it, both in terms of managed review services and cyber-related data privacy reviews.” For the second year, Integreon placed in band one for Asia-Pacific Region ALSP. With two delivery centers in India and one in the Philippines, Integreon’s teams are experienced professionals with deep expertise across their Legal and Compliance Solutions portfolio. This includes services for contract management, document review, cyber incident response, compliance, and legal document processing. In addition, these locations also support Integreon’s Creative and Business Solutions including research services, presentation graphics, and marketing technology support. “Receiving these top rankings is incredibly meaningful to Integreon because they reflect feedback from our valued clients,” said Subroto Mukerji, Integreon CEO. “We are proud of the work we do every day, and that our dedication and quality of delivery has been recognized by such a globally respected organization as Chambers.” About Integreon Integreon is the trusted, global provider of creative, business, and legal outsourced services to corporations and law firms seeking to expand their capabilities and transform their performance. The company’s 3,500+ professionals provide expert support across a range of managed services—from creative design, content delivery and administrative support to legal and compliance. With global delivery centers on three continents, Integreon delivers round-the-clock service in 50+ languages and is deeply committed to client success, consistently delivering innovative, tech-enabled solutions that improve agility and efficiency to drive business performance. Integreon is owned by EagleTree Capital, a leading New York-based middle-market private equity firm with over $5 billion of assets under management. For more information about Integreon’s range of services, email [email protected], visit www.integreon.com and follow Integreon at LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
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How Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) Help You Maximize Document Review Efficiency
To flourish in the global market, modern corporations must rely on their internal and external legal advisors to navigate international and local regulations, anticipate and manage risks, and deliver expert counsel at a strategic level. No longer are legal processes restricted to managing internal projects, drafting and reviewing contracts, and performing administrative duties. Growing and empowering your legal team amid tightening budgets remains challenging. Industry leaders have long forged partnerships with ALSPs to increase productivity and cost efficiency, allowing them to navigate the budgetary challenges of the current climate. ALSPs allocate experienced and knowledgeable legal resources to supplement your team to undertake document review tasks such as redactions, witness preparation, chronologies, and other services supporting disputes and investigations. What Are the Advantages of a Partnership with an Alternative Legal Service Provider (ALSP)? 1. Enable efficient and transparent budgeting Unlike conventional law firms, which are tied to hourly billing models, ALSPs offer flexible, custom fee models – including hourly, per document, blended, and subscription plans – which best fit the requirements of each client. With a focus on assigning the correct resources at the correct level and the correct rate, ALSPs enable budget transparency and cost predictability throughout the end-to-end process. 2. Leverage technology and best practices All ALSPs employ expert-level resources who are well-versed in legal tech and AI solutions. They incorporate best practices, such as Six Sigma and Project Management principles, into their work processes. This transformative approach can help improve your end-to-end legal operations. Integreon differentiates itself by being fully tech-agile, enabling Integreon’s consultants to provide unbiased advice around technology solutions and best practices. 3. More time to focus on complex business processes and high-level advice An ALSP acts as an extension of legal teams by adding dedicated resources with expertise in document review, project management, and delivery best practices. This enables legal teams to focus on case strategy, compile legal advice pertaining to more complex legal issues and other strategic directives. What Is the Document Review Process? The regulatory landscape constantly changes to meet consumer expectations, protect their interests, and meet sustainability objectives. It is common for corporations to face litigation, and regulatory investigations are becoming increasingly common, often on a global scale. The documents and data required to understand the facts in a dispute and meet disclosure obligations are increasing in volume and complexity. Data is collected to identify relevant documents or satisfy a regulator’s request, often from numerous sources and custodians. Technology and manual human review are used to remove irrelevant or duplicative information, identify relevant, privileged, or confidential documents, and apply redactions before producing the information to 3rd parties. This “first pass” review of documents to categorize relevant and irrelevant information is regularly outsourced to teams of specialist document reviewers who act on the instructions and guidance of the legal team. Using this approach, the legal team does not lose control of the process but gains valuable time to focus on the complexities and strategy of the dispute or investigation. Document review process best practices include: Appropriate use of technology and analytics to create project-specific workflows – one size does not fit all A clear and concise protocol and training sessions with the review team Reasonable and transparent deadlines Timely feedback and guidance Clear communication with all parties throughout Robust and defensible quality control processes See Integreon’s 6 tips for Document Review Projects using Alt Legal Services here. Document review is resource-intensive and can be the most expensive part of the EDRM. Using the right experts at the right time throughout the entire process, including the review phase, is imperative. While it is possible to use internal resources for this purpose, utilizing ALSP resources for the review can reduce the burden on those resources enabling them to focus on high-value, high-risk tasks. Also, by outsourcing to an ALSP like Integreon, you gain the value of years of project management and industry experience. The Benefits of Engaging ALSPs in the Document Review Process The three significant benefits you get by enlisting the help of an ALSP for document reviews are: 1. Enhance flexibility and scalability The expertise of an ALSP lies in the ability to source and onboard appropriately experienced teams at short notice and to scale up (and, equally significantly, scale down) in response to the requirements of each project. When volumes increase or deadlines contract, resources can easily be integrated into existing teams to maintain progress and meet targets. 2. Drive cost savings and budget optimization Whether projects are undertaken onshore, offshore (or a combination of both), clients benefit from cost savings through flexible fee arrangements and the efficiency-driven ethos behind every process. 3. Assure quality control and expertise A good ALSP will have a well-defined QA process built around training, legal team input, expertise in technology and analytics, and solid communication protocols. In keeping with best practices, quality control mechanisms can be adapted to meet the needs of individual projects or legal teams. Transform Your Legal Function with Integreon Are you considering a partnership with an ALSP like Integreon to maximize the efficiency of your legal function and deliver desirable outcomes from critical and labor-intensive activities like document reviews and deposition preparations? Integreon is an award-winning global provider of ALSP services for corporations and law firms, helping businesses expand capabilities and enhance performance. Integreon’s expert teams’ partner with clients on document review engagements and offer privilege review, redactions, witness preparation, document summaries, chronologies, and other services supporting disputes and investigations. Our global delivery centers provide round-the-clock service, ensuring your business’s success. Learn more about Integreon’s Document Review Services here: https://www.integreon.com/what-we-do/legal-and-compliance-solutions/document-review-services/
How In-House Counsel Can Prepare for Generative AI Risks
Generative artificial intelligence legal applications have arrived. They include everything from automated contract drafting to effective on-demand clause-level search. And more are coming to the market every day. But are in-house legal teams ready for them? Have they thought through all the security and legal implications? Typically, before companies acquire new legal-focused technology, they must ensure that it meets data privacy and security requirements. In-house legal teams often rely on their information security departments to screen new applications for the usual litany of concerns, including cybersecurity weaknesses. These threshold considerations have become so standardized that few give them much thought. In a typical request for proposal, vendors must answer questions about the host location of their application, how they transfer data, whether they run vulnerability tests, and if they have industry cybersecurity certifications like SOC 2 and ISO 9000. These data points all remain important considerations, but they do not go far enough with generative AI. New Data Security Questions Generative AI tools are supported by large language models. These models retain, learn from and reuse the data fed into them. Inside many companies, that learning process will raise concerns about whether their data is directly or indirectly helping other companies, including their competitors. In this context, companies should wonder whether they can share their data with an AI application, but prevent outsiders from benefiting from that data. But that worry will also raise the question of whether the AI can continue to improve if the user companies do not share data. The balancing of these two interests must be understood by companies embarking on generative AI application use. In-house legal teams need to start probing these issues with their technology vendors now. Those vendors that employ large language models should be able to assure customers they do not retain customer data or use it to train their models. In addition to asking about data retention, in-house lawyers or their information security teams should ask vendors the following questions: Can the vendor describe exactly what data is shared with the large language models to produce the responses provided in the tool? Is it encrypted at rest and in transfer? How long is it retained? Is it identifiable to your organization? Has the vendor put in place automatic data deletion features? Knowing if the system requires your company to actively delete its content to avoid its inadvertent use is important. Also, can your company remove all traces of its content should it discontinue the application? Are the prompts or questions being sent to the large language model based on generic data models that the vendor has created, or are they relying on customer users to frame questions, potentially exposing confidential data to the platform? Understand if you will need to educate your user community on effective query of the AI, or if the tool’s operation will take care of this concern by presenting structured output and controlling queries behind the scenes. If the tool offers market comparison information, is the participation in feeding that market opt-in or automatic? Does the tool provide ways for your company’s users to benefit from market information without sharing data, or does it provide a means to share some level of data without compromising confidentiality? In-house legal teams should be partnering with their information security teams to develop these screening questions when generative AI applications are being explored to be sure applications are fit for their environments and to address the additional privacy and data security concerns these capabilities raise. Vetting Existing Applications But what about existing applications? Many, if not most, existing legal software applications, as well as many finance, human resources and other business applications, will be employing generative AI capabilities. Overall, these applications bring much-needed innovation to routine work and will likely mean productivity gains across many organizations. But generative AI functions will likely be introduced without any information security review. In most organizations, applications already in use do not receive information security screening once they are deployed and operating without incident. Now is a good time for in-house teams to ask existing vendors if generative AI features are being planned for their upcoming software releases. If the answer is yes, then it is important for legal to team up with information security departments to ask additional questions on data use and security before permitting the installation of generative AI capabilities. Risks Prompted by Uncontrolled Access With great power comes great responsibility. That old expression applies directly to the use of generative AI technology, and the faster in-house legal teams recognize this new reality, the better off their companies will be. Take generative AI contract drafting applications. Before their advent, companies could constrain contract drafting through clause libraries and online playbooks. Generative AI applications, on the other hand, enable the drafting of contracts and other legal content guided by the interpretations of the tool, which poses potential legal risks. An AI tool that offers drafting options based on the broad training a market-facing large language model can produce may suggest clause alternatives that go beyond a company’s risk appetite or are inconsistent with other terms in the agreement if not compared holistically. A new or junior person drafting a contract with unvetted AI guidance or without oversight could expose the company to unacceptable and costly terms, and even undermine established customer or supplier relationships with inappropriate guidance. In-house counsel teams need to review who will be permitted to access this type of machine guidance. They also need to utilize tools that provide guardrails in the form of online enforced playbooks to ensure that undue reliance on unvetted machine suggestions is not permitted. In other departments, like HR, more significant issues exist. Tools that might influence hiring decisions, promotional opportunities, or disciplinary actions are subject to bias and privacy considerations. An excited HR department might see automated screening or similar features being added to an existing application as a productivity boon, but it is up to legal and their information security partners to raise potential red flags
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5 Ways Legal Marketing can Leverage an External Partner for Maximum Efficiency
Take Five-Key Marketing Functions off Your Plate to Increase Productivity and Extend Your Marketing Budget In the highly competitive world of law firms, reputation is brand currency. Establishing, maintaining, and supporting reputational recognition does not happen overnight and requires a marketing team with the skills and budget to effectively execute across a range of disciplines including industry and bespoke events, website and digital media, media/thought leadership, presentation development – ensuring the integrity of the brand. For many marketing teams, the demand from the firm and each of its practice areas often outweighs the rate of output, in-house skillsets, and budget making it difficult to produce timely, relevant, and results producing campaigns and deliverables. So, what is a marketer to do? What if there was a way to access specialist skills and free up time to think more strategically, collaborate more extensively withing the firm, research competitors and prospects more deeply, or even just increase the rate of production? Here are five-key areas law firm marketers should consider shifting to an outsourcing provider to achieve maximum efficiency and engagement: 1. Graphic Design. From software licenses to hiring and training, design costs can add up quickly. Marketers can partner with external organizations for everything from brand ideation and template creation to infographics and web design. In-house marketing teams will use their expertise casting vision and voice, while the outsourced designers make everything come to life for a fraction of the cost of doing the work internally. 2. Podcast Creation. A The firm attorneys have something important to say, and there is no group better suited for amplifying their voice than marketing. Marketers can opt to handle everything from script writing to recording assignments then bring in an external partner to mix the audio to meet critical publishing deadlines and ensure quality deliverable. 3. RFP Support. When responding to RFPs, many details are left to marketers to ensure the firm presents the best possible first impression. Outsourcing a portion of the RFP process can free up marketers for their value-add work in the process. Some ways an external partner can assist with RFPs include library management, template and pitch book creation and general formatting of final documents. 4. Market Research. Thorough research takes time, but it is a necessary tool to ensure marketing is responsive and developing meaningful materials from campaigns to whitepapers and event topics. A tech-enabled research team supplied by an outsourcing partner will save time providing quality, easily digestible reports that speed up the decision-making process. External researchers can also help with data relating to the competitive landscape, KYC/AML requirements, survey collection and distribution, CRM support, and more. 5. Brand Adherence. The firm and the marketing team have invested time, money and worked diligently to maintain the brand both visually and in writing. The marketing department should see their outsourced creative services provider as a true extension of their team and leverage them as a champion of the brand and its attributes. This includes developing, maintaining, and adhering to brand guidelines, templates, as well as ensuring quality through thorough proofreading and other established quality checks. Incorporating an external partner for marketing tasks and functions can significantly help marketers to gain bandwidth, stretch the budget, and gain access to talent to achieve more for the firm.
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Bringing greater efficiency and scalability to help clients meet complex immigration requirements
Many organizations want to tap into the skills of today’s global, mobile professionals. However, maintaining compliance with U.S. immigration policies is a major hurdle. Helping businesses meet the complex documentation requirements associated with employment immigration presents tremendous opportunities for law firms to attract and retain profitable enterprise clients. Integreon can help, with expert immigration document services. We work as an extension of your firm, adding value to your practice while reducing the burden on your staff and overhead.