Case study
How AtriCure modernized legal operations with Thomson Reuters legal solutions
AtriCure built a scalable legal operations ecosystem using Thomson Reuters legal solutions to manage growth, improve spend oversight, and deliver greater visibility and value to the business
Key results
- Expanded legal operations support across a growing global medical device company with a lean team
- Improved control and predictability of outside counsel spend, consistently tracking to within roughly 2% of forecast
- Strengthened the legal department's ability to demonstrate business value through better data, reporting, and operational metrics
~2%
Tighter control of outside counsel spends
Enterprise ecosystem
Thomson Reuters legal solutions across legal operations
Business transparency
Stronger reporting and legal performance metrics
Executive summary
A global medical devices company, AtriCure, Inc. is focused on surgical treatments and therapies for atrial fibrillation, and post-operative pain management. Headquartered in Mason, Ohio, the company serves hospitals and physicians around the globe. AtriCure has been on a rapid growth trajectory while navigating a transition from startup-style operations to a scaled global enterprise.
AtriCure partnered with Thomson Reuters to build a comprehensive legal technology ecosystem spanning HighQ, Legal Tracker, CoCounsel Legal, and the recent purchase of Risk & Fraud Solution CLEAR. By combining trusted tools with a collaborative vendor partnership, AtriCure has created a more scalable legal function — one that can manage spend more effectively, automate core workflows, support global expansion, and better communicate the legal team's value to the business.
Scaling legal operations in a rapidly growing global company
AtriCure’s rapid expansion brought new opportunities and complexity for its legal department. As the company expanded into new geographies and added hospitals, physicians, distributors, and suppliers, the volume of contracts and regulatory requirements grew accordingly. As Melissa Bodner, Director of Legal Operations and Risk Management, explained, “The more that we are growing, the more hospitals and physicians that we’re supporting to help with their treatment of patients with AFib, that and then working with additional distributors and suppliers around the globe, generates a lot more need for contracts.”
“Thomson Reuters solutions have helped our legal team scale alongside the business as AtriCure continues to grow globally.”
Melissa Bodner
Director of Legal Operations and Risk Management, AtriCure
Building a comprehensive Thomson Reuters ecosystem
AtriCure built a comprehensive legal technology ecosystem with Thomson Reuters. The centerpiece is HighQ, which the team expanded well beyond its original contract management role. As Melissa Bodner shared, “We’ve been very creative in our use of HighQ. We started with just the idea of a contract repository and a few contract requests. And we now have expanded that into entity management, corporate insurance management” and additional collaborative workflows that connect different teams across the organization in a single platform.
For outside counsel management, AtriCure relies on Legal Tracker and Legal Tracker Advanced. The tools provide the visibility needed to monitor spend, enforce billing guidelines, and negotiate timekeeper rates with data-driven confidence. The team also adopted CoCounsel Legal to assist attorneys with research, drafting, and contract review. Most recently, the company signed on with CLEAR for third-party due diligence and counterparty screening — a critical requirement in the heavily regulated medical device industry.
Delivering impact across legal operations
The Thomson Reuters ecosystem has delivered measurable impact across AtriCure’s legal operations. Legal Tracker Advanced has proven especially valuable for outside counsel rate management. As Bodner noted, “Legal Tracker Advanced has been wonderful because we find that it pays for itself just in the timekeeper rate review module alone. We’ve really been able to make some very educated negotiations with outside counsel about the rates that they’re proposing.” The team consistently delivers outside counsel spend forecasts within two percent of budget. Beyond cost savings, the integrated toolset enables the team to tell a stronger story about its contributions to the business and demonstrate its role as a strategic partner. As Bodner emphasized, “I have a big pet peeve when people say legal is a cost center. We are a value center. We add value to the organization all day, every day.”
“With better data and reporting, our legal team can clearly show the value we bring as a strategic partner to the business.”
Melissa Bodner
Director of Legal Operations and Risk Management, AtriCure
Leading AI adoption across the enterprise
As Bodner observed, “Attorneys who use AI well are going to replace attorneys who don’t use AI. So, we want to upskill the skills of our attorneys so that they not only can be doing work more efficiently, but also so that they really are freed up to do the high-level strategic work that is going to help drive the business.”
The integration of CoCounsel with HighQ has the team especially excited about streamlining the administrative side of contract management — filing metadata, managing documents, and reporting on contract data. As Bodner shared, “The new integration of CoCounsel with HighQ has us very excited about how we’re going to be able to not only assist the attorneys with the drafting and the research and the review and the negotiation and redlining and comparisons of documents, but also on the back end, the administrative piece of this has been a big pain point for us.”
With CLEAR implementation underway and the CoCounsel-HighQ integration on the horizon, AtriCure continues to expand its Thomson Reuters ecosystem. As Bodner described, “We have all of these different tools and they’re all Thomson Reuters. We want an ecosystem in which they’re working together. To have it all seamlessly work together in one ecosystem has been the dream.” For peers considering Thomson Reuters, Melissa Bodner’s advice is to invest in the partnership — the combination of strong products, responsive support, and continuous innovation has helped AtriCure’s legal department grow into a recognized strategic driver for the business.
Call to action
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At a glance
Industry
Manufacturing
HQ region
Mason, Ohio
Solutions
HighQ
Legal Tracker
Practical Law
Westlaw
CoCounsel Legal
CLEAR
Year founded
2000
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