How AtriCure transformed legal operations with Thomson Reuters

Creating visibility

Visibility is one of the critical benefits these solutions have delivered. On the legal-spend side, the company previously had no formal systems for matter management, legal spend monitoring, or e-billing, and most of its expenditure data was stored in Excel spreadsheets. Legal Tracker provides transparency into how much AtriCure spends on outside counsel, enabling it to better control costs.

The rate-review module in Legal Tracker has been particularly helpful because it provides the legal team with data on timekeeper rates, which they can compare with other firms. This market insight puts them in a better position when it comes to rate renegotiations.

Melissa Bodner, Senior Manager, Legal Support and Operations, says, “When we went through the rate review process the first time using the rate review module in Legal Tracker Advanced, we felt empowered to have those cost conversations with outside counsel, based on real data. That helped us enforce some maximum percentages on how much we would be willing to allow the timekeeper rate to increase.”

On the contract management side, HighQ has provided much-needed clarity over contract status and metrics. The platform stores all contracts and captures metadata, displaying insights through clear data visualization tools and reports. Lawyers and business teams can view active contracts, easily track important expiry or renewal dates, and monitor key terms. This centralized visibility ensures that nothing gets missed and delivers efficiency gains.

“Having all that information about contracts is great, but it’s what you do with it that matters. So, the dashboards and the visualizations are one of the most heavily leaned-on features of the system,” explains Bodner. “We can easily help our business teams monitor everything in real time through the dashboards, and then we can report by exporting the information to them on a regular basis as well. Reporting has been really important: not only having access to all of the data but being able to learn from it ourselves and distribute it to the leadership within the company.”

As a publicly traded company operating in a highly regulated space, it’s also vital that AtriCure has access to contract metrics and can report on them easily from a compliance perspective. For example, the company’s compliance team uses HighQ regularly to run reports and conduct the testing and monitoring required by industry regulators, while the finance team has easy access to the data they need when preparing financial reports.

Optimizing workflows

Initially, AtriCure implemented HighQ as a contract repository and a central access point for business colleagues to submit intake requests to the legal team. Now, it relies on automated workflows to streamline its contracting processes.

Business teams are empowered to create their own contracts and agreements. Using HighQ document automation, legal documents can be automatically created based on structured questionnaire inputs and then applied to predefined templates.

“We have numerous contract request types set up within HighQ. We recently rolled out a self-service NDA (non-disclosure agreement) process that allows individuals to put in all the information and get an NDA right away, rather than having to wait for someone in legal to do it for them,” says Bodner.

Having extensive functionality right out of the box and the ability to customize HighQ to suit the needs of the legal team and the wider business were major plus points. “Being an in-house legal team, the core of what we do is to provide services to our client, which is the business. Having HighQ has definitely helped us become better business partners,” she believes. “Before implementing HighQ, we did have a CLM system, but there were a lot of pain points with it. It was very difficult to customize, and we had a hard time running reports and showing a lot of the contract metrics that are important to our business partners.”

Amplifying legal expertise

Meanwhile, the ability to access expert legal guidance through Practical Law and powerful research capabilities via Westlaw are vital for AtriCure’s small legal team of three lawyers, two paralegals, and Bodner herself. For example, these tools help them keep up with regulatory compliance requirements across multiple locations and take on more work in-house.

“From an in-house counsel perspective, having all that information at our fingertips is really critical. We can go in and find exactly what we need by doing some preliminary research or getting some guidance and tips,” says Bodner. “It also has allowed us to better manage our outside counsel spend, in that we’re able to identify things that we can actually manage on our own.”

The most recent milestone on the company’s legal tech roadmap was the rollout of CoCounsel, the AI-powered legal assistant from Thomson Reuters, to help the legal team work even smarter and spend more time on higher-value work. Having initially beta-tested the solution prior to implementing it, Bodner says, “We knew we loved it. We knew we had to have it, now.”

Leveraging the Thomson Reuters ecosystem

By optimizing its use of these solutions, AtriCure is reducing the number of steps and personnel involved across multiple processes, creating smoother, more transparent legal operations that save time and money while minimizing risk.

According to Bodner, “We talk all the time about how painful things would be if we weren’t able to lean into the processes we’ve implemented in both Legal Tracker and HighQ. We’ve focused on optimizing how we’re using these solutions, which has increased the amount of time we save. It’s hard to put a number on it, but I can tell you it’s significant.”

The fact that these are solutions from Thomson Reuters was a major selling point. Decision-makers felt confident that they could trust in the capabilities upon rollout, product development would be ongoing, and customer support would be responsive. They’ve developed a very positive relationship with Thomson Reuters.

“We absolutely cannot function without our Thomson Reuters products. Everyone has bought into and is engaged with them: we’re all big fans and realize how much easier they make our lives on a daily basis,” says Bodner.

“I like the idea of being able to have all your solutions operating in one ecosystem. I think there’s a lot of value that can come from that,” she adds. “We’re excited about being on the journey with Thomson Reuters and seeing how it continues to develop these programs and the connection between them.”