Case study
How HighQ modernized legal operations for a real estate group
By deploying Thomson Reuters HighQ, a real estate development group streamlined matter management, automated workflows, and unlocked meaningful business insights
Key results
- Centralized document repository enhances contract and matter management
- Automated workflows create efficiency gains
- Document automation saves lawyers time and provides self-serve options to business colleagues
- Meaningful metadata provides vital insights and supports decision-making
Executive summary
A major U.S. real estate development group deploys Thomson Reuters HighQ — the modern, adaptable legal operations and business management software solution that simplifies legal processes — for seamless document management, to optimize workflows, and to help deliver data-driven insights. HighQ adds value to the legal team and to the wider business by streamlining matter management, improving access to legal resources, and providing meaningful metadata for business intelligence.
Single centralized platform
Centralized document and matter management
Automated workflows
Workflow automation improves efficiency
Self-service contract generation
Self-serve contracts save lawyer time
The opportunity: Enhanced matter management
The group’s legal team wanted to replace its paper-based ways of working with a modern, digital environment. It was already using Westlaw, the online legal research solution from Thomson Reuters, when HighQ caught the team’s attention, impressing with its advanced customization capabilities and price point. The team was initially looking for a solution that could act as a centralized repository for legal documents to enhance matter management. However, once they started using HighQ, they soon saw its potential to streamline legal workflows and extract critical data points from documents to enable better-informed business decision-making.
HighQ revolutionized document storage and matter management, enabling business colleagues to submit legal requests directly and track progress in real time.
The solution: Streamlined processes
As well as using HighQ to store documents in a well-organized way, the legal team uses it to help manage its workloads. Business colleagues can submit legal requests, such as contracts for review, directly in HighQ, and the matter is automatically assigned to an appropriate lawyer. Progress is tracked, notifications are provided to all those involved along the way, and it acts as a hub for communication between colleagues.
Many workflows are now automated, which streamlines processes, reduces the administrative burden, and ensures nothing gets missed. Automated workflows and self-service contract generation have empowered both the legal team and business units, driving productivity and satisfaction.
“Automated workflows have really helped the legal team in how they handle their matters. It speeds processes up and saves us a lot of time — and boosts company productivity.”
Legal Data Analyst, Real Estate Development Group
HighQ automatically captures metrics like matter duration, enabling the legal team to retroactively measure efficiency. It also provides the ability to extract key data from documents for analysis and visualization. All data is stored in the iSheets database; charts and graphics can be created in seconds, and those insights are seamlessly visualized in dashboards and KPI cards. For the analyst, “iSheets is the biggest highlight of HighQ. I like how you can implement diverse data fields, for example a text field, date field, or time field, and then depending on what insights you need, you just click a button to get a certain view of the data.”
The power of Contract Express
The group also harnesses HighQ document automation capabilities, powered by Contract Express. This tool accelerates the drafting process for the legal team and allows business colleagues to “self-serve” their own standard contracts automatically from pre-approved templates, directly via HighQ.
“Contract Express has been extremely helpful, so lawyers don’t have to draft a whole document,” says the analyst. “We’re now working to expand it to our business units so they can simply input whatever details they need into a form that legal has reviewed, and then they can generate a document that is already approved.”
The outcome: Significant efficiency gains
Automating processes has been a major driver of efficiency gains. More streamlined workflows support faster turnaround times. When actions need to be taken, such as a contract review, the Tasks feature alerts the relevant people, so they are addressed in a timely manner.
In addition, Contract Express saves significant amounts of time because business units can generate their own documents quickly, without having to ask the legal team to do it for them, while the time it takes lawyers to draft documents is significantly reduced.
It has been very well received by users. “Now that Contract Express is being implemented, users are thankful to have it. They are saying, ‘This is great’” says the analyst.
Capturing metadata has been a big plus. “We now have so much insight into the business, across all units. That has been an immense win for us,” she adds.
“There’s a lot more visibility with HighQ, and the legal team is more accessible to the rest of the business. If they ever need us, they can submit a general question, an incident report, or a legal request in HighQ. Next, we’re planning to implement standalone sites for different parts of the business, which will allow even better outreach as well as more self-service options.”
The analyst points to several other aspects of HighQ that are especially beneficial. For example, the granular permissions framework in HighQ is an important security feature that ensures users only access what they need and that confidential information is properly protected. The Wiki pages in HighQ are a valuable source of information and best practices, so users can find answers to questions or read blogs about how the company is using the solution.
On a personal level, the analyst appreciates the creative flexibility of HighQ and the ability to customize how she uses it. She’s excited to explore the artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in HighQ to expedite data extraction . “My background is in computer science, with an emphasis on data science. When I discovered the capabilities and potential of HighQ, I said: ‘Wow. This is amazing.’ HighQ really serves its purpose. I love it,” she concludes.
At a glance
Industry
Real estate
Solutions
HighQ
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