Use CasesLegal Services

Legal Services firms are heavy with agreements and notices that require extensive preparation, signing, tracking and archiving. Law firms, in particular, must initiate and manage a high volume and wide range of agreements and notices – from engagement letters and business contracts to deposition notices and settlement agreements. These documents often require a significant amount of time and cost to prepare, print, mail, scan, archive, retrieve, and manage. The effort, complexity, and slow turnaround time can frustrate clients who are accustomed to the speed and simplicity so prevalent in the digital world.

DocuSign enables legal services firms of all sizes to exceed client expectations by accelerating agreement turnaround time and reducing costs while ensuring document security and privacy. Whether your firm is just beginning a digital transformation or has already implemented a legal use case with DocuSign, the next step is to consider the journey within a modern System of Agreement.

Legal Services Priorities

System of Agreement

Prepare

Dynamically generate agreements and simplify the legal review and approval workflow before signing with a high degree of automation. Import or generate and prefill new agreements from existing systems. Create review workflows to collaborate, redline, comment and track changes.

Sign

Sign and capture legally enforceable signatures from almost anywhere, on practically any device, with capabilities such as automated routing, signer identification and multiple authentication options, tracking, and digital audit trails. Certify the signing process with DocuSign’s court-admissible certificate of completion.

Act

Act on an agreement’s terms after the signing is complete. Automatically update other systems and trigger actions that initiate internal processes, transfer amounts to a billing system or collect payments as part of the signing process.

Manage

Manage completed agreements including certificates of completion digitally in a centralized, highly secure environment. Document repository capabilities include retention, tagging, full-text search and retrieval.

Prepare

Sign

Act

Manage

A System of Agreement is the collection of technologies and processes an organization uses for its agreements. For many law firms, the “system” is likely fragmented among different practice areas and operational functions. Inconsistencies across these disciplines can cost money and time, impact the client and employee experience, and expose your firm to legal risk.

A modern System of Agreement connects systems and processes so an agreement can move end-to-end from preparation through signature, enactment, and management in a highly automated way. It is the result of digitally transforming your firm’s agreement processes. The transformation can occur in stages, starting with eSignature, then connecting and integrating eSignature with a document and contract management solution optimized with analytics and artificial intelligence.

The DocuSign System of Agreement Platform enables the end-to-end automation of your law firm’s System of Agreement through the four pillars of the agreement process: Prepare, Sign, Act, and Manage.

L E G A L S E R V I C E S U S E C A S E S

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Legal Services Use CasesThere are five classes of law firm workflows which are used independently or in combination, e.g. collecting data and signing.

OpportunitiesLaw firms can categorize their use case deployments in one of four quadrants. Use cases can be labeled with a higher or lower ROI in combination with a faster or slower Implementation speed. A snapshot of Legal Services example use cases is provided here.

Access the “Use Case Map Tool” at bottom of the DocuSign Knowledge Market homepage for a list of many Legal Services use cases that can be sorted by area, signature type, speed, ROI and inter-nal/external focus.

SignBinding legal documents that require a legally-defensible signature

NotifyUse cases that are intended to inform or notify employees, clients, counsel, agents, suppliers or vendors

AcknowledgeUse cases requiring con�rmation that the employee, client, counsel, agent, supplier or vendor has read/agreed/complied

ApproveUse cases that ask for an approval as opposed to a more formal signature

Collect DataUse cases where information needs to be collected from the recipient(s)

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Legal Services Example Use Cases

In addition to practice areas, a law firm is naturally comprised of legal operations functions that are essential to the business, employees and clients. The DocuSign System of Agreement can also au-tomate workflows across those functions. For example, these functions can include:

• Legal Operations & IT: record storage services, vendor contracts, etc. • Human Resources: candidate/new hire paperwork, policy distribution, PTO approval, etc.• Finance: travel and expense approval, direct deposit forms, purchase orders, etc.

Access the Use Case Map tool to select departmental options or review the list of offerings here on the Knowledge Market.

Invoice Cease and Desist Letter

Collection Letter

Corporate M&A Agreement

Letter of Intent

Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

Patent Applications

Retention Agreements

Subscription Agreement

Voter Agreement

Waiver of Notice

Engagement Letter

Board Resolution

Insertion Order

Notice of Meeting

Copyright Notice Litigation Notice

Ret

urn

on In

vens

tmen

t

Implementation Speed

Collect Data

Sign

Approve

Notify

Acknowledge

Slow Fast

High

Low

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Following a Use Case through the Agreement ProcessTrack the life cycle of a Legal Services engagement letter use case through the DocuSign System of Agreement Platform. The example below includes both a “Standard” and “Advanced” workflow. “Standard” examples use the DocuSign Web Application out of the box. Leverage the “Advanced” examples for the next step in your digital transformation journey.

Prepare

Action Example

Import documents and data

Standard: Create a template of the engagement letter signing workflow to ease the process of sending to the client and other recipient.

Advanced: Generate the engagement letter directly from the DocuSign platform and import the client’s data to create and send directly to the client. Alternatively, seamlessly create and send the engagement letter to DocuSign directly from your existing document management system including iManage, NetDocuments, and others using pre-integrated connectors.

Enable real-time questions and comments in a chat interface. The interactions are captured as part of the policy completion record.

Live-Chat using DocuSign Comments* with client who has questions about the engagement letter before signing.

Sign

Action Example

Route

Standard: Send the engagement letter to the client, then automatically route the completed envelope to the client.

Advanced: Use the DocuSign API or a pre-built integration to connect with intake tools such as Lexicata or Intapp and gather data from your client intake form to auto-route the engagement letter.

IdentifyStandard: Use one of DocuSign’s Signer Authentication Options as a second layer of signer identification prior to the client viewing and acknowledging or signing the engagement letter.

SignStandard: Send the notice to the client via email to acknowledge or sign on their computer or mobile device.

*Contact your Account Manager to enable Comments on your account.

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Act

Action Example

Update other systems with information from signed agreements

Standard: All recipients complete the engagement letter by signing. Final routing in the DocuSign eSignature workflow can be configured to notify operations to set up a client matter number and file.

Advanced: Automatically store the engagement letter in the DocuSign platform’s document and contract management system or store in iManage, NetDocuments or Doxly via a pre-built partner integration.

Trigger processesAdvanced: Automatically store the engagement letter in a legal document management system and trigger a billing or payment option for the engagement letter.

Manage

Action Example

Retain

Standard: Completed engagement letter is automatically stored in the DocuSign Web Application.

Advanced: Completed engagement letter is automatically routed for imaging and indexing directly to the DocuSign platform’s centralized document repository or is routed via a pre-built partner integration to a document management solution such as iManage, or NetDocuments.

Retrieve

Standard: Use multiple search criteria to find and extract the engagement letter and its metadata from the DocuSign Web Application.

Advanced: Perform an advanced search to locate and retrieve agreements from DocuSign’s centralized document repository via tagging and automatic metadata from the workflow to the document.

Report

Standard: Create, save and schedule reports on envelope, recipient and sender data in the DocuSign Web Application.

Advanced: Use the DocuSign API to pull envelope data to your document management system to produce advanced reporting and metrics outputs on notice usage, envelope velocity, etc.

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Top Legal Services Use Cases

Below are examples of top use cases to consider for legal services. Access the “Use Case Map Tool” on the DocuSign Knowledge Market homepage for a list of many more Legal Services use case examples.

Area Use Case TypeImp. Speed

ROI Focus

Client Communication

Engagement Letter/Retention Agreement

Sign Medium Medium External

Board & Leadership Communication

Voter Agreement Sign Fast Medium Internal

GovernanceCorporate M&A Agreement

Sign Fast High External

LitigationClass Action/Ligitation Notice

Sign/Acknowledge

Fast High External

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How Linklaters Saved Costs and Created A Smoother ProcessBased in London, Linklaters is an international law firm with over 5000 employees across 20 differ-ent countries. Linklaters identified several key challenges around their agreement processes. Their processes with physical documents were slow and time-consuming for both their clients and those supporting them internally. Valuable and costly attorney time was being spent in the administration of signing documents. In addition, the logistics of the signing parties physically meeting incurred addi-tional time and financial costs. As a busy and modern international law firm, Linklaters was seeking to establish a smoother and more efficient process.

Linklaters chose the DocuSign solution because it provided the legal validity required, a widely ac-cepted eSignature experience, and the capability for users to sign from almost anywhere on nearly any device. After implementing DocuSign, they realized a faster, more efficient and economical signing process. The attorneys were free to focus on negotiations and legal complexities instead of administrative tasks, saving their clients hourly fees. DocuSign’s solution streamlined the process, enabling all parties to view, comment upon and sign agreements without protracted processes or requiring travel. Learn more about Linklaters and the DocuSign solution in this short video.

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Path to Modernizing Your System of AgreementThe following is a high-level summary of the customer success tools recommended to help you accelerate the rollout of DocuSign throughout your firm. The opportunities, methodologies, and re-sources below can be applied to your agreement processes, regardless of your practice areas.

Action Resources

Assess

• Review the “Use Case Map Tool” on the Knowledge Market homepage for use case ideas and to prioritize your top use cases

• Use our Back to Basics: Steps to Achieve Digital Maturity whitepaper to help you identify, prioritize and measure use cases.

Implement

• Review the “Use Case Deployment Toolkit” for best practices, tools and templates to increase new use case implementation success

• Access the wide-range of DocuSign University (DSU) Self-Paced Courses to ensure the DocuSign project team is prepared to effectively understand and use the DocuSign Web Application

• Use the “Production Go-Live Checklist” and, depending on the size, the “Going Live with Large Volume Use Cases” checklist to safeguard against missing critical steps prior to the go-live date.

Accelerate

• Take the next step in project design with the Solution Design Workbook, which was built by our DocuSign Professional Services team.

• Take a few minutes to complete the Designing for Your System of Agreement Assessment to identify any gaps or areas of improvement within your project.

Expand

• Expand DocuSign knowledge with DSU’s robust learning management site. Self-paced, webinar and classroom training offerings cover everyone from the beginner to the more advanced DocuSign Administrator.

• Increase adoption across your firm and with your clients: – Adoption Toolkit – Creating a DocuSign Portal

• Learn how other companies implemented DocuSign: Aon, Microsoft, AstraZeneca, and more.

SummaryWhether you are just getting started or are looking to further develop and enable the end-to-end process automation of your law firm’s System of Agreement, this Legal Services Use Cases Playbook will help accelerate your path forward.