Case Study
Legal Department Transformation and Contract Solutions Drive Efficiencies and Transaction Readiness
The C-suite of a mid-sized transportation company sought to improve efficiency within its legal processes, expand departmental agility, contain costs and establish transaction readiness. Working closely with the general counsel and chief information officer, FTI Technology’s experts supported the organization with multiple phases of legal department transformation efforts, including assessing a contract lifecycle management tool, redesigning contract analysis and improving the department’s strategic contributions.
Situation
The organization’s existing CLM platform was not being used effectively, placing strain on the legal team and making it difficult for them to manage resources across high-volume, business-critical agreements. FTI Technology’s initial assessment found numerous areas for improvement in process and technology maturity, which required outside expertise to design more efficient processes, tighten roles and responsibilities and enable improved strategic implementation of existing tools.
The company also needed to organize and analyze lengthy legacy leases to inform the diligence process for a potential transaction. Specifically, the company needed to understand notice and consent requirements and termination rights that might be triggered by the transaction. Additionally, the general counsel wanted to gain clarity into how contracts had been negotiated historically, for the development of a negotiation playbook to implement post-acquisition, including obligations to invest, key risk allocation provisions and restrictions on competitive and operational behaviors.
Our Role
FTI Technology's experts began with a comprehensive assessment of the client's CLM platform and use, benchmarking internal practices against industry standards. Based on the assessment, they developed a framework of recommendations and a roadmap of short-, mid- and long-term goals, including streamlining high-volume, high-touch contracts and creating a central repository for all agreements.
Throughout the engagement, FTI Technology provided guidance and education for the legal team to align on the fundamental capabilities and expectations of their CLM, document management and collaboration systems and specific actions they could take to improve processes within these platforms.
Across these transformation exercises, FTI Technology’s experts provided:
- A robust data model comprising 50 defined data points across 15 categories, each supported by detailed field-level guidance.
- Future state workflows and technology design, improving efficiencies and establishing sustainable change management strategies.
- Organization of the contract portfolio into priority and non-priority workstreams, enabling the team to fast-track critical items and deliver the priority work on an expedited timeline.
- Guardrails within the platform for instances requiring additional legal review and technical workflows to address pain points in the existing system, providing the client with recommendations for ongoing contract management and tracking.
- IQ.AI by FTI Technology ™, a proprietary suite of artificial intelligence solutions, to extract relevant language within contracts and analyze for insights into notice and consent requirements and termination rights to support transaction diligence. Provided visibility into key risk and liability areas, to support the organization with negotiations.
- As part of IQ.AI, large language models were also used to extract information and correct issues from poor quality scans of contracts. Machine learning models were used to provide quality control across the analysis.
- Hands-on education and change management support for new tooling and processes, to build internal capabilities in line with organizational goals.
Our Impact
As a trusted extension of the general counsel and the legal team, FTI Technology provided a detailed CLM assessment and legal department transformation roadmap to drive process improvement, efficiency, strategic decision making and dealmaking readiness.
The engagement demonstrated how legal operations and contract analysis expertise helps legal departments navigate complex challenges across technology optimization and transaction readiness, while building sustainable operational improvements that deliver long-term value.
Additional results:
- IQ.AI for Contracts enabled rapid insights across a complex contract portfolio while ensuring accuracy and cost containment.
- Comprehensive visibility into critical agreements to better understand strategic opportunities, negotiating power, transaction structures and risks.
- A sustainable foundation for efficient CLM and legal process, enabling a lean legal team to scale and optimize resources during periods of high demand and complexity.