HighQ is set to launch a new platform for corporate legal teams that will include work and collaboration tools for enterprise legal management, document management, matter management, legal intake and self-service, contract management and vendor management.
The launch follows six to 12 months of research into the corporate sector, including engaging with legal teams ranging from big banks and manufacturers to small teams, to work out what their needs are and how the HighQ technology can be productised to address them.
While HighQ has long had relationships with in-house teams, particularly through its virtual data room, the corporate sector has for the first time become a core focus, and the London-headquartered vendor is creating a dedicated team to support and help evolve the new offering, which is being led by director of legal solutions, Rob MacAdam.
HighQ’s chief product and strategy officer, Stuart Barr, told us: “While we’ve been working with in-house teams for a long time what has what changed is that this is a proper focus for us now. We recognise that law firms, including Addleshaw Goddard and Osborne Clarke, have been providing some fantastic solutions to corporate legal teams and we’re taking on that market more directly.
“With the rise of the legal operations movement; the shift towards in-house teams taking on more work themselves; and in-house teams being under the same pressure to be efficient and demonstrate value but also to manage and engage with their outside counsel more effectively, they struggle.
“They don’t have the same access to resources as law firms. They aren’t set up in the same way and often end up with access to generic technology like SharePoint and often don’t have document or contract management systems, so we’re saying and our USP is we’re not a point solution and we can give them access to our intelligent legal operations hub and give them a platform that gives these six core solutions in one.”
HighQ has already partnered with corporate legal teams from companies like HelloFresh, Zillow, HSBC and more.
Keep an eye out on http://www.legaltechnogy.com for a forthcoming in-depth interview with Barr about the new HighQ platform and what it says about legal sector data trends.