Legal Operations/ Legal Managed Services
As multinational corporations grow in size, their organizational structure also becomes larger and more complex. This makes it more difficult to comply with the local legislation applicable to the respective corporate entity. In light of stricter regulatory requirements for corporate transparency, companies must always keep an eye on the status and development of their group structure. Many companies recognize the benefits of having compliance and governance tasks are in the hands of a single service provider and implemented uniformly for all locations worldwide. This is where our teams come in with legal operations and legal managed services.
What EY Law can do for you
Combining experienced legal advice from an integrated global network of local counsel on the one hand and innovative, technology-based services on the other, our clients are supported by our legal operations team to navigate the transition to a digitized business world.
We offer you a uniform model and platform for all legal processes for your legal department. In this way, you combine legal services (managed services) with the advice of our global network of legal specialists who are available worldwide to deliver consistent, high-quality and cost-effective solutions with the legal operations platform of EY Law.
Our legal operations teams ensure the use of award-winning, industry-leading technology based on intelligent systems and data. This combines comprehensive quality, risk management and dashboard tools with a dedicated customer support team that understands your company’s culture, risk appetite and needs.
Using our legal operating model, companies can manage legal issues that come into their legal department through a leading contracting process. Work that requires legal advice is forwarded to the appropriate contact person – either fully automated, to external or to highly specialized consulting teams. This makes it easy for companies to manage all stages efficiently and effectively – from the first legal contact to completion, including the preparation of documents.
With new, advanced technology that complements existing professional strengths and know-how, our digital project management office increases the insight into ongoing processes and supports early risk identification and transparency via comprehensive live dashboards. In addition, our model offers flexibility and adaptability, as it extends to all legal tasks and other legal systems.
EY Legal Operations can support your business goals – for example centralization, compliance optimization and the elimination of burdensome, repetitive and standardized tasks in the legal area. Or use EEY Legal Operations to better understand and control your legal expenses. As a component that is seamlessly integrated into your legal function, we can optimize risk management and assist in collecting and analyzing the right data for informed corporate decisions. This allows your employees to concentrate on important tactical and strategic tasks.
Better and quicker decisions thanks to the use of data.
Just imagine…
- All instructions that reach your legal department would be complete, directly implementable and addressed to the appropriate person, the team or to external third parties
- You could see at a glance all the issues that the legal department is working on internally and externally, as well as their status and risks
- Tasks that can be handled by the company itself would be completed using templates and clauses controlled by the legal and risk functions with comprehensive audit competencies
- You would know the value of all purchase and sales contracts related to the company, product, category, location, or supplier and customer
- You would know about all pending legal proceedings and their backgrounds
- You would know which leases, customer contracts and supplier agreements will soon have to be renewed
- You could oversee the development data of all legal activities and thus support the development of a lean and effective operating model for legal services
Legal IT Services
Legal Operations supports legal departments and related business units in assigning tasks of low, medium or high complexity to internal/ external units, as well as handling them themselves. As a rule, some tasks are also performed by the responsible contacts in our legal operations team. Examples for this are:
1. Contract lifecycle management
We solve two core business and legal problems:
- Which contracts do we have, where are they, what do they contain and what is necessary to adapt them (review of old commitments)?
- How can we turn the handling of contracts and obligations into a business unique business proposition, including a shortened time for contract execution?
Our contacts can implement a technological solution (the same solution we use to provide outsourced contract management services to our customers) that allows your internal teams to handle the entire contract life cycle from customer inquiries to sales/ purchasing activities and legal support and dealing with obligations. In addition, there is the option of providing you at a fixed price with an external IT service team for implementation, seamlessly integrating into the work of your employees and creating internal capacities so that your employees can refocus on important tactical and strategic customer and supplier relationships.
2. Contract localization services
Contract localization services resolve the typically fragmented approach companies take when faced with a global customer base and large volume of sell-side contracts, with frequent questions about local language and applicable laws. Contract localization services offer a technology-based approach that consolidates the contract and change process into a complete solution that combines a customized intake process with a digital project management office (PMO) and the local expertise of EY Law.
Contract localization services are a scalable one-stop-shop solution for translation, localization, project management and individual digital applications for cross-border contracts.
3. Legal Compliance Services – Managed Services
Many companies are faced with the challenge of proving that their legal entities comply with the relevant requirements for secretarial compliance and reporting obligations. These requirements and obligations are subject to constant adjustments and updates and also vary by country and area of responsibility. Multinational corporations are increasingly realizing that limiting themselves to in-house teams in each country is neither practical nor efficient for obtaining all the information required to comply with applicable local regulations.
Our managed services can help. Regardless of your company’s organizational structure, our employees can provide you seamless Entity Management Services in order to set up your business areas well and protect them from fines and violations.
4. Health checks
With our health checks, we review company data and the compliance status of all group companies. During this review, internal data is compared with data in public directories and legally specified records in order to reconcile all data sources. As a result, you will receive a risk assessment that identifies material and non-material risks as well as a detailed action plan. Our services are aimed primarily at clients with acquisition plans or complex organizational structures, as well as at companies that want to have a due diligence check carried out.
5. Annual compliance
Our offer related to annual compliance takes into account all mandatory legal requirements such as:
- Support with all formalities relating to the annual financial statements
- Maintenance and documentation of company data
- Reminder of upcoming compliance dates
- Update of the internal legal entity management system
- Establishing compliance reporting in real time
- Ad hoc changes
We support you with routine changes such as the appointment and dismissal of managing directors, changes to the registered business address and the ownership structure, issuing powers of attorney or amendments to the articles of association.
6. Knowledge acquisition and training
Our knowledge platform provides clients with a central point of contact for current and relevant global information on corporate compliance. Our training program helps board members and executives to understand the governance risks of subsidiaries.
In addition, we provide training specifically tailored to your company’s policies and create management manuals with hands-on information and reference materials. Trainings take place worldwide in the format of online or face-to-face sessions.