Fifth annual Legal Innovator Awards celebrate commitment to excellence and innovation
Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions has this week announced the winners of its fifth annual Legal Innovator Awards at its virtual premier user conference ELM Amplify 2021. The awards are designed to celebrate clients who have transformed legal operations.
“I am delighted to announce the winners of the fifth annual Legal Innovator Awards. Citi, Equitable and Swiss Re have all impressed our experts with their ongoing efforts to leverage technology to deliver more efficient and predictable legal services, in turn transforming their business,” said Raja Sengupta, General Manager and Executive Vice President of ELM Solutions. “These organizations demonstrate a truly innovative approach to legal operations and should be applauded.”
Citi, the leading global bank, was recognized for its continued efforts to enhance its Legal data quality and controls, productivity and spend management, and reduce technology risks. After a strategic review of its organization, processes, systems and controls, Citi was able to make significant progress on key priorities like the centralization and optimization of internal and external spend, risk-based management of its law firm network and enhancing its third and fourth party information security controls by moving to the centralized ELM Solutions’ Passport platform.
Citi is also focused on making meaningful progress on its supplier diversity and Action for Racial Equity goals and understands the importance of data in that journey. Passport enabled the bank to roll out a fully integrated, data driven, Legal Supplier Diversity and Inclusion program across its outside counsel network to explore increased opportunities for diverse attorneys to lead Citi matters and client relationships by securely gathering information, and ultimately making that data actionable. Maitane Arozena, Citi’s Global Legal Solutions Director, Operations & Technology, shared examples of the successful strategy with delegates at ELM Amplify 2021.
Equitable, a leading financial services organization, won its accolade for developing a modernization strategy and technology roadmap which has resulted in significant operational improvements in its law department. Judges noted how Equitable has shown itself to be a forward thinking and cutting-edge partner, looking to explore and utilize new processes and functionality with a keen eye on the possibility of developing new processes or features. The benefits of this approach were shared with ELM Amplify 2021 attendees by Mike Lordi, Equitable’s Head of Law Department Operations and Dana Harris, Head of Strategy and Project Management.
Independent recognition of Equitable’s innovation is also evidenced by the fact that the firm was named a Buying Legal award winner for its Diversity initiative, and a runner up in the Innovation category. Buying Legal is the international trade organization for legal procurement.
Swiss Re, one of the world's leading providers of reinsurance, insurance and other forms of insurance-based risk transfer, was also recognized as an ELM Solutions Legal Innovator Award winner. The accolade acknowledges the company’s strategy around operational excellence and for using Artifical Intelligence to assist with invoice review in capturing anomalies and billing pattern changes that would not be realized in a standard eBilling platform. Swiss Re has worked tirelessly to provide better vendor information to the business users that help analyze how their vendors stack up to each other, ensuring the selection of the right vendor for the right case. At Amplify 2021, Dr. Orazio Difruscolo, Swiss Re's Head of Claims Legal Sourcing, shared the journey to get AI successfully embraced in his claims legal department.
