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Corporate paralegals must have an attention to detail and stringent organizational skills to thrive in their careers. They also need excellent communication skills and an inherent ability to simplify complex legal jargon for corporate managers, directors, and shareholders to comprehend.

Since paralegals spend most of their days conducting research for cases, tracking deadlines, managing schedules, and filing minute book records, great organizational and communication skills are the bedrock of how paralegals build sustainable careers. Additionally, they need the right tools to manage expectations and monitor all important records.

Why entity management software is a paralegal’s best friend

Among the most helpful resources for corporate paralegals are entity management solutions. Entity management software is an intuitive, cloud-based platform that simplifies how legal teams manage large amounts of data for various legal entities.

As a corporate paralegal, managing all the legal entity affairs for the parent company is a taxing challenge in itself. If the entity has multiple subsidiaries under its corporate umbrella, it becomes significantly more difficult to remain organized, responsive, and transparent with all the people involved in managing those corporate affairs.

Entity management software automates many clerical tasks with time-efficient workflows. This is the best way to maintain those coveted organizational skills as you manage multiple entities and subsidiaries. Additionally, by automating most of the clerical work, you have more time to address any questions or concerns about minute book records from corporate executive teams.

How entity management software supports paralegal skills

Organizational and communication skills are critical components of a successful paralegal’s career. Now, let’s break down some of the tactical competencies of a paralegal’s day to day activity and how entity management software helps paralegals conduct themselves.

Managing documentation for mergers and acquisitions

Suppose the business entity your paralegals represent is undergoing an acquisition of a separate entity. Think about all the steps involved in an acquisition process:

• Researching the entity in question
• Contacting executives of that entity
• Making introductions with your own executive team
• Submitting an offer to the financial and legal heads of the entity
• Conducting due diligence into the entity’s financial history
• Preparing the documents that legalize the note of acquisition
• Preparing the documents that finalize the acquisition deal
• Submitting all the paperwork with regulators

It’s a lot of work, and it requires managing time with a lot of different stakeholders. Entity management software allows your paralegals to maintain diligent and digitized records that monitor each step of the process. Your paralegals use the platform to track important filing dates for each stage of the process, keeping an organized checklist of signatory approvals necessary to complete those files. They can then note the record on the platform so the process can continue.

Maintaining accurate records to support corporate governance

Here’s another hypothetical scenario. Suppose your company has received a summons from federal regulators to conduct an audit. Your legal department is tasked with leading the coordination with the regulators to keep the business out of any legal quandaries.

Entity management software is one of the best resources to maintain accurate and diligent records of all corporate transactions. Every time a purchase is made, an acquisition is conducted, or a shareholder invests new capital into the entity, it can all be recorded within the platform to promote proper corporate governance.

The consequences of failing to comply with corporate governance policies can potentially bankrupt your business entity. Look no further than the FTX case that forced the company into insolvency and resulted in criminal charges against the founder as he awaits trial.

Corporate governance ensures your entity is prepared for any regulatory inquiries or investigations. Your paralegals use entity management software to maintain accurate minute book records, and they can assist your in-house counsel with communicating the details of those records to the regulators at the appropriate times.

Protecting confidential entity information with advanced security measures

Any corporate documentation is extremely sensitive and confidential. It requires paralegals to maintain rigid organizational standards to protect the contents of those records.

The problem with traditional methods of corporate recordkeeping is that paper files are so easy to lose or misplace. Suppose a record with a signature from a corporate manager is lost in cluttered office spaces, negating the authorization applied to the record in question. What kind of setback does that create for the company as a whole?

Additionally, this process is very tedious and time consuming. On average, it takes paralegals up to five minutes to sort, tag, file, and organize a single page in a minute book record. Each minute book contains numerous pages, and there are likely multiple minute books in any standard office filing cabinet. Multiply all those records by the number of pages stored within, and you can see how much of your paralegal’s time is spent organizing paperwork in unsecure ways.

Entity management software is backed by biometric and hardware key authentication. This ensures that only those who have been given specific access to the platform can view the records. It protects the security of your business entity, an important step in the road towards corporate compliance and good governance.

Time is a luxury that many businesses can’t afford to spare. Global organizations always seek more efficient and innovative solutions to streamline workflows, accelerate deliverables, and generate results in the pursuit of growth.

In the legal entity management field, it’s no different. Legal departments, corporate secretaries, and compliance professionals are often inundated with repetitive administrative or clerical workloads. In between managing minute book records and corporate documentation, these teams of professionals must meet filing deadlines and manage inquiries from jurisdictional regulators to remain in compliance.

Global entity management systems assist legal teams with more streamlined and efficient methodologies to support corporate compliance. Here are five of the chief benefits of global legal entity management systems and how they help modernize entity management workflows.

Increased focus on compliance deadlines

One of the biggest responsibilities for legal entity managers is to stay on top of all the administrative tasks to help an entity remain in compliance. Examples of these tasks include:

• Uploading corporate organization charts
• Managing compliance deadlines
• Coordinating multiple calendars
• Filing statutory and date-based compliance tasks
• Completing minute book records
• Generating annual reports
• Modernizing corporate documentation workflows

With a global legal entity management system, you can streamline all of these tasks. Built-in compliance modules include pre-built templates on how to create each of these corporate records to help your organization remain in compliance. It makes it easier to create, edit, and manage the documentation, saving valuable working time for your entire legal department.

Reduced risks of non-compliance penalties

Remaining in compliance with jurisdictional laws keeps your company from falling into legal and financial peril. One need look no further than the collapse of FTX as an example of a company operating in bad faith and the fallout from those non-compliance business decisions.

Using a legal entity management system, you store all your important corporate data in one centralized location. There’s no risk that paper records will go missing or be accidentally tossed in the trash. Everything is stored in cloud-based servers that make it easy and convenient to access corporate records whenever a situation calls for clarity.

Increased security with no technical expertise required

Transitioning your corporate documentation to a legal entity management cloud is not only a time saving benefit. You can accelerate documentation workflows without adding additional technical expertise to your company’s payroll.

Legal entity management systems include no-code document generation features. You can easily create and customize legal documents without the need for technical expertise to complete these tasks. The platforms are intuitive enough to generate PDF-style templates of these documents that are easy to modify as necessary.

Improved corporate transparency with regulators

When regulators come calling, you want to provide clear and accurate minute book records. Transparent documentation makes any scheduled or unscheduled auditing session quick and painless. Satisfying regulators with your diligent recordkeeping is one of the best ways to avoid the repercussions of non-compliance business activities.

Since all minute book records are stored in your legal entity management system, you can sit down with regulators for scheduled sessions and walk them through the documentation. Advanced search filters allow you to pull up any records under scrutiny in a matter of seconds, which will go a long way towards keeping your entity out of legal hot water.

Greater efficiencies with meetings and signatory approvals

We end where we began around the idea of time saving efficiencies. Using cloud-based global entity management systems, you can conduct all meetings with entity executives, directors, and shareholders from any location.
Data shows that nearly three out of four corporate executives want greater flexibility when it comes to running important meetings for the business. Since minute book records are stored within the entity management system’s cloud-based servers, the records can be viewed from anywhere with an internet connection.

Imagine granting your legal entity management team the ability to conduct minute book record meetings and reviews with key stakeholders at their convenience. Instead of coordinating a review session across multiple calendars to arrange time for everyone to be in the same room, the meeting can be conducted virtually from anywhere. Plus, the built-in e-signature feature makes it easier to get signatory approval on any finalized documents.

The legal industry is rapidly adopting cloud-based technology, and for good reason. From increased efficiency and productivity to enhanced accessibility and scalability, the benefits of cloud-based technology are numerous. In this blog post, we’ll explore the advantages of cloud-based technology in the legal industry, as discussed by Tiffany Pereira, Director of Customer Success at MinuteBox.

In this post, we’ll cover how cloud-based technology:

• Streamlines routine tasks and centralizes disparate systems
• Boosts productivity and efficiency
• Eliminates the need to maintain expensive and insecure server structures
• Allows for instant adoption of new features and functionalities
• Can have scheduled downtime windows

The move to the cloud has been accelerated by the pandemic, and it’s clear to see why. Cloud-based technologies like MinuteBox are becoming increasingly popular tools across all law firms. Investing in a serverless architecture is an effective way to streamline processes, save on costs, increase scalability, and enhance accessibility.

Watch the full interview, The Advantages of Cloud-Based Technology in the Legal Industry

Tiffany explains that practice management systems and entity management systems can help to streamline routine tasks and centralize seemingly disparate systems. This results in a boost in productivity and efficiency, allowing for more time to be allocated to clients. Additionally, there is no need to maintain an expensive and insecure server structure, and the adoption of new features and functionalities is instant.

Another advantage of cloud-based technology is the lack of scheduled downtime windows. Tiffany explains that this can be a huge value add for a firm, as it eliminates the frustration of not being able to access the system during certain times.

Overall, it’s clear that the benefits of cloud-based technology in the legal industry are numerous. From increased efficiency and productivity to enhanced accessibility and scalability, the advantages of cloud-based technology are undeniable. As Tiffany concludes, “being able to say, we can push out that change and there is no downtime, it’s not gonna affect any user, is a huge value add for any firm.”

Corporate compliance refers to internal policies and procedures enacted by a legal entity in response to federal or provincial laws and regulations. An enforced compliance program detects and prevents any violations of those regulations, protecting the corporation from any fines or criminal indictments that may occur as a result of those violations.

So, how does a legal entity enact an effective corporate compliance program? We’ve done the research, and we’ve identified seven elements of an effective compliance program that all legal entities should administer in their own corporate structures. Let’s break down those seven steps.

Why is corporate compliance important?

Before diving into the specific sequences of a compliance program, let’s begin by answering a very fundamental question. Why is corporate compliance so important in the first place?

A corporate compliance program helps organizations prevent any discrepancies that could result in non-compliance penalties for the business. Canadian regulators are cracking down on white collar crimes, targeting organizations that violate compliance policies.

Crackdowns are being implemented in response to the Cullen Commission. The commission’s report was the culmination of years-long money laundering inquiries in British Columbia. The report’s recommendations were submitted to the federal government in Ottawa.

Following the submission, the RCMP was tasked with enforcing new regulations against complex financial crimes. This resulted in the creation of the Integrated Market Enforcement Team’s Special Advisory Group and the Canadian Financial Crime Agency. The purpose of these institutions is to hold accountable any individuals or legal entities that commit fraud, money-laundering, insider trading, organized crime, and other financial crimes that put Canadians at risk.

What is the purpose of a corporate compliance program?

The federal government and the national police force are enforcing compliance laws to reduce the amount of white collar crime across Canada. Organizations that lack effective compliance policies are at risk of being swept up in these investigations. If there is evidence of deliberate malfeasance, businesses can be subject to steep financial penalties for non-compliance.

Therefore, the purpose of a corporate compliance program is to mitigate risk and protect organizations from severe, long-term financial losses. An effective corporate compliance program sets boundaries to enforce permissible conduct and good governance.

7 elements of an effective compliance program

So, what are the 7 elements of an effective compliance program? Here’s what you need to know to create a corporate compliance program that will protect your organization from unwanted regulatory investigations, penalties, and other long-term consequences.

1. Documented policies and procedures

Documentation of policies, procedures, rules, and controls demonstrates your company’s determination to abide by compliance laws. Written documentation enables compliance officers to enforce the mandate and ensure the organization “practices what it preaches.”

You can simplify the documentation process by using entity management systems with built-in compliance modules. A built-in compliance framework monitors your organizational charts, calendars, workflows, and other templates for any errors, statutory non-compliance, and date-based compliance tasks that may be lacking. These automated workflows help your organization follow the jurisdictional letter of the law so that you always remain in compliance.

1. Designated compliance officers

Org. charts provide oversight into the various executives and directors responsible for managing the legal entity. Among the featured positions on your organizational charts should be a Chief Compliance Officer, whose purpose is to enforce the documented compliance policies and procedures.

A Chief Compliance Officer must have the authority to maintain direct communication with all executive officers and members of the Board of Directors. While it’s not mandated, the person selected for this position should have previous legal experience. This will help the officer enforce the protocols and protect the organization from inadvertent non-compliance.

1. Effective training procedures

Training is absolutely essential to an effective compliance program. Once the policies have been created, the Chief Compliance Officer and his/her team must enact training protocols to properly educate employees, business partners, executives, directors, and shareholders on the fundamentals of the corporate compliance program.

The purpose of compliance training is to ensure everyone associated with the entity fully understands the rules of corporate compliance. Once the training is complete, updates should be made to minute book records notarizing the completion of the training programs. If outside regulators ever investigate the company, these records will show that the entity has crafted effective corporate compliance programs.

1. Whistleblower reporting programs

If there are incidents of behaviour that are not in compliance with corporate policies, there needs to be a reporting mechanism in place. Sometimes, individuals who witness those examples of non-compliance actions fear the ramifications of speaking up.

Part of an effective compliance program is giving those witnesses the option of anonymously reporting the facts. This will help increase accountability and allow organizations to catch non-compliance behaviours before they cost the company significant penalties. People will feel more comfortable reporting the truth to compliance officers, allowing those officers to nip the problems in the bud before they spiral out of control.

1. Monitoring and auditing

The Chief Compliance Officer’s roles and responsibilities include monitoring and auditing the corporate compliance program. These reviews of the program should be done periodically, and if any issues are identified, those problems should be immediately addressed and fixed.

An entity management platform with a built-in compliance module can assist with the monitoring and auditing process of your compliance program. Use the compliance module to review the documented policies and ensure no errors or statutory non-compliance tasks are missing from the corporate program.

1.  Enforcement of compliance policies

The Chief Compliance Officer is also responsible for enforcing the compliance program. This means subjecting every member of the organization, including the CEO and the Board of Directors, to the same standards and requirements as interns or contract workers.

Compliance is a ubiquitous requirement that all levels of the organization must abide by to remain compliant with the laws of the land. Enforcement of the compliance program ensures that no special treatment is awarded and no bending of the rules is prohibited.

1. Investigating and responding to non-compliance

Finally, investigations and responses to non-compliance behaviours are the only way to ensure the program is enforced across the organization. Compliance officers must step in and lead the investigations when the organization is at risk of non-compliance.

A compliance program that has no teeth is an ineffective set of guidelines. Properly responding to and investigating incidents of non-compliance may result in short-term pain, but it will effectively prevent the organization from becoming subjugated to stiff penalties from the law.

Corporations hire experienced legal professionals to oversee legal entity management on behalf of the business. These hires can be either in-house, under the direction of general counsel, or as contracted members of an outside law firm.

In either scenario, legal professionals rely on their team of law clerks or paralegals to help administer entity management best practices. This includes assembling all corporate filings into one centralized database of records to maintain business compliance with regulatory laws.

How corporate entities maintain business compliance

Legal teams follow entity management practices, policies, and procedures to maintain business compliance with regulatory authorities. Entity management is a governance system that organizes the corporate records of a legal entity to improve business compliance and corporate transparency.

Effective entity management organizes records from an array of sources into structured minute book records. Examples of prominent sources to collect entity management data include:

• Organizational charts
• Organizational calendars
• Corporate workflows
• Statutory non-compliance records
• Date-based compliance records
• Clerical and administrative records

Many legal professionals use entity management software to assist with the management of corporate data in support of business compliance. Entity management software is a specialized system built by legal minds for legal minds. It simplifies how law firms and legal departments manage large amounts of corporate data in service of numerous legal entities.

Four tips to help paralegals maintain business compliance

Simplification goes a long way to helping paralegals and law clerks remain on top of the entire business compliance process. Each record of data must be inputted into the master entity management database, which requires diligent recordkeeping skills and vast amounts of time dedicated to this process.

So, how can you make life a little easier for your paralegal team, while still ensuring that business compliance is maintained? Entity management software is one of the best resources to simplify the workload. Here are four helpful ways these platforms will help your paralegal team maintain business compliance, and also preserve their own mental health.

1. No-code document assembly

One of the biggest reasons companies choose not to insert modern technology into their workflows is that platforms require technical expertise to manage. Many legal departments don’t have the staffing or resources to invest in a tech guru. In fact, according to the Association of Corporate Counsel, the median total of legal staff in any given department is just six people.

The chief benefit of entity management software is that it’s built to support the non-technically savvy legal department. The platform includes no-code document generation templates, allowing teams to leverage intuitive software that easily creates and customizes legal documents with no technical requirements. This approach significantly reduces the time it takes to create documents to a few simple minutes.

1. Time to consult with stakeholders

Paralegals and law clerks often wear multiple hats. In addition to managing corporate entity data, their responsibilities include serving as the primary point of contact between the heads of the legal department and the other key stakeholders of the business.

Scheduling time to converse with those stakeholders with fully briefed and informed documentation is a challenge for paralegals. Since the average team has only six functioning staff members, juggling all these responsibilities without sacrificing the requirements for effective business compliance is a tall order.

The simplicity of entity management software streamlines the entire business compliance workflow. Using these systems, legal teams save valuable hours on recordkeeping, enabling more prompt and effective meetings with key entity stakeholders. It’s a workflow that generates value and improves the efficiency of meetings throughout the entire organization.

1. Greater alignment between attorneys and paralegals

Any documentation submitted to regulators will undergo meticulous scrutiny. Business entities provide transparent records to regulators, who then review and make their judgment on whether the entities meet the standards for business compliance.

Sometimes, supportive positioning statements that provide additional context to the records make or break the case for regulators. If there’s misalignment between the legal professionals and paralegals who submit the records to regulators, the argument may become diluted or confusing.

By using a platform that centralizes all records and streamlines the time investment necessary to maintain those records, attorneys and clerks can dedicate more time to making their arguments in clear, concise, and aligned manners. It will also allow any misalignments or disagreements over submissions to be squashed without leaving paralegals feeling threatened or at risk of dismissal.

1. Paralegals will not succumb to burnout

The most consistent benefit of entity management systems is the time saving efficiencies they provide to resource-strapped legal teams. Valuable working time is granted back to legal departments, chiefly, the paralegals, whose primary duties are to maintain those records.
Paralegals are under enormous pressure to maintain business compliance. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed at times, especially if workloads become overwhelming due to rigid time constraints. Using entity management software, the work gets done faster, paralegals feel accomplished, and creeping thoughts of burnout dissipate into the subconscious. It’s a win all around for everyone!

In the legal industry, innovation and technology are playing a bigger role than ever before. From document automation to virtual closing lists, technology is changing the way firms work and operate. In this interview, Karen Tuschak and Karen Anderson, both experts in the field, share their insights on the practice areas where innovation is having the greatest impact within firms right now.

• Corporate practice areas are leading the way in innovation and technology adoption
• Cloud-based technology is replacing traditional software licenses
• Transactional practice areas such as banking and finance, real estate, and litigation are also adopting technology for document automation and e-discovery
• Corporate databases can be utilized by other practice areas for increased efficiency

Karen Anderson, who specializes in corporate practice areas, says that innovation is changing everything in her field. “Clients can access their records, it’s about having cloud-based technology rather than licenses for this and that. I think we will continue to see this level of change for a few years. Everybody is in the midst of change right now in corporate groups.”

Karen Tuschak adds that any transactional practice is also starting to adopt technology for document automation and virtual closing lists. “Banking and finance are adopting document automation and virtual closing lists and checklists. It’s unbelievable when they start to wrap their minds around things that we used to do in corporations with automation. Its particularly effective where they have similar large clients, and using templates. Especially in real estate with things like condo closings, real estate transactions, anything that can be automated is changing the game.”

Watch the full interview, Innovations in Transactional Practice Areas: How Technology is Changing the Game

The use of technology in transactional practice areas such as banking and finance and real estate is allowing for increased efficiency and cost savings for clients. Karen T. also notes that litigation has been utilizing e-discovery for some time, but other transactional practice areas are also starting to adopt these tools.

Furthermore, Karen T. highlights the value of using corporate databases in other practice areas. “Banking and finance is doing things for the firm’s corporate clients. The information is already there. So just finding new ways to incorporate their documents.”

In summary, the practice areas that are seeing the most innovation right now are corporate and transactional practices such as banking and finance, real estate, and litigation. Corporate is undergoing major changes with the implementation of cloud-based technology and client access to records, while transactional practices are using document automation and virtual closing lists to streamline their processes.

Overall, it is clear that technology is playing a major role in shaping the future of these practice areas and firms that are able to embrace and leverage these new tools and processes will be well-positioned for success.