Insights and updates
from MinuteBox
Innovation and efficiency are two invaluable perceptions that should automatically come to mind when clients think about your business. From business leaders to corporate counsel and legal professionals, everyone wants innovative technology that provides clear, concrete solutions in the most efficient manner possible.
In the legal community, there’s been a slower adoption of innovative technologies. Many law firms and corporate counsels still rely on paper files to document minute books, corporate records, and business transactions. Many firms continue to stick with the old ways of doing things, despite the fact that 77 percent of business owners want more efficient access to corporate records than what their legal representation currently provides.
Benefits of subsidiary management software
Firms that have chosen to modernize their processes for minute book recordkeeping use subsidiary or entity management software. These solutions help companies define and manage their business entities within digital environments.
All minute books and corporate records from a business are uploaded to cloud-based systems. In essence, this allows anyone with account credentials to view the documents, at their own convenience, from anywhere in the world.
In addition to the added efficiency and cybersecurity features, subsidiary management platforms are also cost saving solutions for firms. Believe it or not, some businesses spend up to $20k per year for the time spent by each legal professional to manage physical binders of corporate minute books.
By moving all corporate documents to a cloud-based secure environment, those records can be found, sorted, organized, and pulled within minutes. As a result, all of those hours spent sorting through files are reallocated towards areas of the business that directly contribute to growth.
Why companies need subsidiary management systems
Subsidiary management solutions help companies become more efficient. Their benefits outline compelling reasons to implement these platforms and innovate your existing processes.
But what are some of the core business reasons why a firm needs subsidiary or entity management platforms? Here are three prime examples of how these solutions can improve your organization.
Reduce overhead and administrative business costs
It costs most companies up to $2,000 to store one five drawer filing cabinet at the office. Depending on the volume of physical corporate documents you have to maintain, you could need dozens of filing cabinets to properly organize all of the paperwork. On top of the storage costs, you have to factor in the amount of time spent filing, sorting, and managing all of those minute book records.
Subsidiary or entity management software radically simplifies the entire process. Get rid of those filing cabinets and help your clerks and legal professionals dedicate more time towards billable hours for clients.
This is also a great selling point to attract new clients to your business. If you can guarantee to your clients that your firm has the ability to minimize time billed for administrative work, your legal services look a lot more enticing to companies in need of those services.
Improve direct relationships with your clients
Nowadays, people have instant access to information. Due to this convenience, people expect immediate answers to their questions so that they can move onto other parts of their days.
Here’s a scenario: suppose you have a client asking about a particular document in one of their corporate records. If you have to go through paper documents one by one to find that record, it’s going to take a lot of time before you can get back to the client with an answer.
In another scenario, a client of a different firm that does use subsidiary management software asks the same question about one of their records. Due to the speed and convenience of finding those files within the platform, that client has their answer within minutes.
In these two scenarios, which client do you think is the most satisfied and would positively rate a firm for having exceptional customer service? By using modern technology, you can build more interpersonal client relationships that become lifelong business partnerships. This may even result in your satisfied client providing free word of mouth advertising to help you gain brand new clients for the firm.
Attract the most prolific talent to join the firm
There are always experienced legal professionals who are ready to make a change in their careers. But they don’t want to just go to any firm; many professionals look for companies that utilize innovative technology because they understand those firms will operate more efficiently.
An efficient operation means more opportunities to increase Legal Recurring Revenue. The opportunity to earn more and contribute real growth towards a firm are very attractive benefits to a highly motivated professional.
Subsidiary management solutions are prime examples of innovative technology that are transforming how the legal entity space operates. Experienced legal minds are attracted to these new and bold solutions, which will help your firm attract these talented professionals rather than lose out to the competition if they’re looking to make a change in their careers.
Are you ready to bring innovation to your legal organization? Join the MinuteBox revolution so that you can become more efficient, provide greater client satisfaction, and help attract the most sought after legal minds in the industry.
Privacy protection and client services are essential to the integrity and reputation of a law firm. Corporations need to know that their confidential records will be in a safe and secure environment. If you’re a law firm, they also need this in order to trust that they can do business with you. Without those assurances, it’s hard for firms to generate new business and maintain mutually beneficial relationships with existing clients.
Cybersecurity is a growing concern for corporations, and for law firms and the clients they represent. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a rise in cyber attacks on many institutions, including schools and hospitals. But many of those attacks were concentrated on some of the nation’s largest legal firms.
For example, in 2021, the American Bar Association put out a report that found 29 percent of law firms reported a security breach. Even more alarming is the fact that one out of five participants in that report could not say if the breach was, in fact, the first time their firewalls had been penetrated.
Digital recordkeeping is still more secure than loose paper
Don’t let those stories sour your belief in digital minute books and corporate recordkeeping. Storing corporate records in digital format is more efficient, more secure, and more cost effective than relying on traditional paper documents.
Here are some interesting stats from a report compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) that further paint that picture:
- It costs law firms up to $2,000 per year to maintain a single 5 drawer filing cabinet
- Over 4 trillion paper documents are circulating the US each and every year
- The rate of new paper documents is growing at up to 200 percent per year
- Legal professionals and business owners spend up to 50 percent of their time searching for corporate records, but only 5 to 15 percent of their time actually reviewing them
Pretty alarming data, right? An over-reliance on paper documentation leaves many companies and the law firms that represent their interests scrambling to find important files in very tight deadlines. When business owners want answers to their legal questions, they don’t want time wasted trying to find the right documents that can provide that clarity. They want answers immediately, and they want to trust that your firm can supply that information.
Cloud-based entity management is more secure and flexible
Rather than have paralegals and legal professionals at the firm spend valuable billable hours searching for physical client records, there’s a more modern, efficient, and secure way to help your legal team provide immediate answers to pressing client questions. That solution is to transfer your client’s records into the cloud with an entity management platform that makes it faster and easier to get clients the information they need when they need it.
When you decide to do away with loose paper documents, you make it far easier to organize and categorize your client’s minute books. Eliminate the need for those expensive filing cabinets to store physical records by instead uploading files into the cloud. This way, you create sophisticated digital documents that you can share with your clients.
The account is restricted solely to your law firm and your client. Each account is password protected with advanced encryption and cybersecurity features to ensure all minute books and corporate records can only be accessed by those with the authorization to do so.
The best part is that, since these are cloud-based entities, clients can log into the platform and access their records from the convenience of any location in the world. Records are immediately at your fingertips whenever the need arises…provided your location has Wi-Fi.
Is your firm ready to improve corporate record security and client satisfaction? Join the MinuteBox revolution so that you can transform how your firm services clients, manages corporate records, and establishes a credible reputation as a law firm that can be trusted with the security and integrity of trade client secrets.
Efficiency is one of the core pillars of a fully functional legal entity. Time is a luxury that many corporations and general counsels have precious little to spare. In a time when technology enables people to uncover instant answers to their questions or concerns, it’s imperative that the process of completing or formalizing legal documentation be as efficient as possible.
That’s why a growing body of organizations are introducing document assembly technology to their operations. Using these types of platforms, general counsels can assemble minute books, corporate records, and legal contracts all to signature ready statuses with little to no manual changes necessary to complete the documentation.
How long does it take to draft legal documents?
There’s a growing need for innovative document automation technology due to the amount of time that companies spend drafting legal contracts. This is because it can take anywhere from several weeks to several months for lengthy or complex documents to reach the state where they are signature ready.
The length of time becomes even more daunting when multiple parties must agree upon minute book records before signing off on the agreement. Negotiating or renegotiating the terms of complex corporate documents also takes a significant amount of time, restricting an organization’s ability to productively move forward and achieve results.
These are just some of the common reasons that complicate the process of drafting and finalizing important legal documents. In order to modernize the documentation exercise into a more efficient one, companies need innovative technology to streamline the process.
What is the difference between document coding and document automation?
For many years, corporations and legal entities were required to store all minute book records and corporate documents within secure office space. Entire records would be stored in filing cabinets where legal professionals would pull and source specific records, file by file, whenever the need arose.
Advancements in technology have made this old way of maintaining corporate records obsolete. Now, all minute books and corporate documents can be digitized to reduce, if not eliminate the need for paper records to be stored at the office. Given that the average firm spends up to $2,000 per five drawer filing cabinet to store legal files, digitizing records is as much of a cost effective way of doing things as it is a time efficient solution.
However, even by digitizing records, there are more efficient ways to help your legal professionals complete their tasks. That’s the key difference between document coding and document automation.
What is document coding?
Legal document coding adds an extended piece of syntax code to standard legal documents. Firms will use document coding to expand upon minute book or corporate record templates and make them more compatible with legal document assembly software.
In the old days, document coding was an extremely difficult process. Legacy platforms were not as advanced as they are today, which required professionals to have advanced knowledge of coding syntax that matched the capabilities of a fully trained computer developer. This is a very tall order to ask of your legal professionals.
What is document automation?
Document automation is a more advanced and streamlined approach to document coding. It utilizes logic-based systems to help professionals insert additional bodies of text or data into standard legal documents. Think of it like pre-programmed modules that allow you to drag and drop additional information into your documents.
Using document automation technology, legal professionals are not required to have the coding expertise of a computer programmer. These no-code entity management solutions are the key to efficiently producing and finalizing legal documents so that organizations can move forward towards growth at faster and more efficient rates.
Embrace document automation technology for best results
Given how easy and efficient it is to insert additional bodies of text or data with document automation technology, it’s no wonder there’s such growing demand for these solutions. By reducing the amount of time it takes to get contracts signature ready, your organization can reinvest valuable time and resources into areas of the business that directly contribute to future growth and prosperity.
Legal professionals, paralegals, and general counsels working on behalf of your firm can all save hours of time each and every day with modern technology. When you have more available hours to put towards boosting Legal Recurring Revenue and other means of growth for the business, you’re in a far better position to become a leading entity in your respective industry.
Are you ready to inject a little document automation into your corporate recordkeeping process? Join the MinuteBox revolution for a faster and more efficient way to maintain minute books, update corporate records, and eliminate the need for complex technical coding skills among your entire professional team.
Automation is essential for corporations and organizations of all sizes and scales these days. Competition is fierce, and this is perhaps nowhere more apparent than when it comes to hiring qualified talent to join the team.
Many firms want to appear innovative to both their clients and their prospective new hires. Skilled professionals often have experience with innovative technology and they appreciate the ability to streamline day to day tasks. This way, they’re able to devote more time, energy, and resources towards bigger picture solutions that help drive greater growth for the firm.
Why use technology to streamline hiring processes
Let’s say your firm is in expansion mode; you’re actively on the hunt for new professionals who can bolster the capabilities of your organization. For the sake of argument, let’s say you want to hire 10 new prospects who can add their years of experience to your firm as either legal professionals or paralegals. Now, you need to create employment contracts to solidify the offers.
This is where it gets challenging without the right technology. Drafting employment contracts from scratch is a very time consuming process. Even if you were to use a pre-written template to draft most of the document, there may be specific terms and conditions for each individual hire that need to be inserted into the contract.
What if the template isn’t easy to edit? If you add in new details into the agreement, does it disrupt the entire formatting and force you to spend more time correcting those errors?
Simplify the employment contract creation process
Given the average job offer process takes up to 7 days, break down the above scenario in terms of that cost in time. If you have 10 legal professionals you’re trying to hire, and it takes up to 7 days to complete the process for each individual person, that’s a lot of time spent writing and finalizing employment contracts.
All of that time could become a sunk cost if the new hire doesn’t work out for the firm. Companies spent over $92 billion on training new hires between 2020 and 2021, which is further compounded by employee turnover. You don’t want to invest all of those company resources to, first, draft employee contracts and, second, train and develop that new hire if they’re ultimately not the right fit for the firm.
This is why it’s important to have an automated process that allows you to create employment contracts faster and easier. With the right platform, you can have document assembly and creation like you’ve never seen before. This way, you can gain back some of those working hours spent creating documents and reinvest that time and resources back into the business. You can also devote more time towards vetting and qualifying prospects so that you get the best new hire to support your growing business needs.
No code injection increases accuracy and efficiency
Certain platforms provide code-free employment contract assembly solutions that make the process even easier for your teams. You can use these drag and drop solutions to draft advanced legal or employment contracts as fast as you need to get them out the door.
These platforms are intuitive, easy to use, and built with a user-friendly interface. You can create automated documents and legal forms that can be sent off to the right party instantly. Plus, you can even save previously written text blocks within the platform and drop them into new documentation as needed. This makes it easier to reproduce elements of the contract that are ubiquitous across all offers, further reducing time and energy required to draft new employment contracts. It’s a win-win all around!
Are you ready to inject a code-free employment contract creation process into your organization? Join the MinuteBox revolution so that you can earn back more of your own time as you continue to source, vet, qualify, and hire new professionals that will contribute to the future growth of your business.
Privacy protection and corporate security have never been so important to an organization’s well-being. Privacy protection laws like GDPR, CCPA, or PIPEDA impose significant financial penalties on companies that abuse or lose their customers’ personal data. Fines can be as large as 2 percent of all global annual revenue from the previous fiscal year.
As more personal and business data is stored on digital servers, enterprise security is paramount for companies to remain compliant with privacy protection laws. Enterprise security not only protects the personal information of individual customers, but it also provides internal and proprietary protection of business secrets and trademarks.
How COVID-19 accelerated the need for enterprise security
The movement towards greater privacy protection and corporate security has been ongoing for many years. Those movements have been further accelerated by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rise in remote or work from home policies.
COVID-19 changed the way that people operate in their day to day lives, and more workers, including business owners or executives, are opting to work away from the office. Up to 77 percent of business owners admit they want to access more files remotely, increasing the demand for solutions that support enterprise security on a global scale.
As a result of work from home, more people are using personal computers, tablets, and smartphones to view corporate records and secure documents. Unfortunately, in some cases, people use virtual private networks (VPNs) to access these records, which are easier for hackers to penetrate. Should hackers be able to steal these documents or expose information that compromises the security of a business, that business could be liable for significant financial penalties.
How to use technology to ace enterprise security
As a law firm, your business is responsible for the corporate security of potentially hundreds of different clients. It’s imperative that you provide the convenience and quality of service that business owners expect (i.e., the ability to access files remotely) while still remaining compliant with privacy protection laws.
Entity management software is your best solution to address these growing demands. Cloud-based entity management platforms simplify the way law firms or corporate counsels manage their records and minute books.
They promote greater collaboration, efficiency, and ease of access to important corporate information. Most importantly, they provide end-to-end client security, including unlimited shares of corporate records and minute books as well as integrated e-signature capabilities. With these solutions, you can easily send and receive important documents for review or approvals.
Other benefits of cloud-based entity management solutions
The ability to send and receive minute books in a secure digital environment is the bedrock of what makes entity management platforms so compelling. But there are other benefits that will help your firm continue to provide exceptional service to clients.
Many firms only have a small group of cybersecurity experts at their disposal. Maintaining on-premise servers to protect client data and minute books is not only time consuming, but potentially dangerous.
In a survey of 450 companies early in the COVID-19 pandemic, two thirds admitted their on-premise servers were targeted by cyber hackers that risked exposing corporate information to the public. If your firm was one of those companies, are you confident that you have the cybersecurity experts who have bandwidth to maintain a protective barrier around client data?
Rather than take that risk, you can invest in a cloud-based entity management platform that stores all client data safely in the cloud behind password protected barriers of entry. Not only can your firm increase the security around your clients’ corporate records, but you’ll also improve your bottom line, streamline operations, and create economies of scale that help all legal professionals at your firm contribute to growth.
Ready to make the leap into cloud-based enterprise security? Join the MinuteBox revolution so that you can adapt to changing corporate demands and still provide the highest quality service to all of your clients.
