Insights and updates
from MinuteBox

As the legal industry evolves, client relationships with paraprofessionals are becoming increasingly important. In this blog post, we will explore how client relationships with paraprofessionals are evolving and the expectations clients have when working with paraprofessionals. Key points include the increasing role of paraprofessionals in in-house legal departments, the importance of being able to work effectively with paraprofessionals on both sides, and the inclusion of paraprofessionals in client service teams.

Here’s a summary of what we’ll cover in this post:

• The role of paraprofessionals in in-house legal departments is increasing
• The ability to work effectively with paraprofessionals on both sides is important
• Paraprofessionals are being included in client service teams

Client relationships with paraprofessionals are evolving as the legal industry changes. As Karen Tuscak, owner of Spider Silk Solutions, explains, “I think it started early on, It was around 20 years ago when I was working in house and I would send out a request to the law firm and the law firm would send it back to the general counsel and I would send out, and it was indicative that lawyers and law firms thought they needed to always deal with the general counsel at in-house departments.”

As in-house legal departments are increasingly staffing themselves with paraprofessionals, lawyers at law firms need to adapt to taking instructions from paraprofessionessionals as well. Karen notes, “Our general counsel said, look, Karen decides where the work’s going, so unless you correspond with her, you’re not getting the work. And I think that’s happening more and more because not only are our external clients reaching out to law clerks and paralegals at firms, but more in-house legal departments are staffing themselves with paralegals and the lawyers at the firms have to get used to the fact that they may be taking instructions from paralegals, right? Not always from a lawyer.”

The ability to work effectively with paraprofessionals on both sides is becoming increasingly important. As Karen states, “I train it both ways. Like I said, it’s one thing, delegating to them in a law firm, and it’s your E&O insurance, but it’s another thing when you have to take instructions from them as well and you really need to be good on both sides. Paraprofessionals are so detail driven and experts in the processes of what we do.”

Watch the full interview, Client Relationships with Paraprofessionals: Evolving Expectations

In addition to the increasing role of paraprofessionals in in-house legal departments, clients are also beginning to include paraprofessionals in client service teams. As Karen says, “When you look at new RFPs that are coming into law firms, they’re asking who are the paraprofessionals that are gonna be on our client services team? And that’s a real shift, right.”

In conclusion, client relationships with paraprofessionals are evolving as the legal industry changes. The increasing role of paraprofessionals in in-house legal departments and the inclusion of paraprofessionals in client service teams are changing the expectations clients have when working with paraprofessionals. Lawyers at law firms need to adapt to working effectively with paraprofessionals on both sides in order to meet these changing expectations.

Companies that make corporate governance an integral part of their risk management strategy are positioned for compliance. Corporate compliance means any audits of internal controls, organizational governance, and subsidiary management procedures are smoothly executed. It’s governance policies that are one of the principal non-financial factors to set corporations up for strong fiscal performance.

It seems like a no-brainer; however, far too many companies fail to take the risks of poor subsidiary management seriously. They’re not small fish in the pond either. Companies like Eron, Cadbury, Xerox, Wal-Mart, and other Fortune 500 brands have faced significant costs resulting from poor corporate governance.

How corporate governance improves financial performance

In a two year study involving publicly traded companies on the S&P 500 Index, corporations with strong governance policies outperformed the weakest firms by 15%. The study also determined companies that faced governance crises underperformed in their sectors by as much as 35%, on average, a year after their compliance crisis. This resulted in a loss of shareholder value exceeding $490 billion.

Despite the costs of poor corporate governance, it remains an ongoing challenge for many firms. Poor corporate governance structures result in bad decision-making, lack of accountability and transparency, and a direct loss of financial returns.

Common red flag warnings of poor corporate governance

What are some of the warning signs that indicate a corporation is falling into a governance crisis? Fiscal mismanagement is one of the biggest red flags in any governance audit. Businesses can look no further than the financial scandal that tanked FTX as a case study of how not to manage corporate funds.

Additionally, an inept leadership team and board of directors cause expensive corporate governance problems. Companies that promote based on nepotism or “yes-man” cultures can ignore disciplined expert advice on business strategy, organizational hierarchy, or financial incentives, resulting in costly mistakes for the business.

How to avoid falling into corporate governance pitfalls

Effective leadership makes all the difference between companies that fall into the group of top-performing S&P firms and the ones that find themselves at the bottom. Leaders that set the tone right from the top create corporate cultures built upon shared values and behaviors. Executives that adhere to those values will make responsible decisions with the entities that, in turn, create more profitable long-term results for the corporation.

By avoiding things like nepotism and unmerited promotions to leadership positions, corporations can build a leadership culture that makes the best strategic decisions for their business entities. Adopting a business regimen that demands accountability and transparency with all corporate records ensures receipts for all business decisions are documented. In the event of a corporate audit, the company can comply with the regulators and maintain a responsible brand reputation.

Use subsidiary management software for accountability

So what’s the best approach to maintaining compliance with responsible corporate governance? As it turns out, technology can help corporations of all sizes maintain rigid, accurate, and transparent records to support good and responsible governance.

Subsidiary management technology uses cloud-based solutions to help companies digitize all corporate records in one centralized platform. The platform includes advanced search parameters that allow in-house counsel to find, sort, and report on any records of notice for executive review or approval, as well as any audit requests from outside regulators. Plus, since the platform is cloud-based, any leaders that require access to the records can view them from the convenience of any location in the world.

Subsidiary management platforms also allow your counsel to quickly generate reports that summarize things like capital purchases, mergers and acquisitions, or the transfer of shareholder equity amongst investors. All legal dates and expiries can also be tracked within the platform, which is very important if any licensing deals require renewals or renegotiations.
In the end, responsible corporate governance is one of the defining factors that separate successful companies from mediocre ones. Using subsidiary management technology, which you can learn more about with educational discussions, you can help your own company remain compliant with good corporate governance, and set your business up for success in the future.

Let’s face facts; it’s very difficult for law firms to keep track of ledgers, records, and minute books for each one of their clients. With up to 77 percent of business owners preferring remote access to their corporate records, law firms must embrace innovative technology to provide the support that clients say they need.

One of the challenges facing many law firms is the lack of a cohesive, modern, and digital entity management strategy. Many firms strive to create a brand image as an innovative and efficient company. Relying on physical documents and outdated ledgers to manage client accounts reduces a firm’s brand perception as an innovative company.

Why physical ledgers and registers are so outdated

So what’s the underlying reason why physical ledgers and registers are so outdated? It all goes back to when the first printing press was invented in the 1400s, allowing European companies to document their receipts and expenses. When the typewriter was invented in the 1800s, it allowed some of that documentation to be delegated to the machine.

Unfortunately, progress on modernizing corporate ledgers and registers peaked with the invention of the typewriter. Since then, many firms continue to create ledgers that follow the designs created with the typewriter. At the time, this was very innovative; today, not so much.

For one thing, typewriters can’t do things like justify text. For example, on corporate records, it’s common practice to right justify numbers in columns. If typewriters are used to create those records, they don’t have the ability to make those adjustments to the text. This requires paralegals to either:

1. Manually write out the documentation OR
2. Sacrifice a professional looking document

The true cost of maintaining outdated recordkeeping

A paralegal’s time is very valuable for the firm. You can use your paralegals to increase billing hours to clients and contribute to sustainable Legal Recurring Revenue, provided they’re not losing time due to outdated recordkeeping. Manually managing all physical records is a time consuming process, eliminating time that could be spent on growing business for the firm.

It’s said that the average paralegal spends up to 5 minutes scanning, tagging, and filing a single document within a corporate record. Multiply that single document by the number of pages in that minute book. Time really adds up, doesn’t it.

At a time when innovation and efficiency are expected from clients, it casts a pall over a firm’s reputation to rely on outdated ledgers and physical recordkeeping. Firms limit their ability to increase Legal Recurring Revenue by sticking to these processes. On top of that, legal professionals who may be interested in joining the firm could be turned off by the idea upon learning of non-digitized record keeping processes.

The innovative approach to corporate record keeping

Your firm’s objective should be to establish a reputation as an innovative, efficient, and capable company that can provide a secure storage space for corporate records. To fulfill all of those client expectations, you need a modernized approach to maintaining those records.

That’s why successful law firms are embracing technology and utilizing entity management software to make record keeping more efficient. Using these types of solutions, all records can be stored in the cloud, eliminating the need for physical records drafted on typewriters and other outdated sources. Clients can also access their records using secure login information from any location, which is a growing trend in the post COVID-19 world.

The benefits of these types of solutions are also felt internally at the firm. You’ll be able to:

• Give your paralegal team more of their time to focus on driving revenue for the firm
• No longer wait for signatures from stakeholders; everyone can sign within the platform
• Attract new and quality legal talent to join your firm and help fuel growth

Modernization is the innovative, efficient, and smart way to manage corporate records and boost client satisfaction. Why continue to follow outdated processes?

Are you ready to make an innovative leap into the digital entity management space? Join the MinuteBox revolution so that you can increase efficiencies and attract new blood that will help grow your firm to greater success.

Corporate entities maintain sensitive minute book records to document vital legal entity data. Minute book records contain legally sensitive information about the business hierarchy, ethics, and compliance policies, as well as confidential shareholder information.

Sometimes, multiple executives or members of the general counsel department must edit, share, or otherwise handle these secure minute book records. Teams must collaborate as they hand off protected data without compromising the security of the entity or violating compliance protocols from government regulators.

Maintaining the privacy and sensitivity of these minute book records is one of the core benefits of entity management software. Platforms like MinuteBox help teams streamline minute book management with more secure and efficient workflows.

Secure Collaboration is a secure collaborative feature in entity management platforms that helps modernize minute book management. Here are three of the primary ways that secure collaboration protects sensitive legal entity data to help maintain corporate compliance.

Secure share grants platform access to minute book data

Data security is absolutely essential when managing corporate minute book records. It’s imperative that legal entity data remain protected under lock and key as general counsel manages the records.

There’s always a risk that data could be lost, misplaced, or compromised when shared over email. PDF or Excel files with vital corporate entity data are at risk of exposure when sent across different email servers and addresses.

The benefit of Secure Collaboration’s Secure Share feature is that it eliminates this workflow altogether. Grant team members portal access to the platform with secure passwordless logins. You can see who accesses the platform, apply granular share limits to specific data, and set an automatic expiration date for the portal to maintain corporate security. No more emailing PDFs!

Real-Time Collaboration makes cooperation a breeze

Part of legal entity security is knowing who makes what updates to the records, and when those changes are made. Traditionally, general counsel maintains a manual audit in a spreadsheet that documents when any new changes are made to the records.

Using entity management software’s Real-time Collaboration feature, all the manual work is eliminated from the process. A secure audit trail tracks every change within the platform, providing a diligently documented record of any updates to minute book data.

Additionally, the feature delivers real-time notifications that let you know when anyone else is viewing the records. All changes can be marked as drafts until general counsel can review and sign off on them. This means all drafted changes can be saved in real-time, ensuring no updates are lost in the hand-off between collaborators.

Advanced Reporting allows oversight of all legal entities

Not every executive, director, or shareholder needs to see every piece of data within your corporate minute books. In fact, most of them aren’t interested in anything more than the absolute essentials.

Using entity management software’s Advanced Reporting feature, you can create comprehensive reporting filters to describe specific legal entity data to your superiors. The reports are dynamic and easily shareable within the platform, granting all users access to the data at the appropriate times.

The reports are fully customizable, allowing you to tailor how the information is reported based on the recipients. This feature makes legal entity management fun, simple, and accurate!

Improve executive satisfaction with secure record-sharing

The main benefit of Secure Collaboration and all its corresponding features is more secure corporate record-sharing. But the supplementary benefit is that it improves interpersonal relationships between collaborators and superiors.

Efficient and streamlined collaboration means the right people get the answers they need faster and easier. As a result, entity management as a practice satisfies the requirements for corporate compliance and makes everyone’s lives easier. When executive lives are made easier, everyone feels happier and more satisfied with their work!

Ready to create a more secure and collaborative approach to minute book management? Join the MinuteBox revolution, introduce Secure Collaboration to your legal entity management workflows, and improve the satisfaction of maintaining compliance.

Economic volatility, tightening labour markets, and geopolitical instability; each of these factors are impacting how global compliance leaders manage their responsibilities. Despite these challenges, compliance tasks must be completed to preserve the legal standing of business entities around the globe.

Compliance leaders develop diligent compliance programs to instill structure and organization while ensuring proper reporting data is submitted to regulatory authorities. As new challenges disrupt traditional compliance workflows, leaders must adapt their protocols and push through these difficult times. Failure to maintain compliance amounts to significant penalties for the business.

So what are the three biggest compliance function trends that leaders must address? Gartner conducted a recent study to identify how compliance departments are adapting to complicated legal and geopolitical landscapes. Here’s a quick overview of the protocols that will impact compliance reporting into the new year.

Leaner financial capital to invest in compliance

Two economic considerations are affecting compliance departments everywhere: stubbornly high inflation rates and the ongoing risk of a global recession. As financial costs rise, leaders must mitigate the situation by finding more efficient ways to get important work done.

Most of a compliance department’s direct costs are tied to employee personnel. With inflation remaining near record-high levels, demand for higher wages has forced many businesses to implement hiring freezes. Forced to do more work with less staff, it’s imperative that business leaders, including compliance leaders, find ways to retain top-performing talent.

One way to do so is to hop on a growing trend in compliance matters. Compliance departments have spent the past few years doubling down on investments in technology that help automate many workflows and improve productivity. Technology can also take some of the pressure off overworked employees — stress becoming more profound with hiring freezes in place.

Solutions like entity management technology help companies build compliance protocols in more efficient manners. The platform includes a built-in compliance framework using drag-and-drop features that speed up how compliance-related tasks are completed. Employees can check off their lists faster and easier, freeing up their own time and reducing fears of burnout.

Fewer dedicated resources to support compliance workflows

With hiring freezes in place and salary demands on the rise to keep pace with inflation, it leaves companies struggling to maintain full-time workers. Compliance departments are no stranger to these challenges as, according to Gartner, compliance teams have seen decreases in full-time employee headcounts for over three years.

It’s also difficult for compliance leaders to retain top-performing talent in light of these challenges. The Great Resignation saw many full-time employees voluntarily resign their positions at companies where expectations placed on those same employees were deemed no longer reasonable. Low pay and fewer opportunities for advancement also trigger mass quitting.

Challenged to enforce compliance protocols with fewer members of the team, compliance leaders are increasing their reliance on technology to automate their workflows. Once again, solutions like entity management software can accelerate all compliance reporting data management tasks.

Workflows that used to require at least five minutes for support staff to file, tag, and sort pieces of compliance reporting data are no longer necessary. Using entity management platforms, the filing process for a particular record is completed in seconds, not minutes. Time saved on these workflows adds up to an abundance of hours that give limited staffed compliance teams more time to enforce protocols across the organization.

Compliance leaders investing in more supportive technology

In part due to global concerns about inflation and recessions, compliance leaders freely admit to Gartner that technology is a growing part of their operating plan. Investments in technology will be how many compliance leaders use their limited budgets, implementing solutions that will help automate compliance tasks and protect the interests of the organization.

Some of the areas cited by Gartner where technology will improve compliance workflows are:

• Automated systems to manage organizational hotlines
• Digital training modules to support compliance and ethics coaching
• Systems that help control risks to organizational compliance

Amongst all possible technology companies, providers of entity management software should be high on compliance leaders’ lists of vendor partners. Entity management software functions as a single source of truth for all compliance protocols. Any employees with questions about compliance and ethics protocols can simply refer to the platform for a helpful guide to answers.

Additionally, entity management software’s intuitive design includes automated prompts for any missing compliance data that poses a risk to the organization. If the prompts are triggered, compliance managers know exactly what data is missing that risks compromising compliance. They can input the missing data and, if they don’t have it, they know exactly what to ask for from the appropriate stakeholders.

Ready to transform compliance matters with more modern solutions? Join the MinuteBox revolution and introduce valuable entity management solutions to your organization’s compliance mandates.

Responsibilities placed upon legal departments have thoroughly expanded in recent years. Where once entity management required legal teams to maintain diligent minute book records, modern entity management plays a more strategic role in global business leadership.

Legal teams must coalesce with compliance, tax, and finance departments to implement effective entity management practices. Collaborative efforts between various department stakeholders allow for accurate summations of reporting data. Additionally, unity between each department minimizes corporate risk and protects the legal standing of the corporate entity.

What is modern entity management?

Once upon a time, entity management described the management of basic entity information, such as managing, sorting, and filing accurate minute book records.

Modern entity management has expanded into a more complex series of responsibilities. Sound entity management processes enable corporations to implement sustainable corporate governance and compliance across a global business entity.

How modern entity management affects general counsel

Forward-thinking corporations incorporate entity management practices into business strategy. This is one of the reasons why general counsellors increasingly function as strategic advisors to a corporate entity’s board of directors.

In a 2022 survey analyzing general counsel’s expansive role in business operations, 76% of participants expect their respective general counsellors to serve in several strategic roles for their businesses.

• Act as a legal counsellor and manager of legal risk for the corporation
• Contribute their views on business strategy and operations
• Actively participate in strategic planning and decision-making for the business

The data acknowledges the potential risks and costs of entity management and the potential that those risks could disrupt options or dovetail growth. The general counsel functions as a leader and advisor to corporate stakeholders while directing legal entity management at an operational level throughout the organization.

Align legal, finance, and tax for effective entity management

With entity management carrying significant risks to the business, general counsel uses their expansive leadership position to drive entity management best practices across numerous departments. Collaboration is most common across legal, compliance, finance, and tax departments.

Here are some of the best ways general counsel can align various departments and create a more robust entity management workflow.

Learn how to speak the language of various department heads

Legal and compliance teams share similar goals, and they sometimes function as the same, depending on the corporation. Similarly, finance and tax departments also speak similar languages, analyzing key decisions based on projected revenues or costs.

Use the position of strategic business advisor to effect

General counsel should tailor the need for effective legal entity management using language that various department heads will comprehend. In the role of strategic advisor, general counsel regularly data, trends, and dynamics to determine their collective impact. Use that analytical approach to explain the need for cooperation and create effective entity management workflows.

Create efficient entity management workflows

Finally, outline an entity management workflow that is efficient and effective. Explain how teamwork across the various departments helps streamline how reporting data is gathered, filed, and submitted. Research various tools and resources that will assist with the entity management workflow and select one that helps centralize all aspects of entity management.

Invest in entity management software to facilitate alignment

After receiving buy-in from various department heads, and creating strategic frameworks for entity management workflows, it’s time to establish the working processes. First and foremost, you need to select the right resources to assist with the workload.

Entity management software is the best resource to align legal, compliance, finance, and tax teams. These systems are built by legal professionals for legal professionals, creating a centralized single source of truth for all legal entity data.

The platforms include built-in compliance frameworks with easy-to-use modules that function as digital checklists for all matters concerning legal compliance. Additionally, you can build structured organizational charts, cap tables, and shareholder ledgers within the platform. All the corresponding data is centrally located, allowing managers from finance, tax, and compliance to add their contributions and finalize all reporting data.

Using entity management software, organizations can address critical entity management functions in a structured and consistent manner. Most importantly, they make entity management workflows more efficient and collaborative. Teams across multiple departments can work towards a common goal, and general counsel can provide progress reports in their respective roles as strategic advisors to the board.