Key Takeaways from ACC Europe 2023

Members of Xakia's EMEA team, Dan Wales (VP - EMEA) and Margo Harris (Customer Success Manager), had the opportunity to attend the 2023 ACC Europe Conference, "Building Bridges," which took place from 16-18 April in Brussels, Belgium — a city known for bringing people together, perfectly symbolizing this year’s conference theme: “Building Bridges”.

According to ACC Europe, "Success often depends on addressing internal and external barriers, across our own legal teams, our wider organisations, and with external legal counsel, regulators and NGOs. 'Building Bridges' is about inspiring in-house counsel to forge relationships that open our minds to new opinions, challenge insights, provide fresh experiences, and teach us how to sustain connections."

Events like these provide a great opportunity to build a community and share knowledge - this knowledge for a legal management software provider like Xakia, enables us to deliver solutions that hit the everyday pain points that Legal Departments face.

The conference was aptly titled ‘Building Bridges’ and we certainly felt that we did that with many in-house lawyers during the event itself, and hopefully beyond.

Panel discussion: “Enabling the Business as a Strategic Partner”

Dan Wales, VP - EMEA was fortunate to share the stage with Dalida Yusupova and Roisin Noonan, from Macquarie Capital France and TLB/One-NDA during our session titled ‘Enabling the Business as a Strategic Partner’. The session was very engaging, along with the audience whose participation was very insightful.

We conducted a number of polls at the outset of the session and it was clear that this is a journey that many in-house legal teams are on, but that continued day-to-day business operations and ‘fire-fighting’ prohibits the speed of progress.

Tip: Check out our legal department strategic plan white paper to help you during this journey.

Notable pain points from in-house lawyers

After connecting with so many in-house lawyers at the event, it was evident that LegalTech can play a crucial role in:

• The management of your in-house legal team
• The delivery of legal expertise itself
• Enabling Legal Departments to become a strategic (and valued) partner to the business

You cannot measure what you cannot see, and a theme from our conversations centered around:

• Transparency and accountability - measuring the growing legal workload
• Resources and delivery - understanding impact on turnaround time  
• External legal spend - real-time visibility over budgets
• Contracts/litigation - deadlines and volume

Being able to capture, analyze and subsequently report in real-time is a key attribute to enhancing the relationship between legal teams and the wider business - providing insight to support day-to-day operations, audit control, budget, resourcing and also demonstrating value to peers and management. Fortunately for us here at Xakia - this is exactly what our legal matter software provides.

From those that we spoke with, it was clear that budget constraints and resourcing were a major bottleneck to growth, and that taking a step or two back to take stock and to implement process and technology soon provided those positive leaps forwards.

Many ACC Europe attendees have begun this journey supported by MS Excel or ’ticketing’ systems and are indeed ready to take the next steps and the adoption of best-of-breed matter management solutions designed specifically for in-house legal teams.

If you would like to chat further on how Xakia can support your in-house legal team, then please do not hesitate to get in touch with the team for a demo.

And, in the meantime — enjoy this photo of Xakia's very own, Margo Harris, celebrating the conclusion of the ACC Europe conference with a Belgian beer (or 10 )!

Show the value of your in-house legal team with Xakia's legal matter management software

Increase visibility and collaboration and show the value of your Legal Department to the business with Xakia's legal matter management software. Get in touch with the Xakia team today for a demo today or sign up for a 14-day pilot.