Helping Avenue Living to work in a more strategic, collaborative way

Avenue Living needed a centralized online matter management solution that would give them increased visibility across the Legal Department's workload, matters, deadlines and documents and automated reporting that would ease communications to key stakeholders.

“Our General Counsel can focus on being less reactive and more strategic, now that she has the big-picture visibility with Xakia,” said Kristine Trudel, Avenue Living's Executive Assistant and Governance Support.

Industry

Real estate

Key results

Increased visibility
Lowered stress and corporate knowledge risk
Reduced time spent looking for information with our matter management and document management software integration
Become less reactive and more strategic
Data-driven, automated reporting

About Avenue Living

Headquartered in Calgary Alberta, Avenue Living is an asset manager of residential, commercial, storage and agricultural properties across North America.

Avenue Living started in 2006, with the purchase of 24 apartment units. The company now manages more than $4.25 billion in assets. Among them: 15,000 multifamily doors, 35,000 self-storage units, and 83,000 acres of farmland.

The Avenue Living in-house legal team of 21 includes a general counsel, two associate general counsel, a legal operations coordinator along with a range of attorney specialists and staff. Together, they manage all legal and compliance needs, which range from a robust transactional volume to litigation to investor relations.

Challenge

Along with the parent company, the in-house Legal Department at Avenue Living had grown organically, bringing on new lawyers and staff as the workload increased. But this growth happened somewhat piecemeal, without a concerted plan for how the legal team would work together. Because each team member saved their documents to a local network, there was no central repository of Legal Department work – and no visibility into who was doing what (and when it was due).

2020 brought a series of events that would force change in the Legal Department:

Avenue Living entered the self-storage market
The company closed its largest single investment in its history, a $39 million acquisition, on its way to $450 million in annual growth
A global pandemic shifted operations remote – and fundamentally changed how the Legal Department would collaborate moving forward

Together, these events – and a request from the C-suite for better and more formal reporting – prompted the Legal Department to seek a legal matter management solution.

Approach

Avenue Living started with a wish list. With a constant deal volume, the in-house corporate Legal Department didn't have time for legal software that would just be another box to check - it needed a matter management tool that would integrate into the current workflow.

The team flagged its major needs:

Visibility across the Legal Department on workload, matters and deadlines
Automated legal reporting that would ease communications to the C-suite and individual subsidiary leadership
Straightforward access to metrics and trends that would break the team out of “reactive” mode

To move the team away from storing documents on local drives, Avenue Living decided to pursue two new solutions: matter management and legal document management. Ultimately, it chose two integrated offerings: Xakia and iManage.

Results

One year later, Ms. Trudel reports that the Legal Department is working in a more strategic, collaborative way. The team now has visibility into all matters, lowering stress and corporate knowledge risk.

“Xakia has provided peace of mind,” said Ms. Trudel, “especially when big things happen and the responsible lawyer is not immediately available to provide an update.”

Saved time

Xakia has dramatically cut the time spent looking for information, Ms. Trudel said. Moreover, the visibility and accessibility ensure that as the in-house Legal Department grows, new additions start with the information they need – and a clear path to proceed.

“New hires love that a system shows them the history,” she said.

Offer more proactive counsel with automated legal reporting

As Xakia's in house counsel software automatically captures multiple fields of data for each matter – from business unit to risk level to deal size – the Legal Department has not only moved away from manual reporting, it has the analytics to spot trends and offer more proactive counsel.

“Our General Counsel can focus on being less reactive and more strategic, now that she has the big-picture visibility with Xakia,” Ms. Trudel said. “At the same time, we can easily drill down and provide tight focus for a specific trust or business function, very quickly.”

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