How customization and ease of implementation set up the foundation for success.
Discover how a university foundation’s in-house legal team streamlined its operations, improved collaboration, and laid the groundwork for increased efficiency by implementing LawVu’s legal workspace.
This university foundation is the contact point for endowment and fundraising for one of Illinois’ universities. This team is made up of four in-house legal professionals and administrative support personnel. Together, they are responsible for administering and overseeing a wide range of scholarships, grants, sponsored research agreements, cash donations, stock securities, and investment bonds, along with farmland and properties gifted to the university.
Being the primary contact point for endowment and fundraising presents the foundation’s in-house legal team with a diverse range and significant volume of matters, matter types, contracts, and documents.
Before LawVu, the foundation’s legal team faced significant operational challenges handling their diverse caseload. They relied on an outdated system of paper files, network share drives, and emails, which created inefficiency and frustration.
“There was an unwieldy combination of paper files, network share drives, and email storage,” Lemons shared. “The problem with this was that it became very had to organize or relate materials between employees, between topics, and within the task itself. It often became a nightmare to try and wrangle paperwork.”
The lack of a centralized repository for contracts and documents resulted in wasted time, limited visibility, and the constant risk of critical information being misplaced or overlooked.
“In our flavor of law, and generally speaking across university-related foundations, we’re known to manage a high volume of contracts. It doesn’t matter what it is or what it’s for, all contracts come through our offices, and that’s a lot of contracts or physical paper to manage in-house. Having one centralized repository for all our contracts is invaluable, and we knew that was what we needed.”
When Lemons joined the team, he saw an opportunity to drive change. Using his prior experience with legal technology, he began evaluating platforms to address the team’s needs.
“We looked at many platforms. LawVu came in first place for in-house counsel work, because the others were either geared towards private practice or offered a structured workflow that didn’t align well with our needs. LawVu was best placed to help our lawyers deal with the various things that in-house lawyers deal with – which is vastly different from the repetitive nature of private practice.”
He noted, “LawVu was the best of both worlds. It gave us the flexibility to control things that mattered to us, but didn’t involve pure programming and workload to turn a blank slate into something—it hit that sweet spot in the middle.”
The implementation process was seamless for the foundation’s small but committed legal team. Strong leadership from Lemons played a pivotal role in this transition. His prior experience with legal technology and his ability to rally the team behind this change ensured a smooth implementation process. Lemons actively collaborated with LawVu’s team to tailor the system to meet the foundation’s needs, which made the process efficient and straightforward.
“For the three of us, it was very easy to implement. The LawVu team was experienced and well placed to help us understand where and how the customization and uniqueness for our flavor of law could happen within LawVu.”
The feedback from the team was immediately positive. Lemons shared, “our Associate General Counsel cannot stop raving about it, because she’s the holdover from the prior framework of paper files, network share drives, and emails.” Even our General Counsel, who had worked with similar software in a previous role, was impressed. “She has been continually impressed by the advanced capabilities of LawVu’s contract module, which we’ve since successfully rolled out to the wider foundation business units,” Lemons added.
LawVu’s centralized workspace has proven to be a game-changer, not just for the legal team, but also in fostering collaboration with the wider foundation business units. By reducing reliance on outdated filing methods, the legal team is now more efficient.
“The clearest win is having one centralized location for our case files,” Lemons emphasized. “We don’t have to worry if person A had the email or person B had the email. We don’t have to worry about who had checked out the paper file from which filing cabinet. Now you can log in to LawVu, and you’ve got it at your fingertips.”
This new system also improves how the team memorizes and recalls key information. “We can rely on the status updates in LawVu without having to sift through a five- or ten-email chain to figure out where we are,” Lemons said.
LawVu has transformed the way the foundation’s legal team manages its workflow. By eliminating silos and providing a clear audit trail for all matters, the system has enabled faster turnaround and greater accountability.
“It’s easier to track the progression of work and to know what’s still outstanding because of the status updates and drafts we can now store in LawVu,” Lemons shared. “We can mark something as complete, push it to the back of the ‘filing cabinet’, and confidently move on without worrying if it’s sitting unfinished. It’s made us quicker and it’s also helped us track what needs to be done and what is still outstanding.”
For a small team working across a range of matter and contract types, these efficiencies are critical. “Having centralized information in one place is quicker, and it removes the clutter—there’s no more digging through multiple email folders or shared drives to track vital details,” said Lemons.
This university foundation has achieved faster turnaround times and enhanced tracking since the implementation of LawVu. No longer relying on outdated systems such as paper filing and email, LawVu’s legal workspace has streamlined operations and solidified the legal team’s strategic value within the organization.
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