KnowledgeTree Survey Exposes Collaboration Challenges for Corporate Counsel and Legal Professionals

RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- KnowledgeTree, a leading provider of cloud-based solutions that help companies "rule their documents," today announced the results of a survey that investigated how legal teams work together on business processes and documents. The study polled business users that work on legal documents and discovered that the process of creating and approving team-generated content creates significant inefficiencies.  

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The survey found that teamwork is critical to legal teams, and documents are central to how these teams collaborate. However, few respondents find the way corporate counsel teams currently manage documents to be effective.

• Only 24.1% believe it is easy to work on documents as a team
• Less than a quarter (24.8%) think it's easy to collect feedback during the draft period
• Just 25.6% think it's easy to control changes during the draft period
• Only 25.4% think it's easy to control the review process
• A slim 24.6% think it's easy to share information between departments

Corporate counsel teams need to stay in control as contracts are created, edited and reviewed. It's important to be sure that critical agreements are properly vetted and all the appropriate stakeholders have a chance to review. Due to challenges in managing document versions and approval processes, unnecessary re-work results in inefficiencies and lost revenue.

• 70.5% make 3-5 document revisions
• More than half (54.8%) need to frequently verify documents that were already approved by the correct parties

The root cause: The collaboration process is broken, and email is the culprit.

• 57% still use email to collaborate
• 45% share feedback via email during the draft period
• Less than a quarter (22.5%) believe the processes are efficient
• Real-time co-authoring and collaboration tools bring a structured approach to managing legal documents. However, only 16.3% of the respondents use such a tool and instead struggle with email.

"Legal teams work with hundreds of contracts, agreements and other documents every week. This survey highlights the fact that legal teams have limited insight into and control of their documents -- and hence into how they get work done. By arming teams with intelligence about their documents -- from document creation to approval -- they can reduce risk and boost productivity," said Daniel Chalef, chief executive officer of KnowledgeTree.

KnowledgeTree's cloud-based solution provides document management solutions and boosts collaboration with instant deployment. For more information and a free trial of the solution, visit www.knowledgetree.com/teams.

About KnowledgeTree

KnowledgeTree helps companies turn documents into business assets. Hundreds of global companies use KnowledgeTree to create, discover and manage the business documents they depend on every day. Our cloud-based tools are structured for business and boost collaboration, with no developers required. That means our clients save thousands of dollars per employee each year. Find out why Network World called KnowledgeTree one of the 10 SaaS companies to watch. And learn why Miramax Films, Alcatel-Lucent, Genesys, Fuji Chemical and many other global companies use KnowledgeTree to bring order to their business documents. 

KnowledgeTree is venture-backed and headquartered in Raleigh, N.C. The company can be found online at www.knowledgetree.com.

© 2012 KnowledgeTree. All other brand names are trademarks of their respective companies.

SOURCE KnowledgeTree