Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) says the new division will operate globally under the new name of Cantilever and brings together the BCXponent and Streamline brands, as well as other teams that support our clients’ in-house teams in improving their legal operations and service delivery to their businesses.

Proprietary platform

The division consists of 20 highly qualified process engineers, data scientists and technologists experienced at working with in-house teams, lawyers and attorneys to help law departments improve legal service delivery to the business.  The team has also developed its own proprietary software platform, called CrossLite, which is a data management and analytics tool that has been specially designed to meet the needs of the modern legal function. Cantilever will be led by co-founders Katie DeBord and Chris Emerson. Ms DeBord is BCLP’s chief innovation officer, while Mr Emerson is the firm’s chief of legal operations solutions. The team also includes legal technologist Bruce Braude, director of legal pperations solutions for emea.

Best practice

Services will include providing legal operations and technology consultancy, designing effective and efficient processes and systems for contract, matter and litigation management, and, delivering document and decision-making automation solutions. Therese Pritchard, co-chair of BCLP, said ‘it has never been more important for legal teams to ensure they are using the latest best practice but, at the same time, it is becoming increasingly hard for them to find the time to do so. We are excited about the potential of our new division, which brings together the best of each legacy firm’s existing expertise and creates a full-service offering for in-house legal teams that wasn’t previously available in the market.’ Lisa Mayhew, co-chair of BCLP, said CrossLite, which was developed internally, ‘gives clients a low cost, adaptable but very robust and secure workflow management platform. There are versions to help legal teams improve the way they manage contracts, matters and litigation portfolios, enabling them to tackle their specific needs.’