How IATA improved collaboration and matter management with Intapp Documents for Corporate Legal

Transforming knowledge-sharing across all regions

IATA legal operations leaders knew that they needed to transform matter management — especially the ways the dispersed team stored and managed matter-related documents and emails. “Like a lot of legal teams, we were quite siloed and not working as effectively as we might have been,” said Clapson.

Clapson, who also serves as IATA’s Regional Counsel for Singapore, had experienced the inefficiency of the team’s legacy processes firsthand. “Previously, if … work was being handled in Montreal or Geneva and I needed an update for the business, I would email that office [but] not hear back until the next day,” he said — a common bottleneck that slowed service to the legal team and its business clients.

IATA’s matter management goals were clear: Streamline interregional collaboration, improve matter allocation, standardize filing behavior, and enhance reporting to the business.

Enhancing the capabilities of Microsoft 365

The association, which had already adopted Microsoft 365 for everyday productivity and information management, wanted to align any additional legal IT changes with its existing investment.

With that in mind, Konexo — a subsidiary of the global law firm Eversheds Sutherland that provides legal services to IATA — introduced the association to Intapp Documents for Corporate Legal. The matter management solution has been widely embraced by enterprise in-house legal teams, in part because it uses the familiar Microsoft 365 interface. Lawyers and administrators can access and use Intapp Documents for Corporate Legal features within Microsoft Outlook, and don’t need to change the ways they work. IATA was drawn to the solution’s ease of use and its deep integration with Microsoft Outlook, which would further aid a smooth transition.

The pandemic and its effects have increased much of IATA’s legal activity. “Employment and bankruptcy counsel work is a lot busier at the moment,” Clapson noted. The legal department has had to adapt to these increases while also supporting remote work.

The appointment of a new general counsel, meanwhile, has driven a greater appetite for operational data to support decision-making. Accordingly, IATA will increase its use of Microsoft’s Power BI data analytics — part of a new update to the Intapp Documents for Corporate Legal solution.

“To inform future work allocation, we expect to add to, and make greater use of, the data we capture about what work we’re doing and where,” said Clapson. “, so smart resourcing will be critical.”

The ability to customize Intapp Documents for Corporate Legal will also help the team work more efficiently as it evolves. “That’s something we really appreciate,” Clapson said. “If we want to start collecting extra detail, we can simply add a field in [Microsoft] SharePoint. That’s a huge selling point for Intapp. With our previous tool, if we wanted to so much as change a label on a field, we had to go back to the vendor, pay a fee, and wait for them to do it for us.”

Advanced matter search, along with Microsoft 365’s Power Automate functionality, will also help IATA’s team eliminate manual tasks and free up time for strategic work.