Our CEO asked our company how we're using AI in our day-to-day operations. It was great to be able to point to Ironclad, show metrics of our impact, and highlight the innovation coming from our legal team.
At NEXT Insurance, a leading digital insurer utilizing AI-supported underwriting, the legal department faced growing challenges managing contracts without proper systems in place. Nadia Louis Hermez joined as Legal Operations Manager in January 2022, hired specifically for her expertise in implementing Ironclad at two prior companies. At NEXT, Ironclad had already been purchased when Ms. Hermez joined, but it was inconsistently implemented and was not being utilized across the organization, creating significant risks as employees produced and signed contracts without legal review.
The challenge: Inconsistent contract management without dedicated expertise
Prior to Ms. Hermez coming onboard, NEXT Insurance had not developed a standardized process for contract review and management. “We discovered that users were not aware that all contracts require a legal review process to avoid risk. Folks were just signing contracts or agreeing to terms and conditions without that proper legal review,” Hermez explains. “That presented a huge risk for the organization because if you’re not familiar with contracts and agreements, you’re not reviewing the terms and conditions, understanding data privacy issues, negotiating provisions involving terms and termination, indemnification, limitations of liability, etc., and ultimately not knowing what you’re signing up for.”
The company had purchased Ironclad but didn’t have a dedicated system expert to handle the implementation, training, and management of the system from end to end, resulting in inconsistent adoption across departments. Some employees submitted contracts through the system while others continued using email, creating visibility gaps and compliance risks.
Making matters more complicated, NEXT Insurance had never had a legal operations role before Hermez was hired. “When I was interviewing, I asked for a job description for the role and they had none because it was the first time they were hiring for such a role,” Hermez says. “They didn’t have one because they’ve never had a legal ops role here at NEXT, but the fact that they were hiring for the role indicated their understanding that Legal Operations plays a key function that supports and promotes legal services delivery with a focus on people, technology, process efficiency, with an eye for cost reduction.” This was both exciting and nerve-racking for Ms. Hermez because this gave her the opportunity to organically build the role.
Implementation: Making Ironclad mandatory
Hermez took a structured approach to implementing Ironclad fully across the organization:
- Learning the business: As this was her first insurance company role, Hermez prioritized understanding the business before making changes. “There is no point in managing any tools unless you know what the business is about and what their needs are.”
- Stakeholder engagement: She met with internal stakeholders to identify pain points and requirements across departments.
- Gradual workflow updates: Rather than making immediate wholesale changes, Hermez took a 30-60-90 day phased approach, gradually improving workflows based on feedback and business needs.
- Adaptability: Hermez emphasized the importance of maintaining flexibility with CLM implementation. “Be prepared to make changes, because the business will change and processes will change. What I love about Ironclad is it allows you that flexibility and autonomy.”
In order to drive adoption, Hermez needed to review all contract types and put together a plan for scale. Her inventory included all vendor contracts, partnership and agency (such as channel partnerships), marketing, data processing, and more. The next step was to create playbooks for each contract type and then train the AI powered clauses to run AI across all contracts in the system.
Within 9-13 months of Hermez joining NEXT Insurance, the legal department established a firm rule: Legal is not going to review any contract unless it goes through Ironclad. This decisive stance helped drive adoption across the organization and standardize the contract management process.
Key benefits realized
Risk management and compliance across all contracts
Ironclad has become an essential tool in NEXT Insurance’s risk management strategy. By mandating that all contracts go through legal review, the company has significantly reduced compliance risks posed by employees signing contacts on their own. The system also supports SOX audit requirements by providing a structured framework for managing contracts, approvals, creating reminders, and tracking auto-renewals.
With Ironclad’s AI Playbooks, the company implemented and enforced a policy against auto-renewal clauses in vendor contracts. “We do not accept auto-renewal clauses,” notes Hermez, “and if there’s no way to eliminate that, we add a termination clause.”
AI-powered efficiency for strategic work with Jurist
When NEXT Insurance wanted to utilize AI in their contracts review operations, they looked to Ironclad’s specialized AI assistant, Jurist, to help maintain productivity levels. “Jurist has been a lifesaver for us,” Hermez says. “Using workflow designer [in Ironclad CLM], I assigned contracts equally across our attorneys and then gave all attorneys access to Jurist. Jurist is helping us review contracts quickly and efficiently, even though we are down a headcount.”
The team has seen considerable efficiency gains, with Hermez noting that “drafting a termination letter with Jurist cuts my time in half.” The prompt library feature has been particularly valuable, with the team using it 20 times in a single week.
Usage metrics show strong adoption of Jurist within the legal team:
- 100% user adoption in a single week
- 9 messages per user per week
- 20 uses of the Jurist prompt library in one week
- 2-8 documents added from repository weekly
- Between 4-26 new threads (conversations with Jurist) weekly
Strategic value of AI implementation
Ironclad’s AI capabilities align with strategic and business initiatives at NEXT Insurance. “Our CEO asked our company how we’re using AI in our day-to-day operations. It was great to be able to point to Ironclad, show metrics of our impact, and highlight the innovation coming from our legal team,” said Nadia Louis Hermez. “Jurist has been a lifesaver – we average about 20 new threads weekly, with a 100% user adoption in a single week. All our attorneys have access – it’s giving the team tons of visibility, helping us be more efficient, and allowing us to make an outsized impact for the company.” Hermez believes that as Jurist becomes more sophisticated in drafting documentation, it could potentially generate even greater time and cost savings, especially for tasks that traditionally consume significant time for paralegals and attorneys, such as discovery responses and answering complaints.
Improved visibility and collaboration
Unlike the previous siloed approach where one person handled contract reviews, Ironclad provides transparency across the legal team. “At least here, everybody has that visibility,” Hermez explains. In Ironclad, Hermez and team leverage workflow designer and AI playbooks to improve collaboration. With Jurist, “We can utilize the prompt library to review contracts against company policies/positions. Perform real-time legal research with complete links and legal citations. And while AI is a revolutionary tool meant to assist lawyers with their work, it’s not supposed to replace legal teams or departments. We at Next Insurance still approach this technology with the philosophy of trust but verify,” she shared.
Looking ahead: Expansion plans
Hermez has ambitious plans for expanding Ironclad’s use at NEXT Insurance:
- Implementing entities and obligation management
- Integrating Ironclad with Sudozi, which was recently implemented for procurement
- Utilizing playbooks more extensively
- Developing more granular reporting capabilities
- Potentially adding clickwrap functionality in the future
- Using RunAI to expand and improve contract extraction accuracy and data insights
- Building workflows to manage complex reinsurance agreements
“Given Ironclad’s AI capabilities, I am thinking of building workflows to manage reinsurance agreements, which are complex agreements with other major reinsurance entities to help us manage risk, increase our capacity to underwrite more policies, etc. Now that we have implemented Jurist, it would be a great tool to utilize when negotiating and drafting these complex agreements,” she said.
"Having Ironclad at NEXT Insurance has been a game changer for our organization. I am lucky to be a part of a company that understands the importance of technology for process and workload efficiency. It has allowed us to manage all of our contracts, manage our records, reduce compliance risk, create better visibility of contracts for our internal clients, and automate our process. AI is taking all of these benefits to the next level.
The verdict: A game changer for legal operations
“Having Ironclad at NEXT Insurance has been a game changer for our organization, I am lucky to be a part of a company that understands the importance of technology for process and workload efficiency,” Hermez states. “It has allowed us to manage all of our contracts, manage our records, reduce compliance risk, create better visibility of contracts for our internal clients, and automate our process. AI is taking all of these benefits to the next level.”
When asked if she could imagine doing her job without Ironclad, Hermez responds decisively: “I don’t think so. I think it would make my life so much more difficult if I didn’t have a tool like Ironclad. I mean, I’m trying to think—what, use spreadsheets? Holy smokes, that’s terrible.”
For organizations considering their first legal technology investment, Hermez offers clear advice: “If you have no legal tech, the first thing you need to do is implement a CLM tool.”
