Morae Legal: Igniting Business Performance

Until recently, law firms and corporate counsel were widely perceived to be change-resistant holdouts against the steady march of technological advances into the workplace. Although somewhat exaggerated, the nugget of truth was that the legal professionals were not ready to give up traditional methods of information management and processes. However, as the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in the U.S. dramatically changed the legislation concerning Electronically Stored Information (ESI), law firms began embracing digitization. Presently, with the rapidly-occurring changes in regulations and proliferation of legal data, the law firms are on a constant look out for advanced solutions to address the challenges that exist in the legal industry. In response to this, Shahzad Bashir founded Morae Legal in 2015. The main thrust of its mission is to “help law departments operate in the most effective and efficient manner by providing end-to-end solutions to fulfill all law department and their law firm needs— focused on people and technology, supported by process, guided by strategy, and measured by data using analytics.” Headquartered in Houston, Morae Legal has a large and impressive team of corporate and legal minds with experience in a diverse range of industries.

According to Bashir, “The legal departments in many large companies are getting larger and gaining prominence in terms of the influence they have on their organization’s overall operations.” There has been a corresponding increase in the call for in-house legal operations to become more efficient at managing risk and compliance, while continuing to effectively control costs. More than ever before, data is being created and used, and there is also the trend toward virtual employment with outside lawyers supporting in-house lawyers presenting additional challenges in legal data management, firewalling and security.

In many companies, the legal function may also be smaller in comparison to other departments such as HR or marketing, so that the in-house legal department is often at the bottom of the list for servicing, improving, or otherwise investing in the technologies it does employ.