Confere­nce Participation & Publication Review

Challenge

A Legal Operations use case on how to design and launch a request-and-review process for employees seeking to participate in professional conferences and publications.

Solution

A workflow that makes both the request and review/approval sides of the process much quicker:

  • The would-be participant, interviewee or article writer completes an online assessment form that asks for all the vital information necessary for review and approval – specifics about the conference or publication, what their participation involves, etc.
  • The assessment form, once completed and submitted, is routed to the right gatekeepers and reviewers; in the case of one ThinkSmart client, it’s the internal legal team responsible for intellectual property (IP) management.
  • Those reviewers decide on whether or not participation should be approved. Factors that may be involved? An NDA may be required, or a publication opportunity may present a conflict of interest or violate internal practices.

Benefits

  • Automating the process saves time for all concerned, and allows for prompt and unequivocal review of the opportunity.
  • Accelerating response time lets the enterprise take advantage of quickly-developing opportunities and openings.
  • By standardizing the assessment form and other parameters that can be communicated as part of the form or associated workflow elements, expectations can be standardized among employees about what does and doesn’t constitute an acceptable opportunity.
  • These requests can be tracked and recorded, allowing creation of a historical record of participation in these channels – which could then be annotated with after-the-fact notes about how effective they were, etc.