Work Smarter, Not Harder, With VitalLaw For Corporate Counsel

Wolters Kluwer, long recognized as a leader in the legal research field, recently changed the game with the announcement that its award-winning research platform Cheetah has been rebranded as VitalLaw. VitalLaw is an innovative approach to legal research that creates streamlined workflows that help lawyers build expertise and practice better law. Unlike most research platforms, however, It’s not just geared toward litigation.

VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel is a complete workflow solution that provides corporate counsel professionals with the content and tools that they need to make effective business decisions. Designed specifically for and vetted by corporate counsel users, VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel reflects the unique needs of corporate users and incorporates workflow decisions that mirror their daily work processes.

From practical content to intelligent workflow tools, VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel is the ideal solution for building corporate expertise and boosting efficiency.

Finally, a Tool Designed for In-House Research Needs

Most legal research solutions are geared toward law firms, who need to serve as experts for in-house counsel. That means emphasis on treatises and other information that supports deep dives into discrete legal subjects.

In-house counsel’s research needs tend to be more practical. That practicality is one of the key distinguishing factors in terms of how VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel is organized. It’s designed based on feedback from actual corporate counsel to quickly give you the know-how you need to master the tasks that are critical to your company’s survival.

VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel is about finding the answer you need, and finding it quickly.

Because every corporate counsel has widely different needs when it comes to the specific information they need to do their jobs, VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel covers 35 different topics.

Logging into VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel filters out the wider universe of VitalLaw content that’s less directly relevant to corporate practice. Instead, you’re taken directly to corporate topics, such as Contracts & Forms, Real Estate & Construction, Trade & Advertising M&A, and more.

Many of today’s corporate counsel are trying to keep as much work in-house as possible. They’re the experts in their particular fields, and they want to continually keep building their skill sets and capabilities. To help with that, VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel focuses on 13 core topics.

Your home screen can be customized to your particular practice area. So, if you’re a labor and employment attorney and you don’t need to see resources on real estate or securities law, you can tailor your landing page to show you only the materials that are relevant to labor and employment law.

Within each topic, there’s a consistent organizational structure made up of treatises and explanations, laws and regulations, news and current awareness, and then tools for day-to-day practice (more on those in a bit). The idea is to have everything you need at your fingertips during a busy day, so you don’t have to try to relearn a topic every time you log in.

Topics are fully searchable, and the search results are quick answer summaries that get you right to the information you need. You can also filter your search results down to get to the answer you need even more quickly.

For the particular topics you’re most interested in, you can subscribe to have updates sent via email every day. Every story includes links to the primary source information and is fully text searchable. In addition, there’s a browsable archive of information from the past five years, with documents that can be printed, downloaded, highlighted, and annotated.

Contract Resources

VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel also serves as a source of contract automation. In partnership with an outside provider, VitalLaw offers a deep repository of clauses and agreements that serves as a valuable resource for standard contractual language.

From here, you can focus in on particular contract types, specific clause language, governing law in particular states, and more. The results can be tailored to the type of client you’re working with by way of convenient slider bars. Whether you’re new to corporate practice or are dealing with an agreement or area with which you’re less familiar, VitalLaw’s language repository makes contract preparation more efficient and more accurate.

Within a particular agreement, you can determine whether your chosen contract language is market standard or not. Slider bars show whether a given clause is, for example, used by 65% of other users in a similar company position. They can also tell you whether specific language is neutral or more favorable to your company.

All of this allows you to create agreements very quickly, even when you’ve never dealt with a particular kind of contract before.

Smart Tools for Better Corporate Practice

VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel is far more than simply a research platform – it’s a way to revolutionize your workflows, make better decisions, and master your day-to-day tasks.

As an in-house attorney, chances are you’re often asked questions that fall outside your area of expertise. You might be a pro at contracts or corporate transactions, but what if someone asks you what constitutes “PII” in California, Massachusetts, and Washington? There’s little chance you know that answer off the top of your head, but with VitalLaw you can find it in seconds.

The most important tools live right on your homepage.

The first is Smart ChartSmart Charts, which are essentially 50-state surveys created by VitalLaw’s expert attorneys. Choose the legal topic – for example, data breach notification – and jurisdictions you need, and with the click of a button review and compare succinct legal summaries for each state (and then link through to review the laws themselves).

SmartCharts are just one of the useful resources you’ll find in your Practical Content dashboard, which you can access directly from your VitalLaw homepage. In addition to the SmartCharts, this dashboard houses SmartTasks, Guide Books, Forms, Calculators, Decision Trees, Answer Books, and Checklists.

Checklists, in particular, are a popular feature of VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel. These Checklists guide you through tasks or projects, reminding you of the elements required for each task and what needs to be reviewed every time you undertake it. If there’s a Checklist you use all the time, you can pin it as a favorite.

Perhaps most brilliant, though, are VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel’s SmartTasks. These are interactive, step-by-step guides for tasks that would often be sent to outside counsel due to a lack of internal knowledge. Say, for example, an issue arises regarding disciplining employees for social media use. What are the top considerations and what might a company policy contain? SmartTasks has all the answers, delivered step by step.

With SmartTasks at your disposal, you have a powerful tool for keeping more work in-house, in turn decreasing your outside counsel spend.

Finally, you have access to primary case law in the event that you need it. Because corporate counsel don’t typically have a lot of time for a deep dive into case law and research, VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel includes a robust search function that helps you get to the law that gives you the answer you need as quickly as possible.

Whether you’re researching a legal question or handling a discrete task in a specific area, VitalLaw for Corporate Counsel has the answers and tools to meet your needs.

Time is money in corporate law. VitalLaw helps you build the workflows and expertise you need to keep more work in-house and handle it more efficiently.