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71 I L T A N E T . O R G E ven though most legal businesses have spent years implementing new innovative tools that optimize a long range of sub processes, many in the industry still work like it was 1995 on one specific area, i.e., meeting management. The time spent and administrative hassle associated with planning and hosting meetings is therefore one of the hottest areas of optimization within the industry. In the following, you will get insight into two of the United States' leading legal firms and their way of optimizing the handling of meetings – and the good news is that you can easily integrate their solutions. As most people know, employees in law firms and legal services represent the company's biggest assets – and are by far the largest item in the budget. It is therefore imperative that the use of employees' and partners' time is handled as efficiently and intelligently as possible. Everything related to planning, invitation and booking of meeting rooms, catering, booking of IT-equipment, cleaning and accounting of all costs is often handled in a messy flow characterized by coincidences and lack of structure - even though the meeting between legal counsel and customers should be smooth, professional, and trustworthy. However, let's first look at some demographics around the selection of a meeting room.In reality, employees select meeting rooms that: • They know • Are closest to their own desk • Have the best view A lot of meeting rooms are thus selected for a meeting without any thought going into e.g. the number of guests or the right technical equipment for remote participants. This random booking structure often causes large meeting rooms to be occupied by very small meetings with just a few participants, and they still have to be cleaned completely even though only a fraction of the chairs have been used. This represents a massive waste of unnecessary resources and unused space every year. Wasted time – a big problem On the fly-meetings likewise occupy many of the meeting rooms that are closest to where most people have their daily tracks. This creates time waste for the employees who actually booked the room, and most people have tried taking over a meeting room that doesn't feel clean and tidy because someone "just" needed a quick room for a brief meeting. Wasted time is a big problem when law firms coordinate, plan, cancel or rearrange guests who are invited to a meeting. A process that often takes place offline and without the use of intelligent tools. Seen across the entire American legal industry that hosts millions of meetings every year, it's a massive waste of time and money. Therefore, it makes sense to implement intelligent IT solutions for everything related to meeting management. This is what the leading American legal firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP has done across its offices in the US and the UK. They've implemented a meeting management solution from Danish AskCody which has helped optimize their entire handling of meetings. Among others, the solution gives them direct access to see all vacant meeting rooms in each of their offices; they can see what kind of technical equipment each room is fitted with, and AskCody is furthermore fully integrated with mail, admin, reception, catering, and finance. Increased efficiency The introduction of AskCody eases everything related to a specific meeting, and the firm can easily see which meeting

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