Swiftwater designed and operated the legal operations infrastructure of an American-Asian global technology company whose legal department managed thousands of active matters and hundreds of outside counsel firms across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and other international markets.
| Client | American-Asian global technology company (media and technology) |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | United States and Asia |
| Markets | North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and other international markets |
| Legal environment | Thousands of active matters, hundreds of outside counsel firms and legal vendors, substantial global legal spend, legal teams across multiple regions |
| Platform | Onit enterprise legal management and eBilling, replacing an aging eBilling system across four continents |
| Engagement | Multi-year. Began as strategic advisory and became an embedded operating partnership |
| Services | Legal operations strategy and org design · Managed legal operations · Global bill review and legal spend · Onit implementation, administration and expansion · Global investigations playbook · ELM, finance, and procurement integration |
| Headline outcome | $60M in outside counsel savings |
Swiftwater designed and operated the legal operations infrastructure of an American-Asian global technology company whose legal department managed thousands of active matters and hundreds of outside counsel firms across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and other international markets. The engagement produced $60M in outside counsel savings and ran six recurring functions: legal operations strategy and organizational design, managed legal operations, global bill review and spend management, Onit implementation, administration and expansion, a global investigations playbook, and integration between Onit and the company’s finance, procurement, and HR systems. The department gained enterprise-scale capability without equivalent growth in permanent headcount.
The client was a global technology company headquartered in the United States and Asia, with legal responsibilities across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and other international markets. Its legal department managed thousands of active matters, worked with hundreds of outside counsel firms and legal vendors, carried substantial global legal spend, and billed in multiple currencies under multiple tax regimes and billing practices.
The company grew quickly across borders under significant regulatory scrutiny. Department structures, approval authorities, reporting lines, and cost centers changed often, and the legal function depended on Finance, Procurement, Accounts Payable, HR, Compliance, and Corporate IT for data and process.
Running legal operations from two headquarters meant the same process had to work across different regional business practices, legal and regulatory expectations, languages and communication styles, time zones, internal decision-making structures, levels of outside counsel billing maturity, and enterprise technology standards. The department needed one global operating model that stayed responsive to regional difference.
The legal department had invested in legal technology, but growth fragmented ownership, process, systems, and governance faster than the internal team could absorb. Six conditions defined the starting point:
The underlying need was a global operating model that converted strategy, systems, policies, and data into consistent daily execution.
Over the life of the engagement the work settled into a five-layer operating model that Swiftwater ran as five recurring functions.
Legal operations strategy, organizational development, governance, roadmap management, operating model design, and executive advisory to legal leadership.
Matter administration and invoice review, vendor coordination, workflow management, issue resolution, reporting, and the recurring managed services that kept the department running.
Onit implementation and administration, workflow configuration, platform governance, systems integration, middleware development, and technical implementation support.
Billing governance, process standardization, approval controls, data integrity, reporting continuity, and operational oversight.
Regional stakeholder alignment, global process standards with managed local variation, law firm coordination, cross-time-zone delivery, and support for a dual-headquarters governance environment.
Together the five layers formed one operating infrastructure.
Swiftwater advised legal leadership on the operating model, decision rights, governance, and roadmap, and turned every reorganization into operational and system change.
Clear ownership and one governance framework.
Read the case study →Swiftwater acted as an extension of the internal Legal Operations function: program management, workflow, escalation, vendor support, reporting, and continuity through leadership transitions.
Enterprise-scale capability without equivalent growth in permanent headcount.
Read the case study →Swiftwater’s seven-person Matter Administration and Invoice Review (MAIR) team ran every step from matter setup to invoice payment and reconciliation, across hundreds of firms.
$60M in outside counsel savings.
Read the case study →Swiftwater moved the department from an aging eBilling system to Onit, migrated millions of records, deployed across four continents, then administered and expanded the platform.
Onit live on four continents and grown into the department’s operating platform.
Read the case study →Swiftwater designed one investigations framework with defined stages, roles, intake, triage, and reporting, and built a proprietary tool within Onit to deploy it globally.
One global framework with managed local variation.
Read the case study →Swiftwater connected Onit with finance, procurement, AP, HR, and reporting systems through proprietary middleware where standard integrations fell short.
Information moved between Onit and the corporate systems.
Read the case study →$60M in outside counsel savings was the headline. Behind it sat six changes in how the department ran.
Roles and responsibilities were defined across legal operations, financial management, technology, vendor management, and operational delivery. Workflows were consistent across regions, escalation paths were explicit, and Legal, Finance, Procurement, AP, and Corporate IT worked from the same operating model.
Invoice compliance got stronger and review became consistent. Clean invoices reached the attorneys, and rejected and stuck invoices fell. Billing leakage went down. The department gained visibility into external spend and ran preferred provider management, rate governance, outside counsel performance, and financial reporting as a discipline.
Onit replaced the aging eBilling system and stayed aligned with organizational structures, approval authorities, reporting requirements, matter ownership, billing processes, and evolving business needs. The platform ran as part of the operating model.
The department added strategic leadership, operational management, bill review resources, system administration, technical expertise, and program management through one coordinated delivery model, without equivalent growth in permanent internal headcount.
Global operating standards applied everywhere, and regional variation was explicit and managed. For a dual-headquarters organization working across diverse jurisdictions, firm markets, regulatory environments, and internal operating cultures, that balance kept one global standard in use in every region.
The operating model held through changes in legal operations leadership, internal ownership, organizational structure, team composition, and strategic priorities, and institutional knowledge stayed with the function through every change in personnel.
A legal operations infrastructure model is an operating structure in which the recurring functions of a legal department (strategy, operations, technology, controls, and global coordination) run as continuous, staffed and measured layers. Swiftwater’s five-layer version was built for this client.
A managed model gives access to strategic, operational, financial, and technical capability at once, scales with demand, and keeps institutional knowledge when individuals change. Hiring the same capability internally requires several specialized roles and leaves the department exposed at each departure.
It starts at matter setup, where most invoice issues begin, and runs through compliance validation of every invoice, substantive review of complex or higher-risk invoices by experienced reviewers, regional tax invoice handling, and structured management of rejections and resubmissions, through to payment and reconciliation.
Swiftwater implemented and administered the platform (users, workflows, reporting, data integrity, releases) and the client owned the decisions. Every organizational change was translated into a system change so the platform kept matching how the department operated.
One global playbook defined stages, roles, decision points, intake, triage, and reporting, and a proprietary tool Swiftwater built within Onit deployed it globally. Local legal requirements, employment rules, confidentiality restrictions, and regulatory obligations were handled as documented variations inside that framework.
Swiftwater provides fractional support as part of the model. The difference is in how the people are chosen and what stands behind them: Swiftwater matches the level of experience to the work and the cost to the level, and every person on the account is backed by Swiftwater’s frameworks and the broader team, so the client is never dependent on one individual.
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