VillageMD powers technological transformation of legal operations with Microsoft services

VillageMD onboards legal technologists to optimize legal operations 

As a national leader in value-based clinical care, VillageMD extends primary care access to more than 1.6 million patients through providers operating in 200-plus clinics across the United States. VillageMD has a big goal: to change healthcare by providing accessible and affordable care for patients nationwide.

To modernize healthcare and achieve its patient care goals, VillageMD needed to modernize internal operations as well. The company had its eye on streamlining cumbersome legal processes. Under the leadership of General Counsel Wendy Rubas, VillageMD sought a technological approach. In her quest for a solution, Wendy engaged a relatively new category of technology professional known as legal technologists—trained specialists in science, business, and law. This new technology team used Microsoft services to build their own “legal OS” to support the VillageMD legal team.

“[Our team of technologists] started adding simple flows to remind us of expirations. They then built several dashboards in Microsoft Power BI that provided a seamless view of task lists, which simultaneously managed daily assignments, all at a glance,” says Rubas.

VillageMD adopted and adapted Microsoft SharePoint, Lists, and Power BI to optimize and automate day-to-day actions, free up its lawyers’ time to focus more on patient goals, and operate at the top of its license.

Microsoft Lists helps track common activities for a better flow of business 

The legal technologists developed processes to automate important, yet time-consuming tasks. To implement and track these processes, the team used Microsoft Lists. Lists enabled the auto-generation and tracking of thousands of common documents, including NDAs, throughout their lifecycle.

The solution combines Microsoft Forms, Lists, and Power Automate. Lawyers use Forms to kick off content creation on their own time. Once submitted, the form populates a contract list (like what is shown above) and auto-generates a Word document based on various choices and information in the form. As the document moves through its lifecycle, the list is updated with statuses like “Legal review,” “Out to client,” and “Signed”—all tied to various automations and notifications.

Rubas had expected the self-service model to be challenging for clients due to a tendency to prefer direct interaction with the company’s lawyers. She was surprised by a preference for self-service among clients.

“Shockingly, after several months, our usage data showed the self-service tools were running hundreds of times a month,” Rubas says. “This tool now saves lawyer’s time, emails, and it is a major client satisfier because they get it instantly.”

Through Lists, the legal team offloaded routine processes to focus on differentiating activities, and clients received their documents with ease and speed. They also gained a rich set of information to visualize and create actionable reports via Power BI to share insights with key decision makers and stakeholders. This gave them the opportunity to review trends across markets, optimize intake and outtake of content, and see where costs are going down.

VillageMD hires “Sharon Pointer” to accelerate participation in technological transformation

Microsoft SharePoint played a critical role in VillageMD’s modernization. To facilitate collaboration within and outside the legal department, VillageMD uses SharePoint as a point of intersection across legal activities including insurance, IP assets, compliance regulation, risk management, contract self-service, recoveries, sales hub, and beyond.

The SharePoint site evolved over time, hosting and managing the creation of full databases, automated workflows, and user-friendly intake forms. These processes eventually incorporated interfaces with external applications such as DocuSign and Salesforce.

While client satisfaction grew from the self-service options, some VillageMD employees were slower to try the new digital intake and reminder processes.

In the hopes of encouraging the legal department to take full advantage of these processes, Rubas and the technology team sought to build internal users’ comfort with these technologies. They began to describe SharePoint as “Sharon Pointer,” VillageMD’s trusted robo-lawyer. With an avatar and an email account, Sharon Pointer presented as a super legal assistant available around the clock. This simple internal rebranding of SharePoint opened the doors to team-wide participation.

“We kept hitting a wall when we told them we were using SharePoint. I think people either did not understand what we meant or just did not believe us,” Rubas says. “We tried referring to the system as ‘Sharon Pointer’. It seems inexplicable, but this was a breakthrough. People could just relate to it better. At this point, many people at this company believe Sharon is a real human.”

Go, Sharon Pointer, go!

Microsoft 365 helps VillageMD power differentiation 

An initial intention to build legal software resulted in a series of significant breakthroughs for VillageMD. Through a suite of Microsoft services, the company customized a solution, tailored to its operations and flexible enough to scale and evolve with the organization.

“Lots of people invent and sell legal software systems. But I’ve come to understand that these are inherently limited in utility. When each department buys their own system, critical information gets bottled up into disparate systems that do not intersect. Instead, we ended up with a multidimensional system that intersects. In my opinion, this is a strategic advantage for the company to connect information and people across the company.”

VillageMD continues to refine its business, building off existing investments of technologists and technology throughout Microsoft 365—all with transparency into the process. 

Microsoft produced a special episode of The Intrazone podcast to hear more from Wendy Rubas and Janessa Nelson, Legal Operations Manager at VillageMD. Listen now to the “Lists loves lawyers” episode. 

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