FAQ
Find answers
to your common questions
Welcome to the Ascent FAQ page!
Whether you want to have a first look or are ready to start your digital transformation with us, learn more about our solution. Let us assist you in finding the perfect fit for your organization’s needs. If you don’t find your answer, please contact us for more answers!
The 5 Most Common Questions
Most legal professionals know what’s included in ELM, but Wikipedia defines ELM this way, “enterprise legal management (ELM) is a practice management strategy of corporate legal departments, insurance claims departments, and government legal and contract management departments.
ELM developed during the 1990s in response to increased corporate demands for accountability, transparency, and predictability, and employs software to manage internal legal documents and workflows, electronic billing and invoicing, and to guide decision-making through reporting and analytics.”
DiliTrust’s Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust hosted software allows corporate legal departments to streamline legal operations, manage legal spend, and easily analyze all matter data by providing visibility into all aspects of legal operations with a fully-integrated, configurable dashboard that delivers information when and where you need it.
The service components that should be included are matter management, eBilling invoice management, advanced legal spend reporting, Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs), Outlook integration, analytics, budgeting & forecasting, benchmarking, timekeeper tracking, user-friendly dashboards, and business system integrations. These are all included with our Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust tools along with much more. Make sure that training and comprehensive customer support are included at no extra charge.
That’s one of our favorite questions. The answer is simple, but sometimes hard to believe. The short answer is that you know cost of your the solution software and services, implementation, integration, configuration, and training on day 1. That’s spend predictability that few others can offer, if at all. There are no hidden fees. We like to call this our “Predictable cost of ownership.” This means that you pay the same rate each month for all these services. Other services are included as well like writing custom reports, integrating other software packages, and configuring the system to meet your team’s needs. Our clients love this year after year because it’s so different from our competitors.
In many cases, corporate attorneys face defending actions during their legal hold processes. These include when it was initiated, what they put on hold, what they communicated with relevant custodians, and when or how they monitored each custodian’s compliance. Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust includes a powerful set of capabilities such as a Legal Hold Module to eliminate the stress and avoid the human error that can be associated with litigation. Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust creates a fully-defensible, cost-effective, and highly-efficient legal hold and data preservation practice.
Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust guides you through these steps as a road map to success:
– Know the FRCP rules regarding a defensible legal hold.
– Audit your data preservation policies and modify them to close any gaps to adhere to best practices.
– Leverage online technology to remove human error and manage the entire legal hold with one tool.
– Drive company-wide adoption and use of the tools to eliminate errors and improve support.
Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust’s SmartLink™ Outlook Integration connects with your email inbox to easily add documents, create and edit matters, and manage invoices. ELM tasks can be directly accessed from any inbox without sacrificing the feature-rich functionality and security of the full SaaS ELM platform. Teams can also seamlessly access Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust from within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to further streamline work.
Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust provides the power to drag-and-drop documents from your inbox to a matter’s repository in one step. Attorneys can approve, adjust, or reject invoices from Outlook. All Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust solutions increase efficiency through templates provided to easily manage existing matters.
View the frequently asked questions below
Mountains represent an elevated perspective where teams rise to the top through trust, endurance, teamwork, and skill. We provide smart data, intelligently delivered which elevates client legal teams to peak efficiency. While a bit witty, it’s completely true. We chose the Ascent name for our ELM software because it creates a panoramic view of your business that offers unmatched business operation visibility to control your cases and costs. With the business benefits our combined solutions offer clients, DiliTrust embodies the characteristics captured in mountain peak symbolism.
You may have noticed that we don’t feature mountains in our website or literature anymore. We recognized that our clients live in an environment surrounded by business teams, corporate offices, and technology. Our visitors’ expectations are best met when the website displays surroundings that reflect their world. This new website focuses on client success and how they work.
DiliTrust is a global leader in legal management and corporate governance solutions. Ascent ELM® is part of DiliTrust’s solutions.
DiliTrust is a global provider of AI-powered SaaS solutions designed to empower in-house legal teams by giving them back valuable time and peace of mind. Through its proprietary AI, DiliTrust secures and streamlines legal operations, enabling teams to focus on strategic decision-making and maximize their organizational impact. The DiliTrust Governance Suite allows legal departments to efficiently manage the entire contract lifecycle, centralize entity management, secure board meetings, and maintain control over matter management. With over 2,500 businesses supported in more than 60 countries, DiliTrust maintains a strong presence in key locations such as Canada, Dubai, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. Committed to simplicity, innovation, and security, DiliTrust helps legal departments work smarter by enhancing operational efficiency and minimizing risk.
In 2024, doeLEGAL joined the DiliTrust Group as part of DiliTrust’s strategic expansion into the North American market. This acquisition combined doeLEGAL’s expertise in enterprise legal management (ELM) with DiliTrust’s comprehensive suite of legal, compliance, and governance solutions. Clients now benefit from an enhanced portfolio of innovative solutions, combining the strengths of both companies while continuing to receive the same high level of service and support.
For more information read this article: https://www.dilitrust.com/dilitrust-acquisition-of-elm-provider-doelegal/
We hear it from everyone, their IT department is being tasked with more responsibilities. With the added concerns about cyber security, technology up-time, remote access, and user support – the last thing they want is another piece of software to manage. That’s where DiliTrust’s team of support technicians, developers, and programmers help our clients overcome their greatest concerns. Our dedicated experts work as an extension of your own IT team to help you overcome infrastructure limitations, maintain data security, manage software implementations, support all users and vendors, and even install updates. This level of engagement allows your team to focus on supporting the business of practicing law and focusing on clients’ needs first.
Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust clients have seen significant benefits leveraging our solutions. Our clients have improved legal performance by 65%, re-purposed over half of their legal staff, saved 50% on legal spend, increased transparency, and improved business efficiency. Clients have lowered their time to process data by 66%, improved accuracy by 50%, and lowered overall litigation costs by 50%. Customer support is also a key component because our teams are highly-responsive, answering every call and providing useful answers.
Not all legal service providers are created equal; the same is true for software solutions. DiliTrust offers legal technology solutions and services that put you, the client, first. We work as your partner, not as a vendor. Helping you overcome challenges to help achieve your goals is our primary business mission. Beyond offering the most advanced legal technology, we offer process automation supported by a client-focused business service model. Our developers are the highest caliber technologists who build software that provides legal teams with the necessary information they need to quickly make critical decisions and optimize their legal operations. We combine service and support to provide the insights high-performing legal teams want to increase efficiency while lowering legal costs. Clients appreciate our full-featured, configurable software versus the typical, costly customized competitive offerings. With faster implementation, lower costs, and more efficient results – clients share their stories to prove the value.
We don’t answer to capital venture groups or shareholders, so we can make decisions in the best interests of our clients – period.
Feel free to use our contact us page to outline your needs. These messages are sent directly to a dedicated team member to ensure your issue gets resolved. Our after-hours support escalates your message to the right person as well. Use the contact method that best suits your desired method to receive a response. We know you want answers, so we don’t pass you off to an auto-attendant system. Your Legaltech experts are ready to help.
Absolutely. The completely configurable solutions Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust offers are an essential part of our business model. Our experts get to know your business first and then configure the solutions to match your needs. We realize that needs change over time, so we ensure that our system changes with you. We continue to enhance our solutions over time, but we also offer self-service options to alleviate your needs to request support assistance.
Configurable solutions are where the technology truly sets itself apart. Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust’s Flex-System™ gives users the most control over their legal operations. The redesigned user interface allows you navigate more simply, customize what you see and how you see it, and offer you new ways to manage your tool configuration. DiliTrust clients rely on us to help them work smarter, not harder.
Our included reports fit most legal operations’ needs, but unique company needs happen every day. Have you ever thought of a question you want to ask, but not sure how to get the answer you need? No more waiting for someone’s help to create and pull a report for you. The new Report Builder™ lets you easily create your own reports by using drag and drop fields to get immediate answers. Reports can be scheduled and automatically distributed or made instantly available to everyone using the new SmartView™ dashboard. If you do need help, our experts are ready to step in and get it done.
You can also output to Excel® with a simple mouse-click for further formatting and mixing with other data. Combining this with the new Search Page enhancements makes your information even more useful.
Also, our new Query Builder™ lets you target every piece of information the system captures. New features like dynamic filters and user-created calculated fields let you customize your results.
Your time is valuable, and we respect that. Not having to worry about interruptions to work as you move to a new software release is often critical to new clients. There is no downtime to account for or any data conversions to worry about when starting with or converting to Ascent ELM® by DiliTrust. You remain productive while we handle the technology so you can focus on legal operations. Upgrades are also an effortless way to bring the power of the latest version of the most innovative and efficient enterprise legal management platform to your team. We handle the heavy lifting with minimal support from your IT team.
We don’t believe in forklift upgrades or charging you to do it for you. Our clients experience minimal downtime to ensure your team remains productive. You get all the rich features and benefits that any upgrade adds to your solutions as part of your contract. Because our software is in a hosted position, we can upgrade at scale and offer it to all clients at no additional cost.