Beyond spreadsheets: How Accordion built a scalable legal function with Streamline AI

Executive Summary:

The Key Challenges: Penny Tehrani-Littrell joined Accordion, a global financial consulting firm specializing in private equity, in early 2023 from large conglomerates. Penny sought a solution for legal intake and workflow management that was designed for modern in-house legal teams and had AI capabilities that the team could grow with. Her small legal team was already supporting a rapidly growing organization with a core mission to drive value for PE-backed companies through the office of the CFO—with a focus on improving processes and technology. That mandate continues today, as Penny builds a next-gen global legal and compliance function leveraging  nimble talent across geographies.

The Solution Design: Streamline AI aligned with the company and Penny’s mission and provided an efficiency platform for her team to handle the increasing volume of requests as the company continues to scale. The platform differentiated itself by providing key metrics that Penny could use to advocate for team resources and demonstrate to the CFO and other leadership peers the legal and compliance team's impact on value creation and protection.

Outcomes: Fast-forward to today and Streamline AI has become a scalable and comprehensive platform that automates processes, enhances visibility for the business, and delivers quantifiable results. Accordion's legal and compliance team is empowered to operate strategically and effectively, and Penny has used the summary data about volume, workload, and project assignment to build stronger bonds with the CFO and all business stakeholders. Streamline AI continues to be a pillar in Penny’s next-gen operating model.

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The Case Study:

FEATURED CUSTOMER: Accordion‍

Industry: Financial Services, Consulting, Technology (Private Equity focus)
Size: ~1,500 employees
Location: New York City (HQ) with offices and employees globally
Legal Team Size: 7
Legal Tech for Intake (before): Spreadsheets and email

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The Problem:

As the newly hired General Counsel for Accordion in early 2023, Penny Tehrani-Littrell had the rare opportunity to build from scratch—she knew she had a “whiteboard within a whiteboard” opportunity to build a high-performing legal and compliance department for a company that was poised to grow quickly. She wanted a solution that aligned with the mission and vision of the company.

Accordion is ambitious. Their goal is to be the best office-of-the-CFO consulting firm for private equity-backed companies in the entire world. In the high-stakes, fast-paced world of private equity, where every decision influences enterprise value, Accordion is a vital solution­, serving as the CFO's go-to partner for value creation. More than services, they offer trusted, strategic, and operational partnerships to transform companies and enable clients to navigate complex financial landscapes and achieve ambitious business objectives.

As Penny was joining the company, Accordion had been experiencing rapid growth alongside the private equity market it serves, and needed to hire a GC to build an efficient legal & compliance team to address its high growth model. 

Over the past two-plus years, the small and nascent legal & compliance team, consisting of a small number of professionals, was supporting a complex, global organization that grew from ~350 employees to over ~1500 employees by the end of 2025. Prior to joining Accordion, Penny had learned of Streamline AI, and believed this newer way of tracking legal workflows relative to the incumbents in the market would be a key strategic pillar to build the next-gen legal and compliance team. When Penny joined Accordion, the team relied on manual processes using spreadsheets and email for tracking legal requests.

This approach was:

• Inefficient and time-consuming.
• Lacking visibility and reporting capabilities.
• Hindering effective prioritization and resource allocation.
• Making it difficult to quantify the legal team's value to the organization.

Penny recognized the need for a more robust and scalable solution. She had experience using tools like Excel and Jira, but they didn't meet the specific needs of a legal team and were cumbersome. She briefly considered Onit, but found it would be too complex and resource-intensive to implement. So, Penny pivoted to Streamline.AI to build the new workflow for their high-growth company.

Accordion needed a solution that was easy to use, adaptable, and capable of providing valuable data-driven insights.

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‍The Solution: 

Streamline AI provided Accordion with an intuitive and powerful platform to transform its legal operations. The solution offered:

• Automated Intake: Streamlined the process of submitting, triaging, and managing legal requests, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency.
• Workflow Management: Customizable workflows that could mirror desired processes and help to manage various types of legal matters efficiently.
• Centralized Tracking and Reporting Dashboard: Provided a comprehensive view of all legal activities and workload, enabling better prioritization, resource allocation, and reporting. 
• Data-Driven Insights: Captured key metrics on request volume, team workload, and turnaround times, allowing for data-driven decision-making and value demonstration.
• Email Integration: Facilitated easy capture of requests directly from email, streamlining the intake process.

Penny was particularly drawn to Streamline AI's ease of use, flexibility, and the fact that it was built by someone with a legal background.

"Because Streamline is designed with legal in mind, it can assist with telling a story about legal and compliance back to the business,” explained Penny Tehrani-Littrell, GC at Accordion. “We use the data collected in the Streamline software to promote the value the legal department is building and the value they are protecting, which aligns to the core vision and mission of Accordion of value creation and protection.”

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The Outcome: 

"Lawyers have a marketing problem," Penny noted. "We don’t know how to sell our value. Streamline helps us sell our value."

The greatest benefit to Penny and the Accordion legal team has been having the data needed to demonstrate the team’s value, both in terms of value created and also value protected.

Just as Accordion works with its CFO clients to root strategies in data and power implementation with technology, Penny utilized Streamline AI to create data-driven value-creation plans and worked through Accordion's CFO office to activate them.

• Stronger Resource Advocacy: Streamline AI's comprehensive data empowered Penny Tehrani-Littrell to transform legal team advocacy. By leveraging concrete metrics, she effectively communicated the team's workload and impact to leadership in familiar business terms, securing crucial resource investments and facilitating strategic team expansion.

Streamline AI delivered many additional benefits to Accordion's legal team, including:

• Increased Productivity: Streamlined workflows and automated tasks enabled the team to handle a higher volume of requests with the same resources.
• Improved Time Management: The platform's features helped the legal team prioritize tasks, manage their time more effectively, and "get stuff done" more efficiently.
• Enhanced Visibility and Reporting: Streamline AI provided the data necessary to demonstrate the legal team's value to the organization.
• Collaborative and Responsive Support: The implementation specialists have offered timely support with new feature implementation and adjustments to intake forms

Penny noted that even members of her team who initially didn’t use the tool are now leveraging Streamline AI to become better organized and log all projects they’re engaging in, and their use of the tool helps Penny, as the GC and leader, to get the comprehensive view needed to know when the team is ‘running hot’ or need more resources.

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Looking Ahead: Continuous Improvement and Integration

Accordion plans to continue leveraging Streamline AI to further optimize its legal operations. Future initiatives include:

• Continue to find more ways to use Streamline AI data to show how much revenue the legal & compliance team touches and to show revenue impact and value creation driven by legal efforts
• Gather up and log all of the unofficial "asks" (out-of-process requests) to help the legal & compliance team gain a more comprehensive view of workload and impact
• Analyze the subject matter of all request types to ensure they are being adequately prioritized with the right workflows, processes, and resources
• Use Streamline AI data to identify where resource shifts, budget changes and internal trainings are needed

With continuous platform improvements, expanded features and integration options, Streamline AI is enabling Accordion to better manage risk and make data-driven decisions about resource allocation and budget planning.

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Recommendation to Peers:

Penny Tehrani-Littrell strongly recommends Streamline AI to other organizations facing similar legal intake and workflow challenges.

"If you want a good relationship with the CFO, get Streamline AI," Penny advises.

She believes Streamline AI can allow legal leaders to better manage risk by seeing what’s coming in, and the platform's ability to drive efficiency, provide valuable insights, and demonstrate the legal team's value makes it an invaluable asset for any growing company.

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Considering Enterprise Legal Management Software?

Accordion's success story is a testament to the power of Streamline AI for busy in-house legal teams. 

Streamline AI can help your team:

• Eliminate chaos and gain control over your legal workload.
• Boost efficiency by automating tasks and streamlining workflows.
• Improve communication and collaboration within your team.
• Make data-driven decisions to optimize legal operations.

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Ready to take your legal team to the next level?

Contact Streamline AI today to book a demo and see how our matter management software can help you achieve your legal efficiency goals.