Elevate Services
Vice President Legal Services and Co-founder
Bio
Kunoor is VP of Legal Services at Elevate. In this role, she leads teams that design and implement solutions for litigation, contracts, M&A, compliance, and IP, combining people, process, and technology in innovative ways, empowering customers to modernize and optimize operations. Her vision has always been to create a platform that provides the most effective and efficient options to obtain, manage, and perform legal services.
In working to achieve that vision, Kunoor has been instrumental in the legal industry’s transformation, from the early days of legal process outsourcing to helping build one of the leading law companies, Elevate. Through this work, Kunoor and her team meet the unique needs of sophisticated customers by providing the right resources for efficient service delivery, specialized domain expertise, and process efficiencies and visibility into the comprehensive services delivered.
Kunoor is a recognized authority in the legal industry on topics related to women in entrepreneurship, diversity and inclusion, legal outsourcing, right sourcing of legal work, and optimization of legal work. Kunoor is a College of Law Practice Management Fellow and a cochair of the South Asian Bar Association’s LGBTQ+ Section.
What is your professional background and how did you become involved in the world of commerce and contracting?
Kunoor is a practicing California attorney. After practicing for five years as a general litigator, she founded LawScribe, a pioneering law company providing litigation, contracts, and IP support to law firms and companies in the US. She sold her company in 2010 and, in 2012, co-founded Elevate with Liam Brown. Kunoor was responsible for building the legal solutions Elevate would take to market.
Early on, Kunoor decided to build out a contract management offering due to increasing customer demand to optimize and do contracting more effectively and efficiently. Kunoor built a global team known for providing high-end contract management support, including drafting and negotiation of simple contracts like NDAs or complex outsourcing agreements. Kunoor extended Elevate’s contracts offering by adding contracts consulting (process optimization and sourcing/implementing contract technologies). She also ensured Elevate built out a contract technology solution as part of its ELM. In 2018, Kunoor moved day to day running of the contracts business to a new leader so she could focus on working with law departments to bring them, among others, contract management solutions.
What are some personal achievements and contributions through your career.
Kunoor has contributed significantly to the legal industry through innovation and entrepreneurship. In 2004 she started a pioneering law company LawScribe which provided litigation, contracts, and IP services to US companies and law firms. She sold it in 2010 and, in 2012, co-founded Elevate, one of the world’s leading law companies.
There, Kunoor built legal services offerings, including a contracts organization supporting the full contracting lifecycle from infrastructure creation (playbooks, templates, data, metrics), to drafting, review, negotiation and obligation/rights management. Elevate’s contracting team is extremely successful in delivering innovative, technology-driven solutions. 2 Kunoor has been a big proponent and advocate of diversity and inclusion.
In 2012, when meeting with Liam Brown, Elevate’s Founder, she was determined to build a company where people could bring their whole, authentic selves to work because this is not something she experienced in her journey as an LGBT South Asian woman. Elevate early on started capturing metrics to help improve D&I at Elevate, including through creation and public publication of an Equitability and Inclusion report. Elevate has been committed, through Kunoor’s influence, in improving its diversity statistics and continues to look at ways to increase the pipeline of qualified, diverse candidates who apply to Elevate.
Covid-19 has illustrated the critical importance of helping women to realize their professional aspirations - what role have you played or are you currently playing within your organization to support women in their roles?
In building Elevate, Kunoor has spent 8 ½ years focused on Elevate’s customers and their success. In 2019, she chose to focus on Elevate’s 1200+ associates through Executive Sponsorship of Workplace of the Future, an initiative intended to help each of our Elevate team members feel a sense of connection and belonging in an Elevate culture that is both welcoming and rewarding.
Kunoor also:
- Started a Women Innovator in Law group at Elevate to empower women by supporting them to “courageously innovate, inspire, invest; to bring their unique talents boldly to Law.” Kunoor is creating a space for women to address important issues, help each other advance, including bringing a speaker series of women leaders to talk to Elevate’s associates about their journeys and what they can do to succeed in their careers.
- Started a monthly discussion series with Lucy Bassli, which launched in August 2020, to encourage and empower women in the legal industry to embrace innovation and chart their professional journeys. Each month, they feature a woman sharing their journey and advising women on how they can innovate and succeed in the changing legal industry.
- Mentors multiple women at Elevate to help them develop and advance as professionals.