Client Insights Interview Reveals Opportunity To Improve Client Collaboration Through Status Portal

Version control and record locking in connection with shared status reports was a constant issue for SITE Centers, a publicly-traded REIT that invests in shopping centers. By uncovering the pain points and opportunity for greater collaboration through a client insights interview, Kelley Drye was able to develop a web based portal to help the client manage status reports for dozens of leases that are simultaneously subject to multiple tenant bankruptcy cases.

The Challenge

With dozens of active tenant bankruptcy matters, the SITE Centers legal department was searching for a better way to manage and track the high volume of tenant bankruptcies impacting its retail shopping center properties. The existing system of collaborating with outside counsel to manage status updates required too many manual inputs and resulted in redundancies between an external tracking system and the internal SITE Centers tool. Version control became a headache when multiple parties attempted to edit documents simultaneously.

The Solution

Kelley Drye invited in house counsel to meet with and engage in a client insights interview to better understand the legal department’s operational and legal goals and to collaborate on a solution to the status reporting challenge. Based on what we learned, Kelley Drye designed and developed a custom web portal to manage lease locations, the status of each lease, and other key information. The online database allows contributors from SITE Centers and Kelley Drye to input and report on data in real time, with confidence in the accuracy of information.

The Impact

Customized web-based portals provide SITE Centers with streamlined real time access to the status of tenant bankruptcy matters in one easy to access central location, that can be updated and monitored by multiple users at any given time and automatically alert the client and supervising partners when matters have been updated.