Legal teams need an efficient way to manage conflict of interest disclosures from employees who may have competing interests or loyalties. ServiceNow's Legal Conflict of Interest application, part of the Legal Service Delivery suite, provides a comprehensive solution to manage the disclosure, approval, and registry of potential conflicts—ensuring ethical business conduct and regulatory compliance.
What Is Legal Conflict of Interest?
This Legal Practice App enables legal and compliance teams to systematically track and manage situations where employees might have competing interests that could affect their objectivity. The application provides a structured workflow for employees to disclose potential conflicts, route them through appropriate approval levels, and maintain a centralized registry of all approved conflicts.
The Legal Conflict of Interest intake form allows employees to easily report potential conflicts
✅ Why It Matters
Managing conflicts of interest manually through spreadsheets or email can create compliance risks and administrative burden. The Legal Conflict of Interest application addresses these challenges by:
- Standardizing the disclosure process with configurable intake forms for different conflict types
- Automating approval workflows with multi-level approvers based on conflict category
- Maintaining compliance records in a centralized, auditable registry
- Sending proactive notifications before disclosed conflicts expire
- Reducing legal team workload through automated routing and tracking
🧩 Key Features
The Legal Conflict of Interest application includes:
- Configurable conflict types: Out-of-the-box support for common scenarios like Outside Employment, Board Service, and Personal Relationships
- Intake form: Simple, guided disclosure form for employees to report potential conflicts
- Multi-level approval workflow: Configurable approval chains that can vary by conflict type (e.g., manager approval followed by legal compliance review)
- Conflict registry: Centralized database of all disclosed and approved conflicts with validity tracking
- Expiration management: Automated notifications to employees before their conflict disclosure records expire
- Extension requests: Workflow for employees to re-evaluate and request extensions when needed
🔧 How It Works
Conflict Types and Approval Flows
The application supports multiple conflict types, each with its own approval workflow. For example:
- Outside Employment: Requires approval from the employee's manager (first level) and the legal compliance group (second level)
- Board Service: May require executive approval and legal review
- Personal Relationships: Typically routed through HR and legal compliance
Administrators can modify approval flows by:
- Adjusting the number of approval levels required
- Adding or changing approvers or approver groups at each level
- Customizing workflows for specific conflict scenarios
The Disclosure Process
- Employee Submission: Employee completes the intake form, selecting the conflict type and providing relevant details
- Automated Routing: The system routes the disclosure to the appropriate first-level approver based on conflict type
- Multi-Level Approval: Disclosure progresses through configured approval levels
- Registry Creation: Once all approvers approve, a corresponding registry entry is automatically generated
- Validity Tracking: System tracks the validity period and notifies the employee before expiration
- Extension or Renewal: Employees can re-evaluate and resubmit if they need to extend the approval
🛠️ Configuration Tips
Administrators can tailor the workflow using Flow Designer, including:
- Editing approval sequences
- Adding policy‑specific rules
- Automating reminders and expiry logic
- Defining approver groups for different conflict types
Get Started!
- Review the Legal Conflict of Interest documentation =
- Install Legal Conflict of Interest from the ServiceNow Store
- Configure conflict types and approval workflows to match your organization's policies
- Assign appropriate roles (COI Admin, COI Fulfiller, COI User) to team members
