Exploring Legal Conflict of Interest

Learn more about the Legal Conflict of Interest application through a sample workflow and review the benefits that it can provide.

Legal Conflict of Interest overview

The ServiceNow® Legal Conflict of Interest enables you to manage the disclosure, approval, and registry of conflict of interest that might arise from employees having competing interests or loyalties. Employees can submit disclosures using the conversational interface of ServiceNow Otto in Virtual Agent or intake form available in the Employee Center. The Requests are evaluated against predefined risk factors to calculate an overall risk score. Based on this score, requests are routed to the appropriate approval workflow for faster resolution.

Note:

The conversational intake functionality is available only when you have installed and configured Legal Service Delivery - Prime that is a paid application. For more information, see ServiceNow Otto for Legal Service Delivery (LSD).

For more information on how to submit the requests using the two methods, see Submit COI request form Employee Center and Submit COI request using ServiceNow Otto conversational intake

Risk assessment

When an employee submits a COI disclosure—either through the Employee Center intake form or via ServiceNow Otto in Virtual Agent conversational intake—the risk assessment utility evaluates the submission against a set of predefined risk factors. Each risk factor contributes to an overall risk score, which determines the risk level (Low, Medium, or High) and the corresponding approval routing.

The risk level determines whether the request needs approval or can be auto-approved.

• Low risk — The request is auto-approved, and both the employee and their manager receive notification. No approvers are engaged.
• Medium risk — The approval chain is triggered. The request is routed to the first-level approvers as determined by the conflict type (for example, Manager and Legal Compliance for an Outside Employment disclosure).
• High risk — The full approval chain is triggered, including escalated approvers. The request is routed through all approvers defined for the conflict type (for example, Manager, Legal Compliance, and Board Approval for a Board Service fiduciary role).

Risk factors support three evaluation types that determine how each condition is assessed:

• Condition: Evaluates the disclosure against rule-based field-value conditions. Use this type for deterministic, field-based evaluations.
• Skill: Uses an AI skill to analyze the disclosure content and return a risk score. This evaluation type is available only when you have installed and configured Legal Service Delivery - Prime plugin (sn_lg_ai_prime), which is a paid application.
• Subflow: Executes a Flow Designer subflow for complex logic, external integrations, or multi-step processing.

The risk assessment process generates a report that provides legal fulfillers visibility into the evaluation. The report includes request details, risk level and score, detailed risk factor analysis with reasoning, and all submitted request variables. Legal fulfillers can review the report from the Risk Assessment tab of the legal request to take quicker decisions.

A notification is sent to the requesters before the expiry of the validity of their COI disclosure records. If the requesters need an extension, they should review and resubmit a request to get the legal clearance for the extended period.

For more information, see Configure risk assessment.

Approval workflow

The approvers and the number of approval levels differ based on the conflict type.

Following illustration shows the approvers and number of approval levels for each conflict type. For example, the Outside Employment conflict type has two approval levels. The first-level approver is the manager of the requester, and the second-level approver is the legal compliance group.

Figure 1. Conflict of Interest approval flow

The administrator can modify the approval flow in the following ways:

• Change the number of levels of approval required.
• Add or modify approvers or approver groups at each level of approval.

For more information, see Configure flows for Legal Conflict of Interest.

Legal Conflict of Interest users

Table 1. Users

User	Description
Legal conflict of interest Admin	Configures intake forms and approval workflows.
Legal conflict of interest fulfiller	Works on fulfilling the COI requests.
Legal conflict of interest read	Has read-only access to view all COI disclosure records.

Legal Conflict of Interest workflow

1. The legal user submits a new conflict of interest disclosure request by selecting the appropriate conflict type.
2. The risk assessment evaluates the request and assigns a risk level (Low, Medium, or High) based on the calculated risk score.
3. The conflict of interest disclosure request enters a predefined approval workflow depending on the risk level.
4. The conflict of interest fulfiller reviews the risk assessment report.
5. The conflict of interest fulfiller either approves or rejects the submitted request.
6. The final decision is communicated to the employee via email notification.
7. A corresponding record is automatically generated in the system.

Legal Conflict of Interest benefits

Table 2. Legal Conflict of Interest benefits

Benefit	Feature	Users
Submit COI request using natural language from the conversational interface of ServiceNow Otto in Virtual Agent. This is available only when you have installed and configured Legal Service Delivery - Prime that is a paid application.	Submit COI request using ServiceNow Otto conversational intake	Legal user
Submit COI request from the Employee Center	Submit COI request form Employee Center	Legal user
Risk assessment with configurable risk factors and score to automate approval workflow	Configure risk assessment	Legal fulfiller
Risk assessment reports with detailed scoring and analysis enable legal fulfillers to make faster, informed approval decisions.	View risk assessment details	Legal fulfiller
Configurable approval flows in accordance with the organization's Conflict of Interest (COI) policy.	Configure flows for Legal Conflict of Interest	Legal administrator

What to explore next

To learn more about configuring and using Legal Conflict of Interest, see:

• Configure Legal Conflict of Interest
• Using Legal Conflict of Interest
• Legal Conflict of Interest reference