Episode summary: 

A short summary of Clarilis a new breed of doc automation tool, as well as an interview with James Quinn, Clarilis CEO.

Episode transcript (What does Clarilis do?)

This week we are talking about one of the first disruptive technologies ever introduced to lawyers, document automation, one that many lawyers are now very familiar with, but still not all have adopted. For that, we will be learning about Clarilis and how they are approaching doc automation in their own way, as well as speaking with James Quinn, Clarilis CEO to get his thoughts.

In a nutshell, doc automation tools are exactly what they sound like, they allow the automated generation of usually complex contracts to be done in a semi-automated way, so that you can draft complex documents in less time, but also importantly reduce risk of drafting errors too. Usually this is done by asking a user to complete a questionnaire about their business situation, the application can then take the data entered and responses to create a tailored document from an existing template or set of standard clauses.

This tech tends to get used in two typical ways, at one end of the spectrum supporting the drafting of really time consuming documents like share purchase agreements or syndicated loan agreements where simply changing a single defined term, company name or pronoun can result in hundreds of changes throughout the documents, alternatively for very simple documents like NDAs it can allow you to make them self-service, reducing business friction.

To some of you listening that might have been old news, solutions like Hot Docs and Contract Express have been on the market for quite a while, so what is Clarilis doing differently that sets it apart?

Principally Clarilis differs in its approach by having its web-based interface be organised around a transaction rather than a single required document like other solutions. This means that Clarilis can be used to automate a whole suite of documents needed for a matter in one fell swoop. Technically this is something you can also achieve with other tools, but is just a lot more complicated to do given their document centred interface.

One further differentiator that Clarilis is keen to emphasise is their managed service that comes packaged with its software subscription. In this the Clarilis team of lawyers provides professional services to do the full contract automation setup and ongoing maintenance, all you have to do is share your existing contract templates, then they can work back from those to setup the necessary automation.

This offering is useful not because setting up doc automation is incredibly technically difficult, most systems are pretty user friendly even for lawyers. It's useful because setting up tools like these can be organisationally difficult, requiring collaboration between different teams and an investment of time to setup more complex automation. Realistically though lawyers have to prioritise their time for client work and so just want to use an out-of-the-box solution, which is exactly what this is. 

Episode transcript (Who should use Clarilis?)

It can be seen from how the market has developed that doc auto is probably best suited for use by lawyers practicing at law firms, and Clarilis is no different. It’s not to say that there are no use cases at in-house teams, just that the highest value use cases like repeat corporate transactions are more frequently handled by outside counsel.

Although Clarilis is more than capable of supporting large firms it may appeal most to mid-market firms as a result of the packaged consulting services. These would be beneficial for any sized firm, but particularly mid-size firms that may not have the internal resources to dedicate to design, build and maintain the doc automation. 

Episode summary: 

A short summary of ThoughtRiver an AI contract negotiation tool, as well as an interview with Tim Pullan, ThoughtRiver CEO.

Episode transcript (What does ThoughtRiver do?):

After a brief departure on the show this episode we are returning to look at AI contract negotiation tools, the original comfort food of the podcast. As part of that, we’ll be digging in to a portion of ThoughtRiver and are delighted to share that meal with Tim Pullan, ThoughtRiver CEO.

For those that have been tuning in to the podcast for a while you'll know that we've covered quite a few AI contract negotiation tools in the past, LawGeex, Scissero and Legalsifter to name a few. All of these are tools that help you to review and mark up third party contracts more quickly, although many of the tools can be used for large contract review projects as well.

ThoughtRiver approaches contract review using AI to boil a contract down to its constituent points of meaning using something they call the Lexible Framework. An easy way to think about the Lexible Framework is essentially as just a list of questions you might want to ask about a contract, for example "does it auto-renew?" or "is the indemnity mutual?". Once this analysis is concluded ThoughRiver then compares the answers to these questions with what is considered acceptable from your businesses' playbook, if something is found that appears to deviate from what is acceptable it's flagged as a risk for further review.

To give you a topical example, if you were reviewing a contract for Force Majeure, ThoughtRiver would not just tell you whether that clause is present or not in the contract, which really wouldn’t be that helpful because we know Force Majeure is in most contracts. Instead it could answer the question “Does Force Majeure include or exclude payment obligations?”. Now whether excluding payment obligations is a good thing for you will depend on whether you are customer or a vendor, so then ThoughtRiver compares this point to your playbook to find that out.

At this point you might be thinking this sounds great, but configuring my negotiation playbook in the application is going to be difficult, and you are probably right, fully configuring your playbook for every contract type and eventuality might be hard. Many companies don’t even have their playbook formally written down anyway. However, ThoughtRiver does have a neat feature that goes some way to help with that. Instead of manually setting all your policies in the application, if you upload your own contract template ThoughtRiver will analyse it and configure negotiation responses for you by mimicking language that's in that contract. Additionally in the tool there are some sensible pre-set negotiation notes and clause suggestions you can use.

In terms of leveraging all of this functionality, ThoughtRiver has decided to keep the traditionalists happy offering a plugin that shows you all the results while you are working directly in MS Word, alternatively you can also view them in the contract viewer within ThoughtRiver, up to you.

Episode transcript (Who should use ThoughtRiver?):

I’ve mentioned a few times on the show that tools like ThoughtRiver are best suited to those that negotiate a higher volume of contracts, so I won’t labour that point again.

Instead I’ll say this, primarily ThoughtRiver and other similar tools are best for those that negotiate 3rd party contracts, procurement teams could be a good example. Third party contracts take longer to review when you have to reconcile what they say with what you can accept, which is exactly what ThoughtRiver is good at. If you are negotiating contracts that start from your paper, you still have issues don’t get me wrong, but reconciling what has changed with what you can accept just isn’t as hard to do. 

About ThoughtRiver:

ThoughtRiver addresses a fundamental problem for lawyers (in-house and private practice): you simply don’t know which part of a contract to focus on without reading it all. In doing so we also address a key problem for CEOs, "how do I increase deal velocity?" Our automated contract review technology speeds up the contracting process by reading the contract, answering key legal questions and then serving up detailed advice and guiding users through remediation within Microsoft Word. The end result is a team of more efficient lawyers who directly increase deal velocity allowing companies to pull revenues forward.

About Legaltech Tapas:

Legaltech Tapas is a regular podcast that serves up bite sized summaries of the latest legal tools, what they do, and why you might use them. Each episode discusses a different legal tool, and includes an interview with a guest from that company so you can hear directly from the horses mouth why you should be using their product. To get the next episode direct to your inbox, sign up @ https://legaltechtapas.substack.com or follow us on Twitter @legaltechtapas.

Episode summary: 

A short summary of Athennian a legal entity management tool, as well as an interview with Adrian Camara, Athennian CEO.

Episode transcript (What does Athennian do?)

For a change this week we will be looking at a legal tool that doesn’t claim to use any AI (for the time being at least), an entity management application Athennian, that makes it easy for businesses to keep track of and manage their corporate records. Joining us to talk about all that and more will be Adrian Camara, Athenian Founder and CEO.

Now legal entity management may not seem like the sexiest topic in the world, but it is an important and necessary activity for  businesses especially those that have complicated entity structures. It's not uncommon for big businesses to have hundreds of different legal entities so they can comply with regulatory regimes or even just do business in different parts of the world. This unfortunately makes staying on top of the reporting requirements time consuming and easy to forget about, which isn’t ideal when missing your reporting deadlines could land you with a hefty penalty. On top of that, managing entities can be labour intensive as you have to deal with multiple parties and antiquated government systems.

In general entity management tools look to solve these problems by doing two things. Firstly, they act as a kind of CRM for your entities keeping all relevant records in a single place, which makes it easier to share that data when regulators or somebody else needs it. Secondly, they help facilitate related workflows like issuing equity, registering new entities or filing your annual reports, so your team can spend less time doing routine paperwork and more time tackling real business problems.

To give you one specific example, if you needed to create a new business entity, Athennian would automatically generate the required documents (share certificates, minutes and the like), submit the registration electronically, automatically store all the entity information and then next year remind you when it is time to file annual reports. Sounds like a lot right? And I haven’t even touched on things like issuing dividends, changing directors or company amalgamations.

However, where Athennian really differs from legacy tools which surprisingly people are still using on-premise, is that it brings these functions in to the cloud, kind of making Athennian the Salesforce of the entity management world. One specific benefit of using Athennian in the cloud, on top of the usual ones, is that Athennian has much better connectivity with government portals and other external systems, meaning that you can register a new entity or e-file your annual reports with the required authorities without having to leave the application.

Episode transcript (Who should use Athennian?)

In general the organisations that benefit from using entity management applications are the ones that have a high volume of entities to manage, which means either law firms that are managing a lot of entities on behalf of clients, or large corporations that tend to have complex entity structures for regulatory, tax or other purposes. If you don’t have a high number of entities then chances are managing your entities is not really much of a pain point for you.

Because this problem is not a new one, many organisations will already have some solution in place. Therefore the organisations I expect will benefit most from Athennian will be the ones that are still using older legacy on-premise solutions. Upgrading to Athennian (or another cloud based offering), would enable them to connect disparate processes that are currently silo’d, creating a seamless flow of information in addition to just storing entity data. 

About Athennian:

Athennian.com is the top reviewed legal entity management cloud platform used by the world's leading law firms and legal departments. Integrating entity data management, document assembly, eSign, org charts, and e-file, Athennian is selected by modern legal and tax teams to scale legal entity governance. Athennian offers rapid migration for customers from any legacy database including ALF, CorpLink, EnAct, GlobalAct, EnGlobe, FastCompany, Corporate Focus, Blueprint (Diligent Entities), GEMS, Secretariat, hCue, Effacts and more.

About Legaltech Tapas:

Legaltech Tapas is a regular podcast that serves up bite sized summaries of the latest legal tools, what they do, and why you might use them. Each episode discusses a different legal tool, and includes an interview with a guest from that company so you can hear directly from the horses mouth why you should be using their product. To get the next episode direct to your inbox, sign up @ https://legaltechtapas.substack.com/ or follow us on Twitter @legaltechtapas.

Episode summary: 

A short summary of ROSS Intelligence an AI legal research tool, as well as an interview with Andrew Arruda, ROSS Intelligence CEO.

Episode transcript (What does Ross do?)

This week on the show we will be serving up a new take on a classic dish with ROSS Intelligence an AI enabled Legal research tool. ROSS is one of the early pioneers in Legal technology using tech to approach the age old task of legal research a little differently, and to explain all of this we will be joined by none other that Andrew Arruda CEO and Co-founder of Ross.

Now…. legal research tools are not anything particularly new, most lawyers will be familiar with the likes of Westlaw and Lexis which have been on the market for some time. In a nutshell these tools provide an online way to access research materials a lawyer might need when arguing a court case, think statutes, regulations and of course existing case law. So if you need to build and substantiate an argument these tools help you to do that more quickly and more robustly.

Ross of course primarily allows lawyers to access these same materials too, but what ROSS does differently is change the way in which lawyers interact with the research tool itself. Instead of having to detail your search with complicated keyword sets and other selected options, Ross simplifies the experience by letting the user ask a question in natural language. To give an example you might ask ROSS "what is the distinction between a contractor or an employee in NY?” Following which ROSS would bring up a list of relevant cases and also identify which are likely the most relevant for you.

Another fun feature of ROSS is the Doc Analyser this tool among other things automatically finds previous negative citations for cases that you upload to the tool. Using this you could quickly check for weaknesses in the arguments used by opposing counsel and strength check your own. If you aren’t sure exactly what a negative citations is, all you need to know is that cases with more negative citations are less trustworthy. 

Episode transcript (Who should use Ross?)

If you are a lawyer supporting litigation in any context you are likely going to need some kind of legal research tool whether it be a newer AI enabled product or one of the classic research tools, so the question is really who stands to benefit most from the advancements ROSS offers.

My expectation is that smaller law firms or even individual practitioners would probably gain the most from using ROSS, basically anyone that doesn't have the substantial number of junior lawyers to throw at legal research that large law firms do. ROSS’s enhanced ability to surface only relevant results makes the workload manageable for a smaller team, while the simplified interface means you don't need to be a research tool specialist to conduct effective research.

ROSS may also appeal more to individual practitioners that work on a contingent fee basis. In those instances you could use the ROSS Doc Analyser to undertake a relatively low effort check on the strength of a certain case before agreeing to take it on, committing your full time and resources to the matter.

About ROSS Intelligence:

ROSS Intelligence, founded in 2015, is building technology to help everyone to obtain the best possible legal outcomes. ROSS’s AI-powered legal research service is the fastest way for lawyers to find all the relevant law they need, enabling them to deliver excellent results to their clients. Today, ROSS is in use at the world's largest law firms, at mid-size and boutique firms, and in solo practices.

About Legaltech Tapas:

Legaltech Tapas is a regular podcast that serves up bite sized summaries of the latest legal tools, what they do, and why you might use them. Each episode discusses a different legal tool, and includes an interview with a guest from that company so you can hear directly from the horses mouth why you should be using their product. To get the next episode direct to your inbox, sign up @ https://legaltechtapas.substack.com/ or follow us on Twitter @legaltechtapas.

Episode summary: 

A short summary of Juro an contract management and collaboration tool, as well as an interview with Richard Mabey, Juro CEO.

Episode Transcript (What does Juro do?)

So on the menu this week we have London based Juro, an end to end contract management tool that combines flavours of contract generation, negotiation and ongoing contract management. Later on we’ll also be joined by Richard Mabey, Juro CEO to get his perspective on where Juro sits in the market and where it is going.

Because Juro seems to straddle a few different categories of tool I want to give a quick summary of each of those so people know what we are talking about.

Firstly, contract generation tools, typically these are workflow tools that enable business users to quickly generate tailored contracts within the constraints set by their legal or leadership teams, rather than having to get a contract from someone.

Secondly, negotiation tools as we have covered on the show before are review tools that increase the speed at which a contract reviewer can negotiate a contract. Often they incorporate AI functionality to locate clauses, but not always.

And finally, contract management systems, these act as a repository of contract data, enabling management of contract obligations via alerts and also the generation of reports and visualisations for leadership decision making. Confusingly however there can be overlap as in order to get access to the data these systems often incorporating the first two tools mentioned as well.

Back to Juro now….in plain English what does it have?

Well, it has an interface for legal teams to create template contracts and then if you are a sales person or HR person in that business, a way to request them without having to go to legal. It has a word style document editor for doing contract redlines with the counter party, an e-signature tool and a nicely designed contract approval workflow. None of this is particularly unique on its own, but Juro really stands out for packaging these features nicely in a consumer-like clear and appealing UI.

In terms of AI functionality Juro doesn’t have the same depth of AI that other tools do, only being able to auto-locate a few more basic data points in a contract. 

The built-in reports and visualisations are also not as configurable as you might find in other products, but that might not matter to you as it has integrations with both Salesforce and Greenhouse (the HR tool), which you might prefer to use for reporting anyway.

I think at a high level I think it would be fair to summarise Juro as a Contract Management System light. One that has focused on user design rather than comprehensive feature coverage like some larger existing players.

Episode Transcript (Who should use Juro?)

Now that we’ve heard the pitch and have a sense of where Juro sits, who do we think should use it?

The integrations, simplicity and well designed interface of Juro I think generally lend themselves for use by external facing business teams (e.g. Sales, HR, Customer Success), teams that traditionally have been frustrated with the lack of control, visibility and speed of the contracting process.

The design-centric collaborative document editor and approval flows, helps those non-legal teams to easily understand where they are in the contracting process as well as what they need to do to move things forward.

Juro's design first approach would also be a good fit for organisations keen to improve their customer's contract experience. A testament to this being that even though contracts can be downloaded from Juro and redlined in Word, 98% of counter-parties choose to remain in Juro throughout the negotiation process.

Juro however cannot be all things to all people, and as a result of its simplicity I could see larger Legal teams being disappointed with limited functionality in areas like reporting, ongoing obligation management or AI. Larger Legal teams might do well by using Juro as a secondary tool or in conjunction with other systems.

About Juro:

Juro is an end-to-end contract collaboration and management platform that helps businesses agree terms faster, while giving deep insight into contract data. The AI-enabled system offers contract creation, negotiation, e-signing and analytics, saving businesses like Deliveroo, Reach plc and Skyscanner up to 96% of time spent on contracts. Visit Juro to find out more about contract management.

About Legaltech Tapas:

Legaltech Tapas is a regular podcast that serves up bite sized summaries of the latest legal tools, what they do, and why you might use them. Each episode discusses a different legal tool, and includes an interview with a guest from that company so you can hear directly from the horses mouth why you should be using their product. To get the next episode direct to your inbox, sign up @ https://legaltechtapas.substack.com/