Big Four legal arm EY Law, has chosen LAWLIFT to help them to provide corporate legal departments with automated documents. The news follows a series of moves by other Big Four legal teams to closely associate with a variety of legal tech companies. It also follows the acquisition by EY of Riverview Law and Thomson Reuters’ Pangea 3.
In this case, EY Law in Germany, Switzerland and Austria (GSA), will work together with LAWLIFT, which is a German doc automation company, and which lists RWE, Daimler and Taylor Wessing among its current clients.
The Big Four firm’s lawyers will tailor automated contract models and templates to meet the needs of their clients, EY said. In effect taking on the work for the corporate inhouse legal teams.
Dr. Christian Bosse, Managing Partner at EY Law in the GSA region, said in a statement: ‘The automation of the creation of documents is part of the transformation of legal work and ties in with contract management, which is currently high on the list of priorities in the legal departments.
‘After the acquisition of Riverview and Pangea3, the cooperation with LAWLIFT is a further logical step to expand the offer of the Legal Operations Services division.’ [Note: translated.]
In addition to document creation, EY Law noted that it offers advice on the integration of existing contracts into a new contract management system; support in the negotiation and conclusion of standard contracts; maintenance of the existing contract portfolio; and risk analysis for contracts.
The firm also pointed out that with their team of computer scientists, mathematicians and lawyers, EY Law can offer customised AI solutions to legal departments.
All in all further proof that the Big Four are serious about embracing legal tech – not just for their own lawyers – but to leverage it directly for the benefit of their clients.
Other examples of tech combinations with the Big Four include Deloitte Legal bringing in a host of legal tech companies in London via its Deloitte Ventures arm, and PwC Legal training up its lawyers on no-code platform, Bryter.