Doc automation pioneer Clarilis and legal information group FromCounsel are now moving to the next phase of their pre-automated contract offering with a far larger collection of ‘productised’ corporate documents, including shareholder agreements and articles of association.
The move follows the launch of their pre-automated M&A suite earlier this year. Artificial Lawyer has noted several times that this kind of hook up, where you are combining subject matter expertise and doc automation (plus plenty of human know-how on the automation side), to productise ‘legal goods’ makes a lot of sense.
It allows law firms and others to skip the often time-consuming need to automate their own basic docs, so they can then focus on higher value work. This can only help to reduce inefficiency. It also helps to support the standardisation movement for less complex contract types.
The next pre-automated documents will be:
- Share transfer suite
- Share buyback suite: Off-market
- Variation of class rights suite
- Articles of association suite
- Consolidation of shares suite
- Sub-division of shares suite
- Reduction of share capital suite
- Shareholders (joint venture) agreements
- Re-designation of shares
The two companies said that they were seeing elevated demand for these legal products as the M&A boom continued across the world. They added that they estimated firms could save up to 14 hours in terms of drafting the above documents by using their productised contracts.
Andrew Thornton QC, CEO, FromCounsel, said: ‘The second phase of our partnership with Clarilis signals a significant step forward at a time where pressures on fees, coupled with a boom in transactional activity requires a solution that delivers what the market needs, now.
‘The first phase of pre-automated document suites, delivered as a result of our partnership, has proven that this can be achieved to enable firms to quickly deliver high quality documentation, minimise risk and provide employees with the best tools. We will continue to extend the range of documentation available with Clarilis, on behalf of law firms of all sizes.’
And James Quinn, CEO, Clarilis, added: ‘We have been extremely encouraged by the market’s response to the roll-out our automated M&A suite and are pleased to be able to meet the demand for additional suites for corporate departments. The teams from FromCounsel and Clarilis are working hard to deliver this content to firms.’