This week, leaders from across the world are meeting in Glasgow for COP26 to limit global warming, so it’s timely that Aniket Bhatt, a law student at the University of Ottawa in Canada, has launched Zersent, a comprehensive ESG tool. It’s also his second legal tech company after launching research system LegalEdison last year.
For a law student to launch one viable legal tech company is impressive, to launch two and to still be studying is truly impressive. Below is an AL TV Product Walk Through of how it works. But generally, this is how Bhatt explained things:
‘Zersent is a one-stop-shop software for businesses to achieve ESG. Businesses can automatically create and survey internal stakeholders about ESG. Based on the responses, Zersent’s algorithm can then create an action plan to bridge gaps and address issues.
‘Businesses can also save time and money by instantly creating customised and effective ESG policies and plans. Further, Zersent uses AI and natural language processing to monitor stakeholder and media sentiment by tracking news sources. Zersent instantly simplifies ESG reporting by allowing businesses to instantly create reports and custom web pages using all major reporting frameworks.’
So, there you go. It’s a really comprehensive system and Artificial Lawyer picked up on the point that this enables a company’s staff to provide a kind of democratic assessment of whether that business is meeting its ESG goals.
Here is the walk through. Press play to watch inside the page. It’s about 11 mins with a short Q&A at the end.
The move is doubly timely as only a couple of weeks ago, Rosemary Martin, GC of Vodafone, gave a keynote speech at Artificial Lawyer’s conference about ESG and how this connected with the law, inhouse legal teams, and also legal tech. Research of the market found that there are very few legal tech companies or law firms developing specific ESG tools, which is surprising given that this is going to be a huge area of interest for a long time to come.
But back to Zersent, as you will see from the walk through, it covers a lot of ground and is ready to go. Below is a screen shot of part of its interface, and then a table that shows your level of ESG engagement.
And, the ESG maturity level diagram:
Overall, it’s an impressive product, and all the more so given that Bhatt is still a law student. No doubt we will see more ESG tools arrive in the months ahead, but Bhatt is already pioneering the way. Congratulations to him.
(P.S. ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance.)