Clarilis has launched a suite of pre-automated model commercial lease (MCL) docs in a move that should help property lawyers to speed up transactions.
It follows the launch of an earlier pre-automated suite of docs for M&A, created together with FromCounsel last year. It can also be seen as a move that reinforces standardisation. For example, since around 2015 in the UK, lawyers from a variety of firms and organisations have worked together to create a set of standard MCL documents (see here), which are freely available. That project was originally commissioned by the British Property Federation.
Also, it’s interesting to see that while contract standardisation efforts are seeing a surge in interest, e.g. with oneNDA in the UK, and Bonterms and Common Paper in the US, the real estate sector has been working on similar projects for some years.
In terms of the product offering, Clarilis is both providing those standardised MCL documents and prefiguring them so that key data can be quickly populated throughout them in an automated way, without lawyers having to go through the process of automating these key real estate agreements themselves.
Clarilis said that ‘by extending its product suites to include market ready automations, law firms of all sizes’ can leverage this approach in ‘an off-the-shelf format’. They added that this is ‘a milestone in the effort to standardise and level-up digitisation in real estate’.
The automated docs, which the tech company’s Professional Support Lawyer team have helped to create, are primarily for law firms acting for landlords, investors, corporate occupiers, as well as generalist real estate practices.
Dion Panambalana, Real Estate Partner at global law firm Hogan Lovells, commented on the move: ‘The MCL working group [ referring to the standardisation project mentioned above ] wants its content to be used by as wide an audience as possible. I am delighted to see pre-automated content extending that reach to a wider group of real estate lawyers through Clarilis as this will make it easier for more lawyers to use and enjoy the benefits of an MCL approach to real estate leasing.’
While James Quinn, CEO at Clarilis, concluded: ‘We believe that standardised content can be a great launchpad for accelerated adoption of legal tech, including drafting automation. We are working to offer pre-automated content in real estate and other areas to enable Clarilis automation to reach a wider audience.
‘The MCL is a client-led project, and Clarilis’ automation of MCL content is a client-driven product. Meeting market demand with the right tech, to solve the right problem, at the right time, is a great way to disrupt the real estate sector (valued at $10 trillion globally in 2021, according to MSCI) and to give progressive law firms even stronger competitive advantage.’
As noted, this is all part of a wider movement to try and solve some of the challenges faced by lawyers that need to meet clients’ regularly recurring contractual needs, i.e. by making use of standardisation, but in this case with automation added in to make the efficiency gains even greater.
Note: if this subject is of interest, Clarilis is holding a webinar 19th May at 2pm (BST), which features panel guests Tim Cooper, Legal Director at LandSec, and Dion Panambalana, Real Estate Partner at Hogan Lovells, who are two of the architects of the Model Commercial Lease documents project. You can register for the event here:
1 Trackback / Pingback
Comments are closed.