CLM company ContractPodAi is to make freely available a doc automation facility for the oneDPA, a standardised open-source data processing agreement, created in partnership with The Law Boutique (TLB), PwC UK and the Claustack community.
Anyone needing to generate a oneDPA document can do so on the ContractPodAi platform in a very short time using a series of doc automation prompts (see images below). Through ContractPodAi’s logic-driven approach you will receive a DPA that meets your requirements and adheres to regulations, they explained.
The oneDPA follows the development of other contract standardisation projects by TLB, such as the oneNDA, which was the first document type they tackled.
The organisations said that they hoped the oneDPA will ‘empower the legal industry to reduce the compliance burden and regulatory risks, while saving time and costs in the process’.
Interestingly, they have tried to make this globally useful, and noted that the ‘Claustack community came together to create a standardised DPA which takes into account data protection laws in various jurisdictions to ensure it’s globally applicable’.
Claustack is a community project where its members can work together on contract standardisation ideas. Each major contract project has a steering committee, or SteerCo, to ensure there are harmonised terms.
Darryl Chiang, Director, Legal, at Google, who is part of the SteerCo, said: ‘I wanted to be a part of the growing community of lawyers championing open-source contracts as the key to a better future where a broad spectrum of companies can proactively agree to fair, friction-free terms to both comply with the law and get business done.’
Sarvarth Misra, CEO and co-founder of ContractPodAi, commented: ‘Through this oneDPA initiative, we’re providing customers with true standardisation plus technology enablement. [This] will be a powerful tool for legal teams looking to drive automation, efficiency, and reduce friction throughout the contracting process.’
Meanwhile Roisin Noonan, COO of TLB and co-founder of Claustack, added: ‘The importance of standardisation within the legal industry should not be underestimated. Beyond the huge time and costs savings it brings with it, in the age of the CLM standardisation works hand in hand with legal technology to benefit the legal sector through greater optimisation.’
And, to conclude Graham Edwards, PwC NewLaw, Senior Transformation Lead, said: ‘Businesses around the world are figuring out the best way to adhere to an influx of data privacy regulations, and through oneDPA built on expertise and technology from TLB, ContractPodAi, and PwC UK, legal teams can easily manage a high volume of these agreements with automation guiding the whole process.
‘This technology complements the overall process of intake, collaboration, and resolution, making it easier and more streamlined for teams to respond and adhere to new regulations.’
All in all, a very positive move that shows that standardisation projects can be scaled up and made easily available to the market as a whole.
And this all started with oneNDA, which first took shape back in early 2021. The amazing thing here is that although it feels like the oneNDA has been with us for many years already, it’s only a year or so old.
That tells us something, namely that once standards are created and people buy into them, then they rapidly become…well….standard. It can all happen very quickly. So, kudos to Electra Japonas, CEO of TLB and Noonan for getting this started and also a big hat tip to ContractPodAi, PwC and all the law firms and many companies supporting this work.
This is great news, and a step in the right direction towards streamlining a complex, costly and time- consuming challenge for many companies. I am curious about how the technology approaches state specific data privacy rules vs. federal data privacy rules. In the US for example, does the template adjust depending on the state selected? Or is it built only to align with federal standards? I look forward to learning more about this technology!
Hi Pam – thank you for your question – suggest you visit https://contractpodai.com/onedpa/ – there is an option to try oneDPA and a contact page where your question can be answered.