A digital contract management platform for modern companies and visionary lawyers (Part One)

Abstract
The usage of a digital platform for creating contracts and managing their entire lifecycle in one flow makes it possible to achieve the best results. It makes you efficient, gives you a broader overview, and it enables you to maximise the value of your legal work. One of the greatest advantages of the digital platform is that it reduces legal risks significantly while using the templates created by the most experienced and advanced lawyers.

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What is Contractbook? Can we define Contractbook as a digital platform for creating contracts?
Yes, essentially Contractbook is a digital contract management platform for modern companies and visionary lawyers. We are based in Copenhagen, Denmark, but we are backed by Google’s AI-fund, Gradient Ventures, and our goal is to help people make better contracts with well-designed, user-friendly technology and data-driven contract automation.

The main idea with our platform is that you shall be able to manage the entire lifecycle of your contracts in one flow. You can create contracts with updated templates, sign them with an advanced digital signature and store them organised and safe in the cloud. You can also review, negotiate and collaborate in teams to ensure the best possible contracts, as well as execute the contracts to fulfil your obligations. Finally, you can track and analyse your contracts to maximise their value. The platform also integrates well with thousands of other apps, and you can automate your workflows through our many customised automations. For example, we have just launched a brand-new Gmail Importer that extracts contracts from your Gmail account and uploads them automatically to a single organised overview.

Furthermore, we offer document automation to draft contracts with questionnaires as well as a digital client-portal for the legal industry. The drafter solution enables law firms to develop new, more scalable business models, while the client portal is a tool that enables lawyers to collaborate with their clients and support them in their day-to-day work. In general, our legal tech solutions for lawyers are developed in a way that allows law firms to adopt a more client-centric and proactive approach with modern business models and new revenue streams.

So, the contract management platform is the foundation upon which we are building a holistic, data-driven and automation-friendly universe for managing your contracts.

Thus, Contractbook was born out of the idea of assisting legal professionals and law firms. Is that it?
We are motivated by the ambition of helping everyone to make better contracts. We want to improve the legal situation of normal people and their access to justice. Originally, we built a platform where companies can manage their own contracts. We also offer a lot of free contract templates that are prepared by lawyers, so it is easier for people to create their own legally updated contracts. But people need help from time to time, and they want to collaborate with their lawyers, so we have now developed our platform in a way that makes it easier for legal professionals and law firms to gain value from the platform as well. We try to facilitate a solution that works equally well for both lawyers and their clients. That means it is easier for any company to manage contracts efficiently, while we also enable law firms to become more client-centric.

Can law firms also benefit from your solutions?
Lawyers can benefit immensely from our client-faced solutions. With a tool like the questionnaire-based drafter, law firms can generate profit 24 hours per day, and not just during in-office hours. With their current business model, law firms can only have linear growth. Every time they take on a new case, they will have to hire more lawyers. An automated solution like our drafter enables exponential growth because setting it up requires a one-time fee and very little maintenance. Once it is set up, it generates revenue automatically.

The client-portal is another digital technology that enables new revenue streams for law firms. Such collaborative tool gives the law firms a chance to get closer to their clients, become more proactive and offer them a more holistic service. We really believe in this approach to law. As we have argued in this piece, law firms cannot rely on law alone. Why would a company pick a firm to manage their legal matters when they can get several types of professional services in one-stop-shop concepts with alternative legal service providers? If accounting firms can handle IT, accounting, data security and compliance, why then pick a law firm that only offers law? Law firms should have more touchpoints with the companies they support. They should collaborate with their clients and offer them services within cyber-security, HR and compliance, for example. That would give them a competitive edge. Furthermore, as digital technology automates all the high-volume/low complexity cases, law firms need to offer surplus value in their expertise and know-how of the companies. But how are they going to do that, if they are not close to the company? That is what our client-portal solves.

[to be continued]