1
00:00:06,443 --> 00:00:12,586
Welcome to LawNext PR, the podcast where we put a spotlight on the latest news coming out
of the legal tech industry.

2
00:00:12,586 --> 00:00:21,011
This is Bob Ambrogi and in each sponsored episode of LawNext PR, I interview legal tech
companies about their latest news and developments.

3
00:00:21,011 --> 00:00:30,868
Today we're talking about a newly announced strategic partnership between two AI powered
legal solutions for in-house legal teams, the legal workspace LawVu and the contract

4
00:00:30,868 --> 00:00:33,910
drafting and review solution ClauseBase

5
00:00:33,910 --> 00:00:45,932
And joining me to discuss the news are the CEOs of the two companies, Maarten Truyens
co-founder and CEO at ClauseBase, and Sam Kidd, the co-founder and CEO at LawVu.

6
00:00:45,932 --> 00:00:46,964
Welcome to both of you.

7
00:00:46,964 --> 00:00:47,963
Thank you.

8
00:00:48,005 --> 00:00:49,061
Yeah, hello.

9
00:00:49,061 --> 00:00:56,130
So you've just announced this new integration, this new partnership, and I want to get
into the details of it talk a little bit more about it.

10
00:00:56,130 --> 00:01:03,850
But just for the advantage of anybody watching right now who may not be familiar with your
companies, let's back up and start there.

11
00:01:03,850 --> 00:01:07,936
Sam, why don't you start by giving us a little bit of the background of LawVu and what you
do.

12
00:01:07,936 --> 00:01:08,516
Certainly.

13
00:01:08,516 --> 00:01:14,931
So at LawVu are a powered legal workspace and that sounds like a lot of buzzwords.

14
00:01:14,931 --> 00:01:24,278
So to kind of break that down, what we really are is everything from intake of the
business and the way the business users engage with legal through to matter management.

15
00:01:24,278 --> 00:01:33,455
the docket management, the collaboration between the legal teams working with each other
and then through the contract management, spend where they're engaging with the law firms

16
00:01:33,455 --> 00:01:35,377
and then the advanced reporting.

17
00:01:35,377 --> 00:01:36,540
analytics.

18
00:01:36,540 --> 00:01:39,916
you really look at us as the of like the sales force of legal.

19
00:01:39,916 --> 00:01:44,747
So it's everything to do with the day-to-day workflow and operations of a corporate legal
team.

20
00:01:44,747 --> 00:01:49,526
And again, all focused on corporate legal, corporate operations, those sorts of users.

21
00:01:49,526 --> 00:01:52,227
100 % built from the ground up for in-house legal.

22
00:01:52,227 --> 00:02:00,592
I know there's a lot of products out there and people often think of law firms and
in-house legal teams where there's both lawyers but their business model, the way they

23
00:02:00,592 --> 00:02:07,997
work and operate is completely different so actually being built from the ground up from
day one for helping corporate legal teams with their day-to-day workflows has been kind of

24
00:02:07,997 --> 00:02:10,569
key and I suppose it's led to our success over the last 10 years.

25
00:02:10,569 --> 00:02:11,880
Maarten what about you?

26
00:02:11,880 --> 00:02:13,653
Tell us about ClauseBase and what you do.

27
00:02:13,653 --> 00:02:19,157
Yeah, so ClauseBase is a document reviewing document drafting solution.

28
00:02:19,157 --> 00:02:31,369
We are a hybrid toolbox, as we like to call it, a set of pro tools for every lawyer out
there, whether you're in-house or part of a law firm, whether you want to do drafting new

29
00:02:31,369 --> 00:02:35,452
clauses, whether you want to draft a completely new document from scratch.

30
00:02:35,452 --> 00:02:40,647
So we do document automation, we do redrafting, we do comparisons, we do...

31
00:02:40,647 --> 00:02:43,988
all kinds of of cleanup.

32
00:02:43,988 --> 00:02:56,954
So really a mix of on the one hand, Gen AI of course, half of the toolbox is Gen AI, but
the other half consists of the more traditional, the precise tools to make your drafting

33
00:02:56,954 --> 00:03:00,826
as quick and as precise and as reliable as possible.

34
00:03:00,826 --> 00:03:12,260
Probably most pertinent here today is you have the product ClauseBuddy, which is a
Microsoft Word add-in, which brings a lot of this functionality right into the Microsoft

35
00:03:12,260 --> 00:03:13,052
Word environment.

36
00:03:13,052 --> 00:03:14,303
Yeah, yeah, indeed.

37
00:03:14,303 --> 00:03:18,582
it runs in Word, that's home territory for all the lawyers out there.

38
00:03:18,582 --> 00:03:30,225
It is also running in Outlook or in the browser, but Word is definitely the environment
where the software will shine, where it can immediately interact with all the documents

39
00:03:30,225 --> 00:03:31,287
that you've opened.

40
00:03:31,287 --> 00:03:39,944
And for anybody watching this right now or listening to this right now, if you want to see
how it works, we have a separate video we recorded with ClauseBase of ClauseBuddy called

41
00:03:39,944 --> 00:03:40,781
How It Works Video.

42
00:03:40,781 --> 00:03:45,749
You can just search on YouTube for ClauseBuddy or how it works and find that there.

43
00:03:45,749 --> 00:03:50,472
So you've just announced this integration between these two products.

44
00:03:50,472 --> 00:03:51,292
Who wants to start?

45
00:03:51,292 --> 00:03:54,675
Can you explain to me what this means, what it is you've announced here?

46
00:03:54,675 --> 00:03:56,107
Yes, certainly.

47
00:03:56,107 --> 00:03:59,646
I suppose the nice thing is we've been working together for the last year.

48
00:03:59,646 --> 00:04:06,872
And I think the key thing with partnerships is really the focus around the customer, the
customer experience.

49
00:04:06,872 --> 00:04:15,447
I think what we really want to do with this is look at the mutual customers that we have
is like, how do we make that a seamless experience for people that are utilizing a of this

50
00:04:15,447 --> 00:04:16,027
workspace?

51
00:04:16,027 --> 00:04:19,259
And then obviously they want to do the contract drafting tools.

52
00:04:19,259 --> 00:04:20,961
So we've been working together.

53
00:04:20,961 --> 00:04:23,803
to make sure that the two systems actually speak seamlessly together.

54
00:04:23,803 --> 00:04:31,948
And so it just becomes a natural flow of information moving between two systems, which
really just speeds up the process and makes it incredibly easy for customers to get on

55
00:04:31,948 --> 00:04:36,482
board and also just the transfer and movement of data between the two systems.

56
00:04:36,482 --> 00:04:44,639
think that's normally where good integrations go to die, as people talk a good game about
the systems working seamlessly together and then you get into the real world and find that

57
00:04:44,639 --> 00:04:45,610
they don't.

58
00:04:45,610 --> 00:04:48,783
the two teams have been kind of working tirelessly over the last.

59
00:04:48,783 --> 00:04:54,243
year to kind of make that a seamless process and just a more enjoyable process for the
legal teams that utilize this.

60
00:04:54,243 --> 00:04:56,414
Maarten, anything you want to add to what Sam just said?

61
00:04:56,414 --> 00:04:59,287
Yeah, were when about a year ago we found each other.

62
00:04:59,287 --> 00:05:05,671
We were really happy in the sense that the, we were often asked by customers like, uh, do
you do workflow?

63
00:05:05,671 --> 00:05:07,912
Do you do document repositories?

64
00:05:07,912 --> 00:05:11,455
Is that, is that also something that we can come buy your product for?

65
00:05:11,455 --> 00:05:13,556
And we were like, no, that's not what we do.

66
00:05:13,556 --> 00:05:14,857
We are drafters.

67
00:05:14,857 --> 00:05:16,199
We are reviewers.

68
00:05:16,199 --> 00:05:18,702
we see ourselves more as the, the, the.

69
00:05:18,702 --> 00:05:20,293
the operating room of the doctor.

70
00:05:20,293 --> 00:05:31,819
So you roll in the patient, which is the Word file, you do some things to it, and then you
roll out the patient again and the patient will rest somewhere else, which would then be,

71
00:05:31,819 --> 00:05:33,890
yeah, for example, the LawVu platform.

72
00:05:33,890 --> 00:05:43,325
And that's where we were really happy to have a product that is so complimentary to what
we were doing without any overlap.

73
00:05:43,325 --> 00:05:47,538
So the integration could really be like, where are the...

74
00:05:47,538 --> 00:05:48,809
points that we need to connect.

75
00:05:48,809 --> 00:05:49,850
Let's do this.

76
00:05:49,850 --> 00:05:55,247
Let's make this as seamless as possible for the end user to enjoy the experience.

77
00:05:55,247 --> 00:05:57,880
So LawVu is kind of the hospital in that analogy then.

78
00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:08,395
mean, LawVu has contract lifecycle management, has document management, and that becomes
the repository for the contracts that you can then pull into the operating room.

79
00:06:08,395 --> 00:06:11,530
I love that analogy and work on them in ClauseBuddy, right?

80
00:06:11,530 --> 00:06:12,372
Is that how it works?

81
00:06:12,372 --> 00:06:13,126
Yeah.

82
00:06:13,229 --> 00:06:14,275
Yeah, come on.

83
00:06:14,275 --> 00:06:17,017
Yeah, that's indeed how we see things.

84
00:06:17,017 --> 00:06:27,303
So you make a comparison, you uh create a new version, you do a review where you don't
like the counterparties arguments, you may make some changes to it.

85
00:06:27,303 --> 00:06:30,095
And then, of course, you need to save this again.

86
00:06:30,095 --> 00:06:39,068
And then you switch to LawVu, where you just make another version, make it safe in the
right environment, right next to the previous version.

87
00:06:39,068 --> 00:06:44,622
all the search capabilities retrieving that again next week in the next round of the
negotiations.

88
00:06:44,622 --> 00:06:48,402
That's where we rely on LawVu to make it shine.

89
00:06:48,402 --> 00:06:55,371
And then we kick into all the workflows afterwards, the approval processes, the thorough
signing, or the lifecycle management around those contracts.

90
00:06:55,371 --> 00:06:58,346
So the two products really work hand in glove together.

91
00:06:58,346 --> 00:07:06,755
So we're talking here without the visuals to explain what we're talking about, but maybe
you can kind of walk us through a little bit what this does look like from a user

92
00:07:06,755 --> 00:07:08,016
perspective.

93
00:07:08,016 --> 00:07:14,003
How do they take advantage of this integration in the normal course of uh contract
drafting workflow?

94
00:07:14,003 --> 00:07:18,424
Shall I do a quick quick run through of how the integration works or?

95
00:07:18,424 --> 00:07:22,275
Well, if you want to describe it, we're not going to, we're not doing a demo here.

96
00:07:22,275 --> 00:07:26,727
but if you just more, more descriptively, mean, so I'm in, I would, do I start in word?

97
00:07:26,727 --> 00:07:27,887
Do I start in law view?

98
00:07:27,887 --> 00:07:29,422
Where, how does, how do I get started on?

99
00:07:29,422 --> 00:07:31,562
It depends how the work is coming.

100
00:07:31,562 --> 00:07:39,362
So if you're taking through LawVu, where you have someone inside the organization that has
a contract they want sent through the legal, that come through the intake portal inside

101
00:07:39,362 --> 00:07:41,873
LawVu that would be sent to the legal team.

102
00:07:41,873 --> 00:07:46,884
The legal team will then receive that, look at it, and then, okay, this is site that we
want to work on.

103
00:07:46,884 --> 00:07:49,404
And that's when that load it into Word.

104
00:07:49,404 --> 00:07:56,104
So straight from LawVu load it into Word, and then you open the ClauseBuddy integration
inside Word.

105
00:07:56,104 --> 00:07:57,011
And so...

106
00:07:57,011 --> 00:08:00,763
without the user ever kind of realizing the switching kind of between systems and
everything.

107
00:08:00,763 --> 00:08:03,905
Once it moved into Word, then that's when ClauseBuddy kind of takes over on the drafting.

108
00:08:03,905 --> 00:08:12,051
And then as Maarten said, you kind of get into all the operational sides of the drafting,
working that through, make all your red lines, all your changes.

109
00:08:12,051 --> 00:08:19,816
And then that would just save back into LawVu, which you may then send out to the other
side or you'll communicate with internal business user around this kind of where things

110
00:08:19,816 --> 00:08:20,207
are at.

111
00:08:20,207 --> 00:08:24,840
And then from there, just depends whether that's then send out to the other side for.

112
00:08:24,840 --> 00:08:33,891
redlining and come back in the same processes is completed until you're in a stage where
you're in agreement and then get sent through LawVu out of the signature.

113
00:08:33,891 --> 00:08:44,111
Maarten, I wonder if you could just kind of quickly describe some of the features that
ClauseBuddy brings to this process.

114
00:08:44,111 --> 00:08:54,471
mean, I know you've got within within ClauseBuddy, you've got features such as Truffle
Hunt, which I love the name of in in AutoSuggest document chat.

115
00:08:54,471 --> 00:08:58,742
You talk a little bit about how those help you in the contract review process.

116
00:08:58,742 --> 00:08:59,092
Yeah.

117
00:08:59,092 --> 00:09:09,272
So for example, the truffle hunt, you're looking for the golden nuggets somewhere in the
woods, like you have hundreds, if not thousands of contracts that you've previously

118
00:09:09,272 --> 00:09:11,153
contributed to negotiated.

119
00:09:11,153 --> 00:09:14,376
So they would, for example, be stored on the LawVu platform.

120
00:09:14,376 --> 00:09:20,931
And what you can then do is to actually search for interesting clauses that were extracted
from those contracts.

121
00:09:20,931 --> 00:09:21,562
So because

122
00:09:21,562 --> 00:09:24,264
Maybe you're now drafting a completely new contract.

123
00:09:24,264 --> 00:09:28,114
You're looking for that one clause that you've written three years ago.

124
00:09:28,114 --> 00:09:29,879
You're like, I've negotiated it.

125
00:09:29,879 --> 00:09:30,790
Where is it again?

126
00:09:30,790 --> 00:09:36,076
It's one of these features where just in a few seconds you can then find something in your
drafting history.

127
00:09:36,076 --> 00:09:47,356
And so this, the pushing, the pulling of the files that's seamlessly connected between the
two platforms so that this is as easy as possible where you can really rely on what's

128
00:09:47,356 --> 00:09:48,388
already stored.

129
00:09:48,388 --> 00:09:51,719
inside of the LawVu platform.

130
00:09:51,719 --> 00:09:57,019
As another example, we recently added a feature where you can summarize changes.

131
00:09:57,019 --> 00:10:02,290
So you get back some track changes, so a redline version of a counterparty.

132
00:10:02,290 --> 00:10:03,730
It's stored within LawVu.

133
00:10:03,730 --> 00:10:06,230
You just got it by email.

134
00:10:06,230 --> 00:10:07,870
You send it through the workflows.

135
00:10:07,870 --> 00:10:09,850
It ends up in the LawVu platform.

136
00:10:09,850 --> 00:10:14,081
And then you're like, hey, I don't want to read through this ocean of changes.

137
00:10:14,081 --> 00:10:23,405
let me have the Gen AI automatically make a summary of what actually changed, where are
all these red lines about.

138
00:10:23,405 --> 00:10:30,112
Give me a quick overview of what I can expect to do with this new version towards the
counterparty.

139
00:10:30,112 --> 00:10:42,525
So again, as you're working in ClauseBuddy, you're able to search against, hunt against
the documents that are within LawFu, and that's essentially your repository there.

140
00:10:42,525 --> 00:10:48,398
Yeah, yeah, we've always been about, we are a plugin to an open Word file.

141
00:10:48,398 --> 00:10:50,318
And then so it needs to come from somewhere.

142
00:10:50,318 --> 00:10:56,200
Of course, you can store it locally, you can store it in SharePoint, but there are so many
features that you would be missing out.

143
00:10:56,200 --> 00:11:04,942
And that's why we've always been like, hey, we need to find a good platform that we can
partner with where all these files can be stored.

144
00:11:04,942 --> 00:11:10,036
while you're drafting, often you do have a need to compare to something else to...

145
00:11:10,036 --> 00:11:12,840
to see like I've written this before, where is it?

146
00:11:12,840 --> 00:11:18,477
And that's also where we piggyback on the storage and the search capabilities of Lawview.

147
00:11:18,477 --> 00:11:20,524
Sam, anything to add to that?

148
00:11:20,524 --> 00:11:24,003
I think it's, you in some ways, just the power of ClauseBuddy.

149
00:11:24,003 --> 00:11:32,004
We look at where we have kind of focused on kind of the workflows for our users, how we
help them communicate and collaborate with each other.

150
00:11:32,004 --> 00:11:39,575
And obviously the technology that Maarten and his team have built up over the years around
just the detail of actually editing documents and controlling that through Word.

151
00:11:39,575 --> 00:11:48,226
That's the power of the two platforms together is years and years of experience on either
side in a similar workflow, but not doing the same thing.

152
00:11:48,226 --> 00:11:57,147
I think that's when the sort of two companies came together is realizing it would take us
so long to try and recreate what ClauseBuddy has had and vice versa.

153
00:11:57,147 --> 00:12:05,497
like, just, you know, the partnership makes a lot of sense and we've already got a lot of
clients that are really enjoying the two systems being more deeply integrated together.

154
00:12:05,497 --> 00:12:12,482
So I heard you say you've been developing and refining this integration over the course of
a year or so at this point.

155
00:12:12,482 --> 00:12:15,721
This is now available and live to customers.

156
00:12:15,721 --> 00:12:17,282
More, more, yeah.

157
00:12:17,282 --> 00:12:21,463
Already some customers, uh quite some shared customers using it.

158
00:12:21,463 --> 00:12:23,463
So it's not something that we launched yesterday.

159
00:12:23,463 --> 00:12:26,125
No, no, it's been in production for several months.

160
00:12:26,125 --> 00:12:34,908
Of course, we still have ideas of how to further explore it, how to deepen the
relationship even further from a technical perspective, know, also from a company

161
00:12:34,908 --> 00:12:35,928
perspective.

162
00:12:35,928 --> 00:12:39,560
But it is already live customers happily using it.

163
00:12:39,560 --> 00:12:45,784
And is there something, what does a customer have to do to activate this integration?

164
00:12:45,784 --> 00:12:47,267
Is there anything they need to do at their end?

165
00:12:47,267 --> 00:12:52,470
This tool basically is getting in touch with our team on either side and then we hook it
up.

166
00:12:52,470 --> 00:12:57,192
the technical invitation and getting up and running is relatively quick.

167
00:12:57,192 --> 00:13:03,954
yeah, it's basically one email, one phone call, and then we're sending to lawyers.

168
00:13:03,954 --> 00:13:08,886
So I'd love to say that it's nice and straightforward, but everyone wants to read a
contract and then redline it and send it back to us.

169
00:13:08,886 --> 00:13:11,998
So there is that kind of process, but the technical piece is actually easy.

170
00:13:11,998 --> 00:13:21,178
It's just the again the user and talking to us again them they're buying a look at the
product and then they're away so we've had some customers that have been on calls buddy

171
00:13:21,178 --> 00:13:26,978
that have moved in law view quite quickly and then vice versa people that have been with
us a couple years and you know we've talked about the integration they've got incredibly

172
00:13:26,978 --> 00:13:30,298
excited and they've been up and running and a matter of no time

173
00:13:30,298 --> 00:13:36,916
Anything else uh either of you would like to point out about this announcement that we
haven't talked about yet?

174
00:13:36,916 --> 00:13:37,917
I have one.

175
00:13:37,917 --> 00:13:47,023
Where we also really found each other was in the shared vision on what Gen AI should be
doing, where it is heading towards the future.

176
00:13:47,023 --> 00:13:50,045
We both have a very realistic view on this.

177
00:13:50,045 --> 00:13:54,139
We're very much into Gen AI.

178
00:13:54,139 --> 00:14:00,724
been looking very closely at half of the toolboxes, Gen AI, LawVu has been constantly
adding features as well.

179
00:14:00,724 --> 00:14:02,064
But we have a realistic view.

180
00:14:02,064 --> 00:14:08,360
Like we're not fanboys accepting anything that is there because lawyers are still divided
on this subject.

181
00:14:08,360 --> 00:14:16,836
And we sense here that taking a realistic view, being honest, uh explaining what it is and
not selling some magic.

182
00:14:16,836 --> 00:14:21,460
That's where the shared vision also really comes in and where we found each other.

183
00:14:21,460 --> 00:14:22,302
Sam, anything else?

184
00:14:22,302 --> 00:14:29,644
Yeah, we've spent a long time, you know, I suppose if look at our website now compared to
a couple years ago, obviously we lead with AI kind of workspace.

185
00:14:29,644 --> 00:14:32,855
Beginners that we're all focused around efficiency and accuracy.

186
00:14:32,855 --> 00:14:41,835
So we've been looking at kind of simple features that we've kind of rolled out as we spend
a lot of time making sure that accuracy is there because it's probably the one thing about

187
00:14:41,835 --> 00:14:43,746
AI is that it's incredibly creative.

188
00:14:43,746 --> 00:14:48,797
But unfortunately, the legal world being creative and different every single time you do
something means.

189
00:14:48,797 --> 00:14:50,088
not super useful.

190
00:14:50,088 --> 00:14:59,483
So trying to spend the time to make sure you get consistent results, constant, consistent
data back the whole time and that you can have citations to any questions they're asking.

191
00:14:59,483 --> 00:15:05,568
And I think that's something that we spend a lot of time in conversations with each other
about our kind of approach to utilizing AI.

192
00:15:05,568 --> 00:15:08,179
Like this is the worst AI is ever going to be.

193
00:15:08,179 --> 00:15:14,362
And so really for us, it's been about how do you set up the platform to take advantage of
the new models that come out of the years.

194
00:15:14,362 --> 00:15:14,753
So

195
00:15:14,753 --> 00:15:18,791
uh Yeah, very shared kind of alignment over what that strategy and approaches.

196
00:15:18,791 --> 00:15:25,244
Well, Maarten, Sam, thanks so much for coming on the show today and telling us all about
this news and congratulations.

197
00:15:25,244 --> 00:15:25,742
Thank you.

198
00:15:25,742 --> 00:15:26,345
Thank you.

199
00:15:26,345 --> 00:15:27,805
That does it for today's episode.

200
00:15:27,805 --> 00:15:28,685
I hope you enjoyed it.

201
00:15:28,685 --> 00:15:31,845
Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or find us on YouTube.

202
00:15:31,845 --> 00:15:33,156
Just search for LawnexPR.

203
00:15:33,156 --> 00:15:38,036
You can also find all the episodes on the Lawnext Legal Tech Directory under the Resources
tab.

204
00:15:38,036 --> 00:15:40,551
This is Bob Ambrogi Thanks for joining us today.