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We had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Giles Thompson of Avvoka. Avvoka is a really cool tool that helps automate agreement drafting. Here’s what Giles has to say:
An insight into Avvoka and the inspiration behind it
We are an online-based, document automation platform. Our tool encompasses end-to-end document automation – everything from automated first drafts to online document collaboration, negotiation, e-signature and data analytics.
Our philosophy:
Put control of document automation back into the hands of the people who know their documents best
We want to make automation a skill that every person has at their disposal when writing documents
These aims sound basic, but most tools don’t achieve them
We do simple and intuitive document automation, however, we do not compromise on power or sophistication. Think of us as the honey badger of document automation. We look unassuming and pretty, but our platform can handle almost anything document automation-related that you’d want. We achieve this in seconds and hours, not weeks and months
5 key elements to the platform – that span the whole range of the document automation process – automation, collaboration, negotiation, execution, analytics
Automation –
All other tools on the market involve ‘coding’ to create automated documents. Our intuitive, visual onboarding tools allow anyone to learn automation in hours, not weeks. Anyone can create automated documents using standard form precedents, super easily, with no need for external consultants – which then –
Allow you to generate a document, in seconds, by answering a questionnaire,
We don’t stop there – unlike most traditional automation tools
Collaboration –
Multiple people from one team can work together on a document at the same time, in real-time (reminiscent of google docs – but for lawyers). No more – working in parallel and then putting divergent document versions back together in a messy collage. Within your documents, tag or assign tasks to your colleagues or external parties. No more – sending your data team chaser after chaser to look at your GDPR clause before you can sign
Built with security and auditability in-mind – range of features built by lawyers, for lawyers – version comparison, granular rights etc
External Negotiation –
Negotiate online via your browser, avoid delay & email ping-pong
Negotiate even the most complicated documents on the platform
We’ve consciously designed it to be practical – we have baked in the concept of the virtual adversarial tennis net
All fully and easily auditable (in a way that email traffic is not)
Block negotiation on certain provisions (if you have the leverage)
Execution –
E-sign seamlessly and remotely
We have our own absolutely free tool – AvvokaSign
You can use DocuSign or Adobe
Analytics –
Through automating and digitally negotiating your documents, you are turning your documents into structured data. We are not a clunky word plugin
We are the next generation of document automation
You, by design, maintain easy access to your crucial commercial data when you use Avvoka:
it’s not lost – offline or in translation, over email
You automatically build a data treasure trove, and we give you the key
Easily view and gain insights about the data attached to your documents
Want to know how often your payment terms are challenged?
Want to know how often your liability cap is amended?
Want an automatic summary of every deal you’ve just agreed, and your responsibilities going forward, straight after?
We can tell you!
Brief outline of the journey so far
Our founders ran into the problem while practising law. Validated it through our own lived experience and by speaking to legal colleagues. Founded in late 2015 by David and Eliot – former solicitors at Linklater and Slaughter and May respectively. Avvoka was started to help bring efficiency and transparency to the contracting process, in doing so, to freeing up the time of lawyers and business teams to do more high-level advisory and technical legal or commercial work that our clients are great at.
Avvoka was inspired by what David and Eliot experienced as junior lawyers, and the opportunities for process improvements that they identified while in these roles, particularly for more repetitive work streams/tasks. Having initially looked at consumer-facing contracting applications available on the market, they looked to take the design-led and user-experience from these products, and apply it to the corporate law world around them.
The company secured a place in Allen & Overy’s first Fuse cohort in 2017 and since then we’ve grown under the guidance of A&O’s lawyers and clients. A notable highlight has been the launch of LMA.Automate earlier this year, a document automation project, alongside the LMA and A&O.
A brief background about yourself and the team, what motivates you each morning
I’m a former technology lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills and Kirkland & Ellis.
The team have a mix of backgrounds – some are former lawyers such as myself, some have studied law, and others have joined us on the back of a strong interest in the start-up scene. It’s incredibly exciting to be involved in trying to help change the way an industry operates.
I believe it’s the company mission. Avvoka was founded to allow lawyers and business people to delegate their most repetitive tasks to its platform document automation to free up their time to do more of the high-level advisory technical, legal or commercial work that they are great at and enjoy most.
Relevance wrt the Asian context
Having opened an office in Singapore last year, we have enjoyed substantial growth in the APAC region, with a focus on the Singapore and Hong Kong markets. Under our current growth push, we believe that working with new Asian clients would not only provide an invaluable opportunity from a sales perspective, but would also help us to successfully address potential pain-points unique to the Asian legal market.
Dealing with competition and creating your own mark
The metrics we achieve for our clients – time saved, quality, ability to tackle volume, consistency, ability to create new products or services
But in particular:
the ability to do more in less time
for in-house teams, we focus on consistency maintenance, which is really important, even with the ability to have direct oversight
creating lots of data for a rainy day
Our clients perceive us as much quicker and more agile than competitors – matches fast pace nature of the work they are expected to do
We work very hard to understand the exact pain point our clients are feeling – instead of just immediately placing a button where they has asked, for e.g., try to understand what is deficient in the current solution, and how can we improve it – sometimes it might be adding that button, but other times we can add something that skips that entire part of the process and makes it 10x better.
Quotes / principles / thoughts that resonate with your organization’s culture and personality
It’s incredibly exciting to be involved in trying to help change the way an industry operates. As many of the team used to be working long hours as solicitors themselves, we want to help our clients finish their working day a lot earlier than they would have to.
Some buzzwords we relate to: client-first, agility, speed, proactiveness.
How the next 5 years look like for you personally, and for the organization
Overarching aim:
We want to be the automation and negotiation tool of choice in the legal industry – be pinned on every lawyer’s chrome browser
Even more than that, we want people to think of automation as a skill just in the same way they can just numbering styles in Word or know how to extract a signature page from a PDF – the first thought of every lawyer has when they start a matter:
“But first, can we make this more efficient using Avvoka?”
A bit like the current near-sourcing conversation
Concrete objectives/items coming up:
Whole new version of our software, with an even more powerful engine:
lift even heavier documents
ability to have even more complex workflows
even clearer UI
More partnerships and integrations (with great tech products) using our super flexible API:
Smart enough to know that clients want to use best in breed or the best value for money for each part of their document-related activities
AI tools –
Range of exciting collaborations with AI review tools – by combining these tools and Avvoka’s document automation capabilities, you can start to automate the end-to-end process of extremely large tasks such as DD reports or mass-repapering
Other data systems-
make integration with Avvoka out-of-the-box for a greater range of systems
(we love allowing clients to subvert the need for filling questionnaires entirely, by getting Avvoka to pull info into from existing systems autonomously)
Analytics tools (we love options like Tableau and PowerBi)
Delivering LMA.Automate
More general document automation evangelising and education:
Running the Avvoka Academy
Educational collaborations with:
Universities
Professional bodies
Industry interest groups
US expansion possible
Client-led
Although, we knew that you could run a global team remotely too, well before COVID-19
Team growth
4 new team members have joined recently!
We’re optimistic – COVID-19 has changed the way people look at digital tools and efficiency
Advice for fellow changemakers and readers
We see that legaltech has always been a part of the conversation around the business of law. If you think about it, email and tools like practical law are legaltech, and are core to what lawyers do – they just weren’t called ‘legaltech’ at the time – they were just bits of technology law firms used. We think that the aim for document Automation should ultimately be to be seen as an essential tool for lawyers, like eDiscovery is quickly becoming, as opposed to something that is alien or even really thought of as ‘legaltech’ as opposed to something internalised into everyday legal practice (like email and online precedent libraries have).There is a danger that ‘buzzwords’ put people off using something, but even Microsoft word was probably considered ‘legaltech’ at one point.
Legal service productization is a relevant trend to follow – we expect to see far more of this. It seems like law firms are moving away from developing tech in-house, but are still looking to marry their knowledge and expertise with technology to provide some incredibly forward thinking legal services.
You need to persuade clients of their tipping point – the point where automation becomes a no brainer.
The tipping point is where the change of mindset is that when a piece of work comes in, the first question is “can this be automated,” like “can this work be done more efficiently, using a systematic process.” You need to give people so people can spot the opportunities and are trained up and ready to react to opportunity rapidly.
So next time you want to draw up a rent agreement, employment contract, business contract, or a loan agreement, don’t forget to log on to https://avvoka.com/.
Also read: Here’s all about LegalMind, an Indian legaltech startup helping lawyers automate their workflow!
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Author Profile
Namita Shah is the co-founder of Presolv360, a legal-tech company focused on out-of-court civil dispute resolution. She is a CA (gold medalist), CPA and LLB. She has also studied cyber-crime management from the 'Asian School of Cyber Laws'. Namita has been recognized among the Top 60 of the ‘Women Transforming India, 2018’ initiative by the Government of India. She recently graduated (top 5) from the ‘Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Foundation’, run in association with Niti Aayog and IIT.