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Legal Transaction Management is now a legal tech category
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: November 2, 2018
In the last few years, legal billing has gone from an emphasis on hourly work determined by attorneys to various creative ways around charging on an hourly basis driven by clients looking to save money.
Because of that, attorneys have really begun to work toward automating a number of the functions that legal assistants and firm associates have historically been tasked with. Software that was ignored or underdeveloped a few years ago is now hot in the market, and law firms are looking to minimize costs to attract and keep clients.
So here we are with transaction automation. We have discussed using AI to create contracts, but larger transactions have a lot more going on than just the language of the contracts.
Which brings us to automating that entire transaction beyond just language.
Software to coordinate complex legal transactions involving multiple parties, law firms, jurisdictions and countries are now categorizable as “Legal Transaction Management” or LTM. Think of it as document management for the discrete transaction.
The basic thrust of LTM software is to increase efficiency (a recent Thomson Reuters survey found that lawyers spend 40 percent of their time on non-legal tasks) and productivity, get signatures quickly, reduce risk, and power up client satisfaction.
So in no particular order, and with no recommendations except to check this all out, here are some LTM products to look at.
Closing Folders (https://www.closingfolders.com). Developed by two young, underpaid Toronto transactional attorneys, this app tracks and organizes every version of every document, comment, signature and schedule in the transaction. It creates e-signing packages and collects the signatures and creates the closing package.
Dealcloser (https://dealcloser.com), also Canadian, is a “transaction management hub” that says it brings clients and attorneys close together. It has a client portal for signatures, document access and collaboration, progress tracking, notifications, etc. and creates a deal book.
Simply Agree (https://simplyagree.com) is a US product that also creates deal packages. It can hold signatures in escrow for one-touch release to documents. It emphasizes security, with data backups, audit trails and uses secure data centers, etc. Not that the other products don’t emphasize security, of course.
Another US product is Doxly (https://doxly.com), a secure portal for end-to-end transactions. It creates and tracks checklists, collects signatures, has real time status reports, and more.
Last but not least are Legatics (UK: https://www.legatics.com) and The DocYard (AUS: https://thedocyard.co).
So go do your research!