In one of our earlier articles, we explained how redlining contracts during negotiations (and before signing) can be simplified with DocuSign Negotiate.
In today’s article, we’re continuing this theme of streamlining the contract creation and approval process, especially for the legal industry. It is common practice for lawyers to reuse clauses in their contracts (and other documents) by starting from an existing document that is reasonably similar.
So, is this a problem?
Yes! Let us explain.
Even if you’re reusing the clauses in an existing document, it’s not easy to access them in the first place. This is because the relevant clauses you need might be saved in many different places such as old agreements, emails, firm servers, local hard drives, cloud-based storage drives and occasionally even thumb drives. With such a vast content library to sift through; identifying and reusing the best/most relevant/most up-to-date clauses is a time-consuming, energy-sapping process.
And when this time and energy can be better spent on other higher-value tasks, finding a solution to this problem – and it is a problem – is absolutely critical.
Another challenge is how to change key information quickly and easily. Once the right clauses are finally found, lawyers must go through them with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that all the old information is correctly replaced with the new. This review process to finalise the new document can – and does – take hours. And it’s easier to miss critical details than it is to get everything right in the first attempt itself. Although making mistakes is part of the human experience, it is not something that can be overlooked, much less completely ignored. This is because even the smallest error can delay the deal completion timeline, and even damage the firm’s reputation.
Now that we’ve articulated the problem, we present the solution:
Litera Clause Companion – now with a new Anonymize feature!
Clause Companion is a clause library solution that enables easy storage, retrieval and distribution of the best approved content from within Microsoft Word and other types of documents. The software delivers access to required content from directly within the document. This saves time, drives adoption and makes saving and later retrieval a breeze.
And with the new Anonymize feature, reusing content is easier than ever before – all without ever leaving Microsoft Word!
How Clause Companion Anonymize works
When you save a clause or document to your clause library, Litera Clause Companion automatically detects deal-specific data. This could include names, salutations, dates, addresses, numbers, etc. You can then quickly review the found information to create a reusable template. Then replace this information with blank lines, symbols or variables to ‘anonymise’ the document. This new document can then be saved in the Clause Companion library as a template for later use and reuse.
With Clause Companion Anonymize, you can automatically anonymise data from documents so any snippet of text can be saved and safely reused later. This feature streamlines the reuse of work products so you can leverage your best content without interrupting the workflow. You don’t even have to be a document expert to use Clause Companion Anonymize and take advantage of its brilliance!
If you want to take the pain out of your contract drafting process and simplify your document workflow management, try Litera Clause Companion with Anonymize!
If you are part of the legal industry, Litera Clause Companion with Anonymize is the perfect solution for your firm. To order a license, give us a call!
