In school, one of my teachers used to give the same talk every year about the importance of collaboration always prefaced with the same joke.
In prehistory, a hunter came across a recently bagged mammoth with a solitary child standing next to it.
“How did you catch this?” the hunter asked
“With my club,” the child said
Astounded that one child could do this, the hunter asked: “how big is your club?!”
“Oh, about 30 people”
Terrible jokes aside, they had a point: you can achieve things in collaboration that are unimaginable alone. And what’s true for mammoths holds for transforming the legal domain. When we look at the ever more complex challenges faced by general counsel, having the right team with you to solve them is essential.
That’s why Factor has announced our first partner program this week, Factor Connect, bringing together the best of legal technology, to collectively accelerate the transformation of legal services. Alongside this, we have announced the inaugural cohort of five leading legal technology firms to join the program: Acadia, Agiloft, BlackBoiler, Kira, and Priori.
The Approach
The genesis for Factor Connect is deeply rooted in our approach to service delivery. Factor has been on a journey to identify and utilize the best in legal technology to deliver to our clients for years, constantly looking for the next best thing to drive efficiency and improve risk control. Factor Connect is an extension of this approach, working even more closely with these providers to build more cohesive solutions to solve the market's most complex challenges.
In building our first cohort, we have been rigorous in assessing two key considerations: Organizational fit and Capability fit.
The Inaugural Partners
In selecting our partners for the first cohort, we have brought together five distinct segment leaders in legal technology that each offer something unique for the market.
Acadia
Acadia (formerly Acadiasoft), provides the tools to simplify the challenges our financial services clients face with their digitization and regulatory compliance with secure and scalable methods. This is a consistent challenge we have seen from our clients as a provider of choice to 8 of the 10 world’s largest banks.
Together, we will focus on solving the challenge of simplifying negotiation and regulatory compliance for this sector, both with Acadia’s leading software and Factor’s extensive subject matter expertise in handling and optimizing the process around financial services documentation.
"We are thrilled to partner with Factor to provide a unique and compelling offering to the market which will enable Acadia's clients to digitize and securely share derivatives documentation that is subject to legal review", said Richard Barton, Head of Product Management at Acadia
Agiloft
A constant challenge for General Counsel in adopting Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) is the need to balance the speed to deploy with the need to tailor a solution to the institution's processes. Agiloft helps to solve this problem with their flexible, low-code platform which joins Factor Connect following an extensive proof of concept.
Factor will supplement Agiloft with enablement services that make the system more effective from day one. We will partner for advisory services that ensure the processes and content that underlie a successful implementation are optimally designed and implemented. In addition, we will offer migration services to ensure that legacy contracts are properly captured and stored in the system.
Eric Laughlin, CEO of Agiloft, says: “Clients do not think about their business challenges as having a single solution, and they are open to working with multiple solutions to get the job done, as long as it’s done well. The synergies between Factor’s legal process capabilities and our flexible, no-code technology means that deepening our partnership and joining the Factor Connect team makes sense for both our users and their clients.”
Clients do not think about their business challenges as having a single solution, and they are open to working with multiple solutions to get the job done, as long as it’s done well.
BlackBoiler
Marking up third-party paper can be a laborious task, even if you use a standardized playbook for a response. BlackBoiler's AI-powered contract markup tool helps solve this problem by instantaneously reviewing and editing contracts based on previously negotiated contracts.
Factor and BlackBoiler will work together to automate the high-volume third-party paper review process by leveraging this technology and Factor's extensive expertise with adopting AI tools and managing the content and process that makes them successful. This has all been based on an extensive proof of concept between Factor and BlackBoiler that saw us significantly reduce the time to review third-party NDAs.
“We are proud to be working in partnership with Factor to address one of the most notoriously inefficient workflows in the legal industry. Both independently and through our partnership with Factor, BlackBoiler helps some of the largest organizations in the world utilize their historical contract data to automate the contract review and markup process, improving the speed of business while boosting the bottom line,” said Dan Broderick, Co-Founder, and CEO of BlackBoiler
Kira Systems
Unlocking insights from tens or even hundreds of thousands of contracts and other documents is a constant challenge for general counsel who face waves of regulatory or M&A-driven events, or even wants to get ahead of this and digitize their existing contracts. Kira Systems helps solve this with their AI technology that automatically identifies and extracts over 1,000 common clauses, provisions, and data points from contracts and other documents at volume, which Factor has deployed extensively on client projects.
In partnering, Factor and Kira Systems will work together to combine this technology with Factor’s extensive knowledge of documentary challenges around M&A, regulatory, and other use cases, as well as the processes that underlie a successful AI tool implementation.
“The Factor Connect program emphasizes the importance of accelerating innovation in the delivery of legal services," said Kennan Samman, Senior Director of Global Sales at Kira Systems. "As we navigate the changing legal landscape, it's essential to work with industry leaders who understand the power of legal technology and its role in addressing unprecedented challenges. Factor is continuing its mission to bridge the gap between New Law and traditional law, and we are honored to be part of this journey."
As we navigate the changing legal landscape, it's essential to work with industry leaders who understand the power of legal technology and its role in addressing unprecedented challenges.
Priori
Access to the right talent at the right time is a key challenge for our clients, especially when flexible or specialist expertise is required. That’s where Priori comes in, offering in-house counsel a vetted, global network of attorneys at firms of all sizes. Using data and technology, Priori rapidly connects legal departments with the right lawyers and streamlines the engagement process, reducing the cost of legal services for corporate clients by 60% and the time it takes to engage an attorney by 80%.
Access to Priori will allow Factor to offer enhanced and increasingly agile expertise, especially in complex and geographically distributed projects, allowing us to address a broader array of client challenges.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Factor and bring to their clients the agility, flexibility, and value of Priori network attorneys and firms,” Basha Rubin, Priori’s Co-Founder and CEO said. “Priori can offer tailored solutions on-demand to ensure projects run smoothly and with the requisite expertise. We are looking forward to working closely with the Factor team to drive value for their clients.”
Looking Forward
We’re more convinced than ever that the future of legal transformation belongs to those who work together. Factor Connect is another demonstration of our commitment to that principle and to solving the problems faced by our clients.
Importantly, the program outside the initial cohort represents an open invitation to the wider legal technology community to come and partner with us. As we build our next cohort, we’re looking for companies that share our vision. If you think that’s you, reach out to us.
