Law Insider Announces Clause Finder

President and CoFounder of Law Insider, Preston Clark, announces Clause Finder to host Bob Ambrogi.

About the news:

We're thrilled to announce ClauseFinder. The world’s largest clause library–right where you need it.

Draft with Confidence: ClauseFinder structures and ranks millions of clauses from the public domain drafted by some of the largest and most respected law firms in the country.

Draft with Speed: ClauseFinder integrates with Microsoft Word, eliminating time-consuming platform switching while drafting.

Draft Smarter: AI-powered search and tagging allows your team to find relevant or suggested clauses and integrate them into their documents in seconds.

Stay in Control: Customize and curate your firm’s search experience by preloading your own standard clauses and fall-back positions.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Bob Ambrogi: Welcome to Law Next PR, the podcast where we put a spotlight on the latest news coming out of the legal tech industry. This is Bob Ambrogi, and in each sponsored episode of Law Next PR, I interview a legal tech company about its just released news. My guest today is Preston Clark, president and co founder of Law Insider.

[00:00:27] Preston Clark: Preston, welcome to the show. Bob, it's great to be here. Thanks for, uh, I understand this is the inaugural episode. So great, great to be on.

[00:00:34] Bob Ambrogi: This is number one. We're very thrilled to have you on here. So, uh, tell us about the news you have to

[00:00:40] Preston Clark: share. Yeah. So we're talking today about Law Insider and the launch of ClauseFinder.

We are in the process of just announcing it to Uh, the, the 9, 000 plus customers of Law Insider, and we're super excited about it. I can give you the quick sort of elevator pitch on, on what it is [00:01:00] as a product. And then, you know, feel free to ask questions and go deeper. But for, for those who don't know, the core product of Law Insider is a 20 million clauses.

The best I know where the largest clause library in the world, and we've, we've been that way for some time, uh, 12 to 14 million, uh, unique visitors to our clause library every single month. And historically that has been only available through desktop. And so what clause finder represents is three products that we've been building for a very, very long time coming together.

And so it is this massive search engine and clause database. It is a word plugin that allows you to bring those clauses into your drafting experience. And then it's a clause library that you can customize and build yourself so that it's not only the Law Insider database, but it's also your own. archive of, of contracts and clauses that you've built up, [00:02:00] uh, or you, that your law firm has built up over the years and, and bringing those things together into a single solution allows, uh, both knowledge management workers, as well as the, the end associate or partner, um, to draft more efficiently and more effectively using either the massive database, um, of law insider or their own bespoke, uh, clause library that they've built.

Um. with Law Insider. So that's that's it. That's the news. You

[00:02:27] Bob Ambrogi: mentioned knowledge management workers and attorneys. Talk more about who this is for. Who would be

[00:02:35] Preston Clark: using this? Sure. Yeah. So Law Insider, when we say we have 10, 000 or almost 10, 000 customers, we historically serve individual lawyers that, uh, that have found their way to our site through Google or some other means and are overwhelmed by the volume and and sort of the value of Law Insider.

And so they become a paying subscriber so they can get more of it. And the value for [00:03:00] ClauseFinder and its relationship to knowledge management is really important because for an individual user, uh, we think ClauseFinder is going to be powerful because it allows. Just one person, maybe it could be a solo practitioner or someone at a small firm or someone individually at a large firm to curate and create their own library and to use this to, to expedite their drafting.

But we also know for tools like this, uh, lawyers often expect the law firm to pick up the tab for it. Um, and, and with that becomes the obligation from us to provide some capabilities for knowledge management professionals. And so, uh, we were just, uh, very recently at a knowledge management event in New York and we got to meet with a lot of knowledge management professionals and, and sort of talk about this product.

And, and they have all of these requirements and expectations because they want this. Because why? They have a new associate coming in and, and this associate may not have the wealth of knowledge or the library or, or the, the [00:04:00] history in drafting, um, uh, sort of per the best practices of, of the law firm and creating something like this both gives them.

Uh, the ability to, to put a tool in the hands of the associate, but also to vet and curate it so that the associate is now pulling from, you know, the, the best practice of indemnification clause or liquidated damages provisions or whatever it may be, um, rather than just. You know, sort of hoping and praying that the associate is following best practices.

So it puts the knowledge management professional in the driver's seat and gives them the control, um, to influence how an associate or a partner perhaps is drafting contracts.

[00:04:41] Bob Ambrogi: You talked, uh, in that answer about. So, small firms you talked about, larger firms, is it appropriate for firms of any size?

[00:04:48] Preston Clark: It is.

And, and I think it's worth highlighting the fact that, um, the reason we're doing this press release with you, Bob, is a, you know, we, we love your podcasts and, [00:05:00] and we love the work that you do and want to support it, but also because Law Insider has an incredible reach with individual attorneys and we have.

Awful reach among knowledge management professionals, literally on a weekly basis, a knowledge management professional will say to us, you know, we have 13 attorneys say that they want us to upgrade to your premium. We've never even heard of you before, and we sort of put our heads down because. You know, we think that we're the most used clause library and the largest in the whole world, but that doesn't mean that we've ever sold to or catered to the needs of a knowledge management professional.

So it's a very reasonable outcome. But as it relates to sort of. Why we are doing this today is we're going to be announcing this in the next couple of weeks to our almost 10, 000 customers. And we know that what's going to follow that is the need to help them make the business case internally. And so I don't expect.

Although we'd be happy, Bob, [00:06:00] we don't expect the law next community that is not using law insider that has never heard of law insider to suddenly start using our clause library and suddenly upgrade to clause finder. But we do expect that the millions of people who use our clause library today will will think about and contemplate this use case.

But in order to actually get it approved, they're going to need to hear about what the value proposition is and how it's valuable to the knowledge management professional. So hope that makes sense. But we're sort of we're taking a circuitous route to, uh, well, I guess we would call enterprise sales by saying we know cam.

are going to be asking who the heck is law insider in a way that they haven't had to before. Um, and we want to be ready for that.

[00:06:44] Bob Ambrogi: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, and you know, you've got this vast library of clauses that you've been building over a number of years. Law firms often have. Their own libraries of clauses and best [00:07:00] practices and playbooks effectively that they've been working with.

How do you, how does ClauseFinder help them marry those two sets of information?

[00:07:08] Preston Clark: Yeah. So that's an awesome question, Bob. So, so think about the, the KM professional needs to bridge that, right? You have the, the very senior partner who has a filing paper system. In their office that is under locking key that is probably not efficiently shared with junior associates.

And you have a junior associate who has no library. Um, and, and what is very interesting, we think about law insider because there's other ways to do this. So Claus finder is, I think it's innovative in how we're accomplishing this, but I don't think, you know, this is not a, uh, an incredibly novel idea as it relates to creating drafting efficiency through standards and through templates like that's been done before.

But what's unique is that we allow the knowledge professional, the knowledge management professional to start with a [00:08:00] baseline of content and we allow them to layer in their own clauses, but invariably there's going to be gaps and we can give them visibility into that. into those gaps, Bob, I think in an interesting way.

And so just I'll sort of give you a very sort of baseline example. Knowledge management announces the launch of clause finder. We have 20 million clauses now available for use and access and integration into word. And, uh, the knowledge management professional also loads in, let's say 350 of their own approved and stamped clauses.

And after the first month or after the first Two months or three months, they'll go into their dashboard and what they're going to find out is that 70 percent of the use among the associates was their own database and their own clauses. And that's going to be wonderful for them. But they're also then going to learn that 30 percent were a type of clause or a category That they're totally unequipped, um, [00:09:00] uh, to navigate.

Maybe it's AI terms or who knows what it is, but now they're providing, they're getting insights into not only what the associates are using in the contract and drafting, but where they may have gaps in their own library.

[00:09:15] Bob Ambrogi: Uh, this is, uh, a podcast, so it's not a show and tell, it's just a tell. But, uh, you talked earlier and you've talked a couple of times about the integration with Microsoft Word.

Could you. Describe a little bit more about how that works.

[00:09:27] Preston Clark: Sure. And I think it's pretty intuitive. It's uh, I think there's lots of, of word add ins that your listeners are using today to help with their drafting. Um, and it's no different from this. It is a sidebar that has two menus. It has your, your internal clause library and it has.

Law Insider Library. And in effect, what an associate or partner would do is type in indemnification or type in liquidated damages or termination or whatever it may be. And a host of sample provisions and clauses would come up with source links. [00:10:00] And so they can see the language, analyze it, decide to move it over.

And if they want to go a layer deeper and actually see where that clause is sourced from and the full contract there, they're able to do so.

[00:10:11] Bob Ambrogi: And is this something you'll be. charging for on a SAS subscription basis, or what's the model for how people will buy this?

[00:10:19] Preston Clark: For sure. Yep. So it'll be, it'll be free to use for individual attorneys and then it'll be the upgrade.

The SAS, uh, subscription will be, um, at the firm level, uh, where, uh, the knowledge manager professional or, or whoever may be operating this.

So, yeah, so there's a free version, there's a paid version is, is the short of it.

[00:10:44] Bob Ambrogi: And for those who get the paid version, what, what ultimately do you see as the value that they'll get out of this product?

[00:10:51] Preston Clark: Control visibility. Um, I think that the, the baseline assumption is that, uh, if your attorneys need a better [00:11:00] mechanism to pull your clause library into their drafting experience, we can do that.

If you believe that there are gaps in that experience, which you should believe that there are, no matter how big your library is. You know, I, I can tell you because Law Insider is as popular as it is, we would not be popular if you had perfect coverage. It's, it's just not possible. And so you get to both see and control, uh, uh, the associate experience from an internal clause library perspective, as well as you get visibility into how it's being used, uh, how the Law Insider database is being used.

And then you can toggle those over time. And so you can decide, um, what types of contracts within Law Insider. You want your associates to access. So if you have your own indemnification library and you don't want indemnification to be pulled from law insider, you can turn that off. So they will have the control over which documents or are sourceable, um, from, from their attorneys by their attorneys.[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Bob Ambrogi: Preston, when should listeners expect to be able to get their hands on this? And, uh, where can they find out more? Where will they go to learn more about it?

[00:12:08] Preston Clark: Yeah. Uh, so we have a wait list. I will brag, uh, if you'll let me, Bob, and say that we, uh, pre announced this, uh, to our user base. And we already have a thousand firms on the waiting list, which exceeded our expectations.

And that was in. You know, a one week period of prelaunch. Um, and so there's a wait list. We'll give you the link if you want to share it. Um, but it will be launching, uh, officially at the end of this month or at the end of November. And, uh, but lots of information in detail will come out. Uh, so get on the wait list is, is the short answer.

Okay.

[00:12:43] Bob Ambrogi: At lawinsider. com. Is that where they're at?

[00:12:45] Preston Clark: Lawinsider. com. All right.

[00:12:48] Bob Ambrogi: Anything else that you'd like the listeners to know about Clausefinder that we haven't touched on?

[00:12:53] Preston Clark: No, I think I'll just reiterate that, uh, we're going to be doing more of this. I think we've been a consumer [00:13:00] business in as much as we've been serving individual lawyers for the past 10 years.

Like I can't, it's hard to, it's hard to believe, but, but we've been working, hacking away at Law Insider for a very long time now. And, and what you're going to see from us in 2024 is, is, uh, an enterprise appearance. Um, and that means a lot of, uh, more podcasts like this and interviews and, and software that is meant for, um, uh, law firms or in house teams, uh, not just the individual user.

[00:13:30] Bob Ambrogi: Preston, thank you for being guest number one on episode number one of Law Next PR. Pleasure having you. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. That's it for today's episode. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can also catch all the episodes on YouTube at lawnext underscore PR.

Thanks for listening.[00:14:00]