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LegalTech: Greater Efficiency in the Application of the Law

By Yaritza Rodelo - Easylex
Co-Founder

STORY INLINE POST

By Yaritza Rodelo | Co-founder - Wed, 10/14/2020 - 09:50

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The legal department of any company is always known as a pain in the ass, a headache, the slowest one in the company. Legal procedures tend to be full of bureaucratic red tape, and tons of paperwork in order to get things done. You might need the approval of your boss, your boss's boss and even the boss of your boss's boss.

One of the main challenges every company faces is keeping all kinds of documentation in order. Stay tuned with expiration dates of agreements, managing to get all the parties involved to sign and most of all, not losing or damaging that important sheet of paper that contains an investment, an obligation, a labor relationship, or any other fundamental element. 

We are always looking to make our life easier and our work more efficient. Definitely, what I’ve just mentioned is not that. So, how can we make the legal department of every company stop being the one department we don't want to get involved with and translate it into a smooth part of our work? 

Thanks to advances in technology and modernization of all the legal services around the world, we can digitalize the bureaucratic red tape and forget about tons of papers.

Something else we need to take into consideration about what we are going to discuss later on is that the consumer habits and processes are changing due to the worldwide pandemic. 

Before COVID-19, thinking about a solution to all these problems or inconveniences of what legal proceedings involved, was just a “nice-to-have” in a company. During COVID-19, the online legal services turned, more than ever, into an immediate necessity. The way businesses are managed, completely transformed. With this transformation, the tools used by companies also needed to change.
Now, we are not just talking about how to make everything more efficient but also safer, and possible in many cases. Fortunately, both problems are solved by the same solution: LegalTech. 

WHAT EXACTLY IS LEGALTECH?

The introduction of this article clearly states that LegalTech is technology related to legal proceedings, documents and legal professionals.
Here are some ways of describing what LegalTech is and involves:

  • The implementation of technology in the provision of any type of legal service, legal process or legal procedure. LegalTech transforms the implementation of law, services provided by lawyers, reducing costs, making them more efficient and reducing mistakes, bias and time.
  • Technology as a tool for the legal profession or any other professions related to legal proceedings.
  • Technology tools that support, supplement or replace traditional methods for the legal system, as well as improve the legal system. 

Any definition you want to use, the basics are the same: use technology in the legal space. 

The term LegalTech is considered pretty new in the industry and has come to transform the way things are executed. In Mexico, this concept has been adopted during this decade and there are a few companies working on developing this kind of technology. LegalTech companies, thanks to COVID-19, have been growing faster than ever. Here is one of the best examples: EasyLex.

EasyLex, is a pioneer in the LegalTech area focused on helping companies with their legal proceedings and paperwork. It’s important to specify in which area of LegalTech it is involved, because this new concept of LegalTech can be used in the private sector, public sector, corporate law, criminal law, civil law, or any area. 

Mexico is a country that resists changes, mainly in the legal sector. Law is created by traditions, rules and formalities, so it’s pretty normal that it resists change. Also, the legal system needs to be stable and kind of predictable. Nevertheless, since the traditions we have right now, and the evolution in the company processes, changed and continue to do so, the legal sector has to do it as well.
So, what’s EasyLex doing in the area to transform the execution of law for companies?

EasyLex started in 2018, transforming the start of any business, its incorporation. Now, thanks to EasyLex, you can legally incorporate a company through an online process in record time. In Mexico, using a traditional process, you’ll have a company incorporated in three to four months. What this startup did was to reduce it to seven business days. 

This was possible thanks to the use of technology during the process, concentrating clients and administrative procedures necessary for it in an online platform. By doing so, mistakes are eliminated, costs are reduced and productivity is maximized. 

But they didn't stop there; the legal needs of a company don’t stop with its creation. In fact, they start with it. So, the solution to be a one-stop shop is to convert more legal needs, starting with the creation of the company, the personalization of any type of agreement, creation of meeting minutes to record any decision from shareholders, and of course, the management of all that paperwork, including the electronic signatures of documents. 

EasyLex covers these features:

Process automation

Digital solutions allow you to create customization flows for legal documents; that is, you can create a question form that will generate a personalized document according to the answers that are entered in the form.
In this way you can create a volume of documents easily and quickly from templates.


Document organization

A document management software works similar to a storage cloud, the difference is that a SaaS allows you to organize documents by companies, clients, set labels and custom notifications, as well as allowing you to use a single word to find the document immediately. 


Collaboration and approvals

During the drafting of a document, this type of solution allows you to concentrate all the notes and comments in one place. It also allows you to capture the approval of each of those involved.
 

Version history

Thanks to the fact that it allows you to create your contracts online and the collaboration of the different parties involved, you will be able to have access to all versions of the document.

This gives you access to all the changes and you will always know which is the final version. Forget about saving files as:

  • File version 1
  • File, latest version
  • File, this is the good one
  • File, ready to print
  • Different users

The handling of information and its treatment as confidential is something that is extremely important today. Therefore, the platforms for handling documents allow you to be certain of:

  1. who has access to the information
  2. who made modifications
  3. date and time of the modifications

Thanks to all of those services, you can digitize your legal department in a blink of an eye. This kind of transformation empowers companies to boost their growth and to manage information, improve communication between lawyers, administrative team, clients and suppliers.
LegalTech solutions continue to grow in Mexico. EasyLex is part of that growth and we expect to see many more in the market. 

Photo by:   Yaritza Rodelo

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