An Al Tamimi Case Study: Contract Express

I joined Al Tamimi & Company in 2018, as the firm's first Head of Knowledge Management. One of my first tasks was to help create, implement and lead the strategy for better knowledge consistency across the firm. Document Automation is part of that strategy, and includes the optimization of our Contract Express investment. An immediate action for me was to ensure we had the right people to support our document automation efforts, get buy-in from the practice and develop a pipeline of documents to automate. Contract Express doesn't require a lot of code, or technical effort to set up, so it only really needs to be led via a few experts who know their tech and understand both English and Arabic.

We are extremely fortunate to have some very talented colleagues who have been trained in how to use Contract Express. Of our team of six, we have one full-time legal engineer with the other five working on automating documents in and around the demands of their day jobs. In order to ensure we are successful with our document automation strategy we have a weekly Coding Club that meets for three hours every Tuesday. This has created a space where tech-savvy colleagues can share tips, and learn from each other. Three of our Coding Club members are bi-lingual which enables us to provide full service, both internally and to our clients. In particular, our capacity to generate large automated volumes of bi-lingual contracts has grown and become a key-selling point for the firm. Despite there being a lot of competition, we feel Contract Express is by far the market leader in terms of what it can do, and what we require -particularly with its bi-directional text capabilities for English and Arabic. With Contract Express, you can have the confidence it can handle this kind of demand with accuracy, no matter the volume.

From our perspective, Contract Express has been extremely beneficial. It enables our lawyers and clients to produce their first draft of a document much quicker. It removes the preliminary routine and time-consuming hurdles which in turn frees up time to do more complex work than if they were doing it manually. For example, instead of spending 6-8 hours producing the first draft of an automated SPA,we can now do it in 30 minutes. We can also support clients outside of the traditional transactional or advisory capacity through offering them a range of value-add solutions including document automation. Contract Express enables us to serve a broader scope of clients across sectors and industries including global media clients, healthcare sector clients, real estate clients, and leading Middle Eastern universities. Even in the most sensitive and rushed circumstances, they can fully rely on Contract Express to deliver comprehensive, error-free documents and contracts.

As we continue to roll-out our strategy for better knowledge consistency, we will be further educating staff on Contract Express capabilities. We are hosting a second 'Knowvember' this November which involves daily internal communications focusing on the importance of available resources and know-how, including the firm's recently improved capacity for document automation, and other Thomson Reuters resources like Westlaw, and Practical Law. We are also looking forward to coming on board as a beta partner to test the new 8.5 sandbox version of Contract Express, to see how we can better our efficiencies. This is a testament to our robust partnership with Thomson Reuters, and our aligning values of innovation, client satisfaction and trusted answers. Al Tamimi has grown at a rapid rate in the last 30 years and innovation has always been at the core of our success: it's a part of our DNA and we are always looking to update our strategies to match the latest technology in order to better serve our clients.

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