I’ve had the privilege of being friends with the founders and core members of ContractBook for over a year now - their openness, dispassionate and stoic approach to what they are building and the problems they are solving sets them apart. I believe there is a unique combination of realities that serve them to continue to grow and want to explore this further.
I’ve certainly enjoyed being recognised and welcomed in my capacity to work alongside them. I continue to enjoy the benefits of relationships built on a common pursuit and look forward to continue this with them.
Why does FutureLab.Legal interface with LegalTech companies?
Two reasons. FutureLab.Legal is in the business of:
The relentless pursuit of the #futureoflaw wherever incarnations of it occur in the world, building an understanding of the underlying dynamics and working it into a capacity building process for others to benefit, and;
Working alongside Industry stakeholders who want to build new future-facing capabilities, be they Law Firms, LegalTech, Courts, Regulators or Universities.
Why ContractBook?
ContractBook builds a solution that covers a core function of legal firms and in-house departments: Contract Management, (or Document Management) and is all about that future. In this two way street, they recognised the value that a business like FutureLab.Legal had at building capacity in the legal industry to leverage new technology and business models, it was the reason our relationship started!
Over time, I saw some fundamental points that in my opinion set them aside from others.
Some of the notable public developments:
ContractBook is one of the first (if not the first) LegalTech company to be funded by a Google backed VC fund: Gradient Ventures.
ContractBook recently announced Gmail integration tool.
Through the numerous projects I’ve brought to them (some of which worked and some which did not) I’ve been able to observe and gain insight into the complexity of growing their business, to participate - and ultimately enjoy working with ContractBook.
The Gmail integration tool really caught my attention. I believe this is a significant move that hasn’t sunk in for the legal world. In earlier posts, I’ve advocated the importance of LegalTech companies integration strategy and in like manner the current state of LegalTech on a timeline to legal hardware implementations.
So what’s the big deal about a Gmail integration?
Adoption and Stickiness
I’ve spoken with various LegalTech developers, vendors and purchasers exploring barriers to adoption. The most prominent issue is the sizable gap between where the service ends and the users ability to leverage the tool begins. Bridging that gap requires certain ingredients, all of which form part of the challenge in generating adoption, traction and growth.
Education is a bridge to remedy the gaps that exist between technology and the people who could use it.
Side note: the Future Framework for Legal Practice was created as a novel contribution to that end.
Storytelling plays a key role to help people identify what novel tools can mean for their work.
Strategic Development of the Core Software centered around the client is fundamental to long term success and growth.
Culture and People are the how and why this pursuit exists in the first place, it cannot be lost on the way if you want to succeed.
Adoption is very important when offering a tool or service to the market, but once you have them it needs “stickiness”, the ability for the tool or service to coincide and cooperate with the rest of the adopters internal and external ecosystem.
I caught up with Viktor Heide (COO @ ContractBook) and Mikkel Boris (Press and Communications @ ContractBook) earlier this year and went a little deeper into the implications of their development decisions. Here are my key takeaways:
In their approach to connectivity and building a technology that stacks, ContractBook develops the platform with an Open API and approximately 20% of their revenue comes from it.
This was strategic in the development of core software, which means ContractBook chose .json as their universal format - making them accessible to powerful AI and Machine Learning capabilities. This is also part of what attracted investment from Gradient Ventures.
Their Gmail integration tool came out of a monthly sparring session with Gradient Ventures. The strategic approach mimics the way third party infrastructure in other industries (like Finance) access secure data and seamlessly integrate it with a well tuned front-end. Contractbook is trying to help you access your own data (Agreements, Contracts, Documents) with a much better front-end experience and greater interoperability.
I asked “why Gmail and not outlook?”. The answer was simply that 70% of their user base (approx 70,000 users) was using Gmail as their main client, with Outlook being used by only 5%. This by itself was a fascinating statistic to think about from a consumer behaviour perspective. There are regional, demographic and user-type implications. It also reflects the general behaviour of those who are more willing to leverage technology already that are drawn to products like ContractBook - like “gravitating toward your crowd”.
When prompted about how interesting this statistic was, I mentioned that for me it is interesting how this seems to be a generational thing, “people like you and me have grown up with this technology and see it as infrastructure”. ContractBook has a team with an average age of 26 years old.
This brings us to interesting point about Culture and People: When hiring, half of the applicants haven't got the experience but have the right passion. Viktor mentioned needs to be able to feel like it is blind trust with his team. Culture plays a part in their success, there's a balanced approach - Viktor spoke about how “our team gets stuck on performance and has to be reminded on the north star”. For me, this is something which seems rare in the current wave of LegalTech that seems to focus on perception of success rather than performance.
I've always noted Contract Book for their genuine and straightforward and matter of fact posture. It seems to be a cultural thing (stemming from Nordics) but it is definitely something that made it attractive in my own experience. This posture permeates their company, there are thin lines between personal and professional and it doesn't seem too difficult for them to dance between. There is a calmness and certainty about their discussions, movements and decisions. It is definitely not a egotistical stance, but more empowered - enabling discourse and debate to occur. Through these debates and discourse, clashes of opinion reveal the spark of truth and there seems to be an undercurrent of valuing that over a facade of success.
Even with the recent funding, ContractBook still has a heavy focus on building in the Nordics - the focus is on building a fundamentally good product, quality focus rather than pure quantity plays. Viktor said we aim to be best in class - once the core product(s) is well rounded we can take that hypothesis and apply it to a market like the US. We've said no to US clients for the time being. There is a clear want to be best in class rather than highest rate of growth.
In terms of Storytelling, Niels uses the Tesla example: what they are building is essentially a robot on wheels, but that wouldn’t make sense to the consumer - so they call it a ‘car’. In like manner, the future is data driven contract automation and ContractBook wants to be the repository for contracts where the data is alive and can be better leveraged by the user. The majority of the current consumer (read: lawyer) isn’t necessarily ready for that future as they struggle with basic digitisation and newer business models. So what it is now for users, is relative to what they can understand and comprehend.
The Gmail integration tool is a genius first step for creating adoption and stickiness (at least for the 70,000 of their users who use Gmail). It solves the painful process of merging or transferring all your contracts into one platform. It is incredible how simple, yet scalable this solution is and the flow on effects have huge potential:
Setting the tool to mass import and then automatically ingest documents solves one of the simplest problems: finding documents. Search-ability and digital organisation of documents, particularly as they involve contractual arrangements and your business relationships cuts ungodly amounts of time and stress in a lawyers professional routine.
The magic starts however, once documents are ingested. They can become an active, organisational repository of your data. ContractBook can facilitate endless possibilities as AI and Machine Learning is applied. The issue is around format: the PDF was an incredible useful step into the world of digitisation. But now and in the future, a PDF is as dead as paper. It’s only good for storage and use when a dispute arises. A document that is essentially data, can be leveraged, organised and managed in much more valuable ways and step one is getting it onto a platform that allows for that.
In the end, I firmly believe the implications for the Gmail Integration tool are significant in our industry and I look forward to seeing (and contributing) to the progress and success that ContractBook is working toward. As I mentioned, not everything we’ve touched together or that I’ve brought to them has worked - but that’s far beyond the point. What’s important at the end of the day is that the humanity in all of this is not lost - I feel welcomed there as someone who from the other side of the world was able to build and grow a relationship based on common values and goals.
ContractBook is calmly approaching complex problems and truly considering what they can achieve by way of iterative solutions with a clear emphasis on the human aspect; both internal and external to the business.
Thank you for being a subscriber!
Did you know you can give access to your team or use this as professional development resources in your business? Subscribe now and click on “other subscription options” and select “group subscription”.
If you know someone who would benefit from reading these insights, you can gift a subscription:
As always, the future of law is in our hands 🔥
Q.