Our Legal Tech Offering in Germany
Harnessing the power of technology to advance the legal profession – Allen & Overy helps the world’s leading businesses to grow, innovate and thrive. Equipping clients to meet the demands of today’s changing and challenging environment has prompted our growth into new services.
This includes delivering legal services in new and flexible ways, making the most of what legal tech has to offer, and providing specialist consulting and strategic advisory services to build strength and integrity into organisations.
This helps our clients embrace change and overcome the frustration of outdated and inefficient ways of working, enabling them to better manage risk, reduce cost and become more resilient. Ultimately it helps them reinvent their “business as usual” as well as drive change. We combine the reassurance of a global elite law firm with the innovation clients might expect from an alternative provider.
Developing innovations is our mission – with legal and technical expertise. Something that seems to work constantly well for us, as no other law firm has been named Most Innovative Law Firm of the Year by the Financial Times for six times.
Benefit from our leading edge, our knowledge, and our experience as one of the most innovative law firms in the world. Whatever the challenges, we can bring together the right combination of skills to tackle them.
LegalTech solutions
Working alongside our legal teams, our specialist technologists design bespoke solutions to deliver all the benefits of technology in one place across three broad areas:
document automation, transaction management and document review.
Automate
We have been automating documents for over two decades and continue to expand our knowledge of the latest automation technologies. We support clients throughout the lifecycle of document drafting, identifying the most appropriate technology and then working through proof of concept to document production.
Our deep experience of the upfront, non-technical tasks involved means no matter which technology is used we can ensure the process runs smoothly from start to finish.
Manage
To enable a seamless experience on multi-team and cross-border matters, our clients’ data is centralised on secure, globally accessible platforms. We work with clients to understand end-to-end workflows and then build tailored platforms to deliver real-time reporting, task allocation, key date notifications and billing transparency.
With our deep knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of tools on the market, we bring together the best functionality to improve overall control and visibility, improving project leadership and reducing risk for our clients.
Review
Our digital review solutions leverage advanced smart technology to get to the facts of a matter more efficiently, whether analysing large transactional document sets or coordinating complex disputes. We work with clients to understand the specific business challenge, then select the best technology tools and embed those into bespoke, effective workflows, enabling our teams to reach informed legal decisions quickly.
We keep close to most sophisticated contract analytics and data extraction technologies and regularly leverage AI tools to manage large-scale document review exercises.
LegalTech solutions in action
Automate
Challenge: Generation of 2,000 signature ready English law deeds of novation and deeds of retirement and appointment of a trustee. Each document had to include different party details and other information, which the client provided in an Excel spreadsheet.
Our solution AutomateSolution:
It would have taken our paralegals over 600 hours to do this whereas Contract Express, a market-leading document automation solution, generated and downloaded all 2,000 documents in minutes.
Manage
Challenge: Working with a global development finance institution to quickly allocate loans to SMEs all over the world struggling as a result of Covid.
Our solution ManageSolution:
A&O’s LegalTech team developed two bespoke legal tech tools: a client-facing interactive deal platform giving real-time oversight of negotiation points and deal statuses, and a document automation tool to promote accuracy and consistency in mandate letters and loan agreements. Thanks to the efficiencies in the process brought by these tools, within four months 31 financings were agreed with local banks in 21 jurisdictions, supporting $1.63 billion in global trade.
Review
Challenge: Creating a data extraction solution for a world-leading provider of transport solutions to quickly and effectively gather information in support of its antitrust defence.
Our solution ReviewSolution:
We needed to extract information relating to our client’s vehicles from tens of thousands of pages of information on trucks belonging to plaintiffs. The laborious exercise was expected to take nine months to complete.
A&O’s data scientists were able to create a bespoke coding solution that automated the extraction of relevant information, translating source documents from German to English, converting from PDF to machine-readable format and delivering clear, actionable findings to the legal team. Nine months’ of work was completed in weeks saving around 3,000 hours of manual input.
Solution:
It would have taken our paralegals over 600 hours to do this whereas Contract Express, a market-leading document automation solution, generated and downloaded all 2,000 documents in minutes.
Solution:
A&O’s LegalTech team developed two bespoke legal tech tools: a client-facing interactive deal platform giving real-time oversight of negotiation points and deal statuses, and a document automation tool to promote accuracy and consistency in mandate letters and loan agreements. Thanks to the efficiencies in the process brought by these tools, within four months 31 financings were agreed with local banks in 21 jurisdictions, supporting $1.63 billion in global trade.
Solution:
We needed to extract information relating to our client’s vehicles from tens of thousands of pages of information on trucks belonging to plaintiffs. The laborious exercise was expected to take nine months to complete.
A&O’s data scientists were able to create a bespoke coding solution that automated the extraction of relevant information, translating source documents from German to English, converting from PDF to machine-readable format and delivering clear, actionable findings to the legal team. Nine months’ of work was completed in weeks saving around 3,000 hours of manual input.
LegalTech help surface new ideas and reimagine lawyers’ day-to-day work, streamline caseloads, drive collaboration and achieve better results.
RegGateway
Regulatory Law goes digital
For years, the complexity of regulatory law has been increasing and, with it, the time and effort spent on its implementation and daily application. With RegGateway, Allen & Overy and Lexemo have now created an online platform, unique in the German market, to support practitioners in various ways with the implementation and application of European and German financial regulatory law and to serve as your go-to page for all questions in the area of financial regulatory law. The RegGateway includes functions such as:
- Horizon Scanning/Regulatory Monitoring
- Financial Regulatory Law Sourcebook
- Comprehensive AT 4.4.2 MaRisk Compliance Solution
How our LegalTech team makes a difference
Access market-leading technology
Strong relationships with leading tech providers allow us to deliver the best-available solutions. If a tool doesn’t exist, our technologists will create it.
Work with digital innovators
A dedicated innovation team proactively engages A&O lawyers and clients to find solutions.
Benefit from lawyer-centric design
Our technologists work with A&O lawyers and clients to ensure solutions deliver lasting change. We take the time to understand our clients’ systems and processes to deliver tailored solutions.
Work with experts at the cutting edge
We are committed to influencing digital change across the wider legal industry, using Fuse as our technology radar and are working with the University of Oxford to explore the potential of AI.
Informing our clients
We are continually watching and monitoring the tech market to understand what’s out there. We use this insight to inform our clients, saving time and providing options depending on their needs and sensitivities.
Legal Tech Videos
The application of technology to key legal processes
Contract Lifecycle
Automation - Live negotiation - E-signing
Automated document review
M&A due diligence - Contract portfolios - eDiscovery
Team and project management
Document sharing - Process/workflow - Team coordination - Status reporting
Risk and compliance
Monitoring for regulatory change
Knowledge management
Deal precedents and advice - Market insights - Third party resources
Supplier management (to be investigated)
Engagement and contracting - eBilling - Infosec audits
Work for us
Join the LegalTech team
Explore our related services
Downloads
E-signing according to German law
Digitalisation in companies involves changes in work processes and a search for more efficient solutions for daily business. Signing documents using an electronic signature has already become common practice in many organisations. In order to facilitate smooth running of this process in terms of organisation and, most importantly, to ensure full legal compliance, please download our how-to-guide on e-signing in German legal transactions.
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Legal Tech in Germany - Digineering the law
Learn more about the use of legal tech in practice and about recent case studies in our legal tech brochure (in German).
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