How Grant Saw streamlined commercial property drafting with Clarilis

Introduction

Grant Saw Solicitors is a London-based law firm with offices in Greenwich and Blackheath. Established in 1851, the firm combines a long tradition of delivering legal excellence with a forward-thinking, client-focussed approach. From commercial property and corporate law to employment, dispute resolution, wills and probate, and insolvency, the firm provides a wide range of legal services to businesses and individuals.

A core service within Grant Saw’s commercial offering is its Commercial Property Team, part of the firm’s Business Services division. Handling everything from straightforward leases to multi-million-pound, highly complex transactions, the team is intentionally structured to maximise efficiency and client value. Client-facing solicitors work alongside a dedicated professional support lawyer and are supported by paralegals and experienced administrative staff. This layered, collaborative model enables the team to manage increasingly sophisticated workloads while continuing to deliver exceptional client service.

“Having a dedicated professional support lawyer in the team isn’t common for a firm of our size,” acknowledges Mario Savvides, Partner and Head of Commercial Property at Grant Saw. “It’s usually something you see at much larger firms – but we’ve found that with experience looking up at larger firms, rather than sideways at similar sized firms, helps us set higher standards for ourselves and meet our growth objectives whilst remaining a great place to work.”

But even this strong, supportive structure couldn’t fully shield the team from the increasing volume of matters, pressure on turnaround times and leaner billing. “There’s always a budget coming up, or another buyer trying to acquire a property – this makes efficiencies even more important than ever,” Mario explains. To meet rising expectations around speed and cost-effectiveness, Grant Saw set out to enhance its processes by adopting Clarilis to streamline its drafting.

The challenge

Drafting commercial property agreements, such as leases and sale agreements, is time intensive. With legal fees under scrutiny and client expectations continuing to rise, inefficiencies in legal processes are increasingly borne by law firms rather than their clients. The growing complexity of commercial property transactions further adds to the risk, slowing turnaround times and threatening profitability. For Grant Saw’s Commercial Property Team, this pressure highlighted two critical priorities: to minimise value ‘leakage’ and to protect margins.

1. Minimising value ‘leakage’

The first priority was tackling hidden inefficiencies in drafting. Specifically, the team aimed to reduce billable hours spent on manual repetitive amendments, so lawyers could focus on higher value strategic work.

“As lawyers, we face targets, deadlines, and the realities of running a business,” Mario explains. “Yes, we’re officers of the court, but we also need to generate revenue and keep the business running. When lawyers tasked with earning fees are spending significant portions of their day on tasks that aren’t profitable, that’s what we call ‘leakage.’”

In recent years, lease documentation has grown significantly both in length and complexity. With the addition of green lease clauses, environmental obligations and bespoke tenant incentives, what was once a 30- to 40-page lease now often exceeds 100 pages.

“That's a significantly larger document to work through,” Mario says. “And it's not just about how much longer it takes to initially produce that document, you've also got the extra pages that the solicitor has to review and then mark up. We've now got way more red line to look at than we would have 15 years ago. So, we really need to make the most of technology to try and help us reduce this leakage.”

2. Safeguarding profit margins

The second priority was enhancing competitiveness and profitability by safeguarding margins. “The number of clauses, the length of the clauses – this all matters when providing quotes to clients,” Mario explains. “Producing a first draft manually can take many hours, and if we quote based on that, we risk overpricing ourselves and losing work.”

For Grant Saw, pushing lawyers to work faster wasn’t an option as it would increase risk, which was a compromise the firm would never make. Instead, automation technology offered a solution to accelerate first-draft production while safeguarding quality, margins and lawyer well-being. “That’s really where we needed Clarilis to help us,” Mario adds, “by giving us the ability to manage time, cost and quality simultaneously.”

The solution

Grant Saw adopted Clarilis’ Real Estate Plus, a market-proven document automation suite built for commercial property. Using a guided, intuitive questionnaire that mirrors the structure of commercial real estate transactions, the automation allows lawyers to capture all relevant details accurately and generate a high quality first draft. By embedding standard clauses and provisions, including green leases and tenant incentives, Clarilis ensures drafts are both compliant with current standards and accurately reflect negotiated terms.

The impact of this automation was significant. Whereas reviewing precedents, inserting clauses and updating transaction-specific provisions once consumed hours, with Clarilis it can now be done far faster and more efficiently. “Instead of drafting a 100-page lease clause by clause, we fill in a questionnaire, and the system produces the document for us,” says Mario. “We still review it, we’re still responsible for the legal content, but the time savings are huge.”

And the benefits of the automation extend beyond speeding up the production of the main agreements. Clarilis automations also generate all of the associated ancillary documents, such as rent deposit deeds, indemnity agreements, licence to assign and service charge schedules. This delivers speed and consistency across all paperwork and dramatically reduces manual drafting. “Clarilis really sets itself apart because the questionnaire will produce all the ancillary documents for you as well,” Mario adds. “That really blew us away.”

As important as the efficiency delivered is the fact that Clarilis maintains the automation of the precedents and updates the content as and when the content providers update the underlying documents, ensuring that the automation is always current. As a result, lawyers are relieved from administrative burdens and can focus on areas where their expertise truly adds value: complex structuring, negotiations, and strategic client advice.

Value

The adoption of Clarilis has delivered measurable benefits for Grant Saw’s commercial property teams, including:

• Reduction in leakage: By streamlining the production of commercial real estate agreements and ancillaries, Clarilis enables lawyers to minimise lower value drafting tasks, so they can spend more time on work that enhances client experience and elevates the overall profitability of transactions.
• Consistency and quality: As well as standardising documents, by linking multiple ancillary documents to a single matter, Clarilis also ensures all necessary components for the transaction are included. This reduces errors and maintains a high standard of client service.
• Work-life balance and staff retention: By automating repetitive tasks and reducing pressure on lawyers, Clarilis contributes to lower stress levels, better work-life balance and greater staff satisfaction. This supports the firm’s objectives for growth and creates a positive team culture.

Conclusion

By automating the full suite of commercial real estate agreements and associated ancillary documents, Clarilis has enabled the Grant Saw Commercial Property Team to eliminate leakage and gain a competitive edge. This has delivered a faster, more reliable service while protecting profitability and upholding the high standards clients expect. A clear demonstration of how drafting automation technology, when applied strategically, can enhance legal expertise rather than replace it.

Learn more about how Clarilis can transform your real estate drafting.