The Creation of Real Estate Plus

At a recent Clarilis real estate webinar, we sat down with Ryan Davies, Real Estate Knowledge Lawyer at Gowling WLG, to discuss the evolution of Clarilis’ new Real Estate Plus suite of automations. 

The creation of Real Estate Plus follows on from the success of our automated Model Commercial Lease (“MCL”) suite, which launched in 2023. We listened to feedback from our customers, who wanted us to automate a wider range of Real Estate documents. This led to the inclusion of the MCL asset management documents. Ever insatiable for efficiency savings, the next most common request was for a broader array of documents, both going broader on lease content and extending beyond leases, to address the diverse day-to-day needs of commercial real estate lawyers.  

Our ambition with Real Estate Plus was to create a suite of automated commercial real estate documents that real estate lawyers can rely on across their practice area - whether they are dealing with lettings (grant, management or surrender), sales, options, pre-emptions or even the issue of collateral warranties. However, we knew that success in this endeavour depended on developing high quality standardised precedents to compliment the MCL suite. To that end, we partnered with international law firm Gowling WLG to help provide the additional content to cover key additional areas not addressed by the MCL precedents.  

A broad view of the property market

Gowling WLG has one of the most extensive real estate capabilities in the UK, with approximately 400 people – 300 legal staff and about 100 support roles. This vast expertise spans the full range of commercial real estate across a wide range of sectors. As a result, Gowling WLG is involved with a wide array of real estate transactions, diverse clients, varied commercial situations, and lots of different counterparty lawyers. This provides them with an exceptional view across the commercial property sector and the pressures facing this part of the legal market. It is this breadth of practice and experience which makes them well suited for this standardisation project. 

Driving process innovation

In the webinar, Ryan shared how the Real Estate Plus project was a perfect fit with the firm’s commitment to embedding innovation into legal practice. As a firm, Gowling WLG is taking a proactive approach to innovation and is a strong voice in the market, supporting pioneering, tech-enhanced approaches to delivering legal services.   

 “Like many law firms, process improvement, adoption of technology, and looking at new ways of doing things is baked into our internal strategy,” Ryan told us. “In terms of speed and levels of service, client’s attitudes are changing. The sort of legal service and products being offered 20, possibly even 10 years ago, fall well short of client expectations these days. So, we're engaging with tools, products, and technology that enable us to stay ahead of those expectations.”  

There has been a surge in technology adoption across law firms in recent years and this is showing no signs of waning. Arguably, it’s becoming even more of a priority as firms navigate a tumultuous property market, where competition for work is high and teams need to be able to adapt more fluidly to fluctuating workloads.   

“In the current market, access to automation, data tools, and artificial intelligence and finding new process efficiencies plays a big part in client relationship management, business development, and winning instructions. It’s the way we have to work,” explained Ryan. 

For example, take Real Estate Plus. The property market may be in a state of flux in 2024, but client expectations continue to be sky high. Real estate clients expect their legal advisors to be using technology to work faster and deliver services more efficiently. Real Estate Plus contains more than 70 deeply automated and fully maintained real estate precedents, across eight different suites, empowering lawyers to produce high quality first drafts in minutes. It is important to note, these documents aim to be a fair reflection of the general market position (not necessarily the Gowling WLG position), reducing laborious negotiation and unnecessary contention over standard terms. 

“It provides automated documents that help facilitate transactions rather than cause delays over drafting and negotiation on points that clients are just not that interested in,” Ryan explained as he emphasised the benefits of standardisation. “Clear, concise drafting, adopting fair and balanced market positions. And where it's necessary to tip one way or the other, providing alternatives so that we can all be very open and clear about the fact that a commercial choice is being made.”  

The war on talent

Whilst efficiency improvements are obviously important, Ryan explained the rationale for Real Estate Plus reaches beyond responding to market competition and client demand. The impetus for investing in this kind of process innovation is also coming from within firms – from lawyers themselves.  

“There’s obviously the benefit of an efficiency gain – that's critically important because it enables competitive pricing – but it’s also about job satisfaction,” Ryan explained. “It's a very different recruitment market today, with tech-savvy, junior lawyers and graduates having high expectations in terms of their working environment. Part of my role at Gowling WLG is to make sure that our real estate lawyers have access to the best tools, so that we can provide the best services and attract and retain and the best people.”   

Conclusion

The real estate legal landscape is transforming, and the lawyers thriving in this new environment are those injecting innovation into how they work. At Clarilis, we help real estate practices use legal technology to drive real change.  

Real Estate Plus provides commercial real estate lawyers with a suite of fully maintained automated documents to drastically reduce drafting and negotiation time, improve margin, enable risk-mitigated delegation, and aid recruitment and retention - across their complete range of transactions. We aren’t stopping there either, in addition to keeping pace with the MCL issued updates we are incorporating the BBP Green Lease Toolkit clauses in the coming weeks. 

Find out more about Real Estate Plus here or book a demonstration.