Law firm
Gowling WLG
International law firm, Gowling WLG, is home to some of the most highly regarded real estate lawyers in the UK. Combining the skills and legal talent of more than 300 people, this market-leading practice offers the breadth of expertise to advise clients throughout the property lifecycle and across all asset classes. This has led to a diverse portfolio of work that includes everything from complex international investment and development projects to routine lease negotiations.
"The automation gets us to a first draft more quickly and our lawyers can adapt that output for any transaction, client or property specific requirements. It means we get to focus on those particular issues faster.
Ryan Davies
Legal Director, Gowling WLG
High quality legal advice, communicated clearly, enhanced with added value services, and provided for the lowest possible fee – there’s nothing new about what clients are asking for from their legal advisors. But what’s different today is the expectation from general counsels and corporate legal teams that legal technology is being leveraged effectively by law firms to work faster and deliver services more efficiently.
One aspect of delivering efficiency is the quality and flexibility of the documentation law firms use. It is critical that this documentation works for all involved in the transaction. This is one of the key reasons Gowling WLG supports, uses, and contributes to the Model Commercial Lease (“MCL”) project. The MCL template documents not only contain the breadth and flexibility to cater for a wide range of landlord and tenant situations, but are also drafted to represent a balanced starting (and, in many cases, end) point for both parties. This (together with the MCL's familiarity in the market) avoids much of the unnecessary negotiation on most routine letting transactions and offers a win-win-win for all parties involved.
“Balanced and workable contracts such as the Model Commercial Lease documents enable us to avoid unnecessary negotiation and delay,” says Ryan Davies, a Legal Director at Gowling WLG. “Legal documents and negotiation are often the start of our clients' relationship with another party – often their customer. It is better for everyone if that experience is positive and the process fast. Our lawyers can focus on the key legal points to provide real value rather than waste time and goodwill issues where there are well-established market positions in drafting.”
The MCL templates, whilst excellent, don’t cover all areas of work undertaken by a real estate practice. For a commercial real estate practice as broad and diverse as that of Gowling WLG, automating the MCL suite alone wouldn’t have been sufficient. They needed a far wider suite of automated documents to deal with including sales and other lease lifecycle documents.
It was at this point Gowling WLG turned to Clarilis for help finding a solution that combined fair and balanced drafting with deep automation to maximise efficiency.
Clarilis had already successfully automated the Model Commercial Lease (“MCL”) agreements and asset management documents, but the team at Gowling WLG were looking for a solution that went beyond leases.
In collaboration with the Clarilis team, Gowling WLG property lawyers set to work creating a comprehensive suite of commercial real estate documents. These were developed by Gowling WLG to meet the needs of as wide a range of clients and situations as possible while allowing for the output to be adapted by the lawyer to reflect any property or client specific requirements. The documents include sale contracts, short-term occupation arrangements, options, pre-emptions, and collateral warranties each drafted in accordance with the overriding principle of a fair and balanced approach aimed at speeding up negotiation.
Clarilis’ inclusion of these additional commercial real estate documents within Real Estate Plus seemed a natural next step to help improve efficiency across the real estate market as a whole. As a result, Clarilis Real Estate Plus (a suite of fully maintained automations of a broad range of high-quality commercial real estate documentation) was born. You can read more about why we did that here.
Access to Real Estate Plus means Gowling WLG's real estate lawyers are now able to produce, for example, a draft of a lease or sale agreement with ancillaries, in around 10 minutes.
“What Clarilis’ Real Estate Plus provides – is an extensive suite of automated real estate documents that helps facilitate and speed up a wide range of transactions rather than cause delays,” Ryan Davies adds. “The automation gets us to a first draft more quickly and our lawyers can adapt that output for any transaction, client or property specific requirements. It means we get to focus on those particular issues faster.”
The adoption of Real Estate Plus will bring significant advantages to Gowling WLG, in particular in terms of enabling its lawyers to deliver an improved client experience. This isn't just due to the quicker delivery of initial document drafts. The use of market-standard documents also provides a fair starting point for negotiations, reducing the need for lengthy discussions over standard terms. Consequently, lawyers can devote more attention to the aspects of the transaction that truly matter to clients.
Gowling WLG is also investing in technology to improve the job satisfaction and work-life balance of their tech-savvy lawyers. This is enhancing the team’s ability to attract and retain new talent and meet the expectations of the next generation of lawyers.
Gowling WLG's adoption of Clarilis Real Estate Plus underscores the firm's proactive approach to improving its ways of working. By leveraging advanced automation technology, the firm not only enhances its operational efficiency and client service but also positions itself as an attractive workplace for top talent.
"Process improvement, adoption of technology, and looking at new ways of doing things is a key part of our strategy at Gowling WLG," says Felicity Lindsay, Partner and Head of Commercial Development and Investment in the Real Estate group. “Real Estate Plus is a terrific example of this in action.”
