Produce leases faster to deliver a better client experience.

Leases may be part of the day-to-day work for regional law firm Thomas Flavell & Sons but getting to a signed agreement still requires significant effort. Clarilis’ automated Model Commercial Lease (“MCL”) suite allows their property team to produce agreements faster, helping to protect profit margins, and deliver a better client experience. 

THE PROBLEM

Finding a fit-for-purpose solution

Like most property lawyers, when it comes to leases, Thomas Flavell & Sons looks to deliver the speed and efficiency their clients demand, rather than being unnecessarily contentious. The landlord and tenant relationship has evolved over the years, and it’s now widely acknowledged that clauses that are heavily biased toward either party are a hindrance to the smooth and speedy process of transacting in today’s commercial property market. Thomas Flavell & Sons recognised that delivering a streamlined lease process required the use of automation to drastically cut the drafting time, based on precedents that remove unnecessary negotiation.

“We tried another product prior to using the MCL suite with Clarilis. We felt let down by this solution, as it still involved us having to spend a large amount of time manually drafting. We also found that a lot of the time, the agreements were landlord weighted, and therefore there was an awful lot of amendment required. This actually led to transactions taking longer.”

Jamie Connolly, Managing Director of Thomas Flavell & Sons Solicitors

THE SOLUTION

A fully automated and maintained ‘balanced’ lease suite

The Clarilis MCL New Lease suite, gives commercial property lawyers a pre-automated, and fully-maintained, suite of high quality market standard real estate documentation. It includes all 19 MCL commercial leases and a range of related documents, all drafted from a single, easy-to-use questionnaire. The MCL documents are published and maintained by the MCL committee, which was formed more than 10 years ago and includes major landlords, including Landsec, and top tier law firms, such as Gowlings WLG, CMS and Hogan Lovells. Like many law firms, Thomas Flavell & Sons find these standardised leases provided a balanced contractual starting position, thereby reducing the negotiation required.

“We were aware of the MCL and have been for many years, but we’d noticed a lot of firms were adopting these standardised leases rather than other precedents that are available. The MCL lease is a much more reasonable, fairer starting lease and that’s exactly what’s needed to bring down negotiation time and therefore reduce transaction times.”

Jamie Connolly, Managing Director of Thomas Flavell & Sons Solicitors

"We have numerous fee earners using Clarilis – all give it excellent feedback. Producing the lease and ancillaries in one platform saves us so much time as a practice. The fact that Clarilis also does the housekeeping and keeps the automation up to date means that we don't have to, which means you've got more time to help our clients.” 

Jamie Connolly, Managing Director of Thomas Flavell & Sons Solicitors

THE OUTCOME

More time, more value-add

Thomas Flavell & Sons’ primary goal was to increase the speed they could execute leases for their clients. By both speeding up the drafting process, and reducing the need for unnecessary negotiation, the Clarilis MCL suite unlocks significant time-savings. This enhances client experience and protects profit margins when working on a fixed fee basis. But the benefits have been far wider than just speed and cost. By reducing the burden of drafting and negotiation, the lawyers now have more time to focus on value added work for existing clients, and growing new revenue for the firm’s real estate practice.

“We found the Clarilis lease automation has dramatically reduced the time it takes us to prepare the draft lease and send out the ancillaries to other solicitors. And this has also reduced the actual transaction time, which means that we can take on more matters.”

Jamie Connolly, Managing Director of Thomas Flavell & Sons Solicitors