logo

GET A DEMO
  • About
    • About Us
    • Industry Guides
    • Watch Our Story
    • Customer Success Stories
    • Contact Us
  • Products
      • veroDocs
      • styleDocs
      • cleanDocs
      • cleanDocs Server
      • compareDocs
      • compareDocs Cloud
      • pdfDocs
      • pdfDocs Binder
      • printDocs
      • contentCrawler
      • contentCrawler Cloud
  • Solutions
    • Redaction
    • Finding Documents
    • Email Security
    • Manage Metadata
    • Document Comparison
    • Document Bundling
    • OCR for Dropbox
    • Legal Software
    • Accounting Software
    • Mimecast
  • Developers
    • compareDocs SDK
    • compareDocs Cloud API
  • Integrations
    • iManage
    • NetDocuments
    • OpenText
    • SharePoint
    • Worldox
    • Other Integrations
  • News
    • Press Releases
    • Events and Webinars
    • Our Blog
    • Infographics
    • Customer Success Stories
    • Industry Guides
    Discover how to produce high-quality work at every stage of the document journey Discover how to produce high-quality work at every stage of the document journey How Travers Smith, one of the world's most innovative law firms, uses compareDocs SDK How Travers Smith, one of the world's most innovative law firms, uses compareDocs SDK
  • Support
    • Customer Support
    • Client Portal
    • myDocsCorp
    • Credit Card Payments
    • eLearning
    • Training Partners
    • Quick Training Guides
    • On-Demand Training Webinars
    • Product FAQs
  • Partners
    • Become a Partner
    • Find a Partner
    • Training Partners
    • Partner Portal
  • Buy
    • cleanDocs
    • compareDocs
    • pdfDocs

How Travers Smith, one of the world's most innovative law firms, uses compareDocs SDK

Learn about:


• Comparing large batches of contracts and agreements against a standard
• Customizing comparison output to show only material changes
• Using compareDocs SDK to parse legal documents for entry into a database
• Embedding compareDocs SDK within other software platforms


About Travers Smith


Travers Smith acts for publicly listed and private companies, financial services institutions, and private equity clients, as well as other business enterprises involved in large and complex UK & cross-border matters, transactions & disputes.


Travers Smith is regarded as a leader in its field regarding legal technology, having been shortlisted for Excellence in Technology & Innovation, Law Society Excellence Awards, and Future of Legal Services Innovation – Mid-sized Private Practice, Law.com Legal Innovation Awards.

Comparing contracts against a standard and allowing lawyers to review changes more effectively


Lawyers at Travers Smith rely on compareDocs' document comparison technology to find small but significant changes in complicated legal documents. "That is the desktop application that all of our lawyers use daily to run their comparisons," explained Shawn Curran, Head of Legal Technology.


However, the firm's needs go beyond the usual bread-and-butter comparisons compareDocs users perform. It also needs to compare large batches of contracts for essential differences.


"There could be hundreds of contracts with a slight variation from a standard form precedent," explained Shawn. "For example, each apartment in a block of 100 will have a slightly different leasehold agreement. Some will be studios, and others will be penthouses. The change could be small with each variation, perhaps for those purchasing studios who have less of a negotiating position, like the rent amount or leasehold term. Or, it could be a significant change, such as the addition of an exterior redecoration clause in the higher value penthouse."


To compare the different tenancy agreements against a standard form document, Travers Smith uses compareDocs SDK, a document comparison software development kit.


"compareDocs SDK allowed us to build an output that enables our lawyers to review changes in the most efficient and effective way – regardless of whether a change is material or not."


Lawyers won't have to review the entire contract if only a few pages have material changes. Instead, the output is the delta between the standard form and the agreement, said Shawn.


The lawyers look at the comparison output and think, 'The term and the rent are either the same, or similar to, the standard form. However, there's a big insertion or deletion that's not in the standard form and looks material. I'll copy that out and do something about it. Where the SDK comes into its own is where that material change exists across several agreements.


Shawn is keen to highlight that the comparison process is not an exact science and that the quality of the underlying PDFs is a key factor in ensuring quality output. Furthermore, the comparison technology is only a part of the bulk compare process, and as with any SDK, bespoke programming is required.


Using compareDocs SDK to parse contracts for entry into Etatonna, a contract labeling tool


The technology department at Travers Smith – renowned for being innovators and early adopters of new legal technology – launched Etatonna, an open-source contract labeling platform developed in-house, in 2020. Etatonna allows firms to label contracts and store the data in a structured format to train AI models.


Contracts and other legal documents need to be parsed before entry into the database. The previous, and still the current Open Source parsing technology within Etatonna, wasn't great at understanding legal documents – particularly paragraphs as clauses, which are critical components of a contract. The firm wanted to invest in parsing technology that had years of experience with legal documents.


"We wanted technology that was very much aware of legal documents and paragraphs," explained Shawn. "I've got a lot of experience of legal document comparison and know vendors like DocsCorp have spent decades fixing document comparison and parsing issues on complex legal documents. compareDocs SDK is very good at breaking down a document into a legal context because it must do that to perform a high-quality comparison. We wanted that technology to parse our documents into the Etatonna platform."


For Travers Smith, the benefit of compareDocs SDK is two-fold: it aids in reviewing large sets of contracts for differences. And it parses documents for the reframing of structured data within an in-house developed platform.


The fact that these capabilities could be delivered through a single SDK saved the firm's Legal Technology department time designing its own solution and the cost of purchasing two different products.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF

Related

image

Case study

Enhancing legal technology

How Mobile Helix used compareDocs SDK in the LINK App for Lawyers

image

Case study

Removing barriers to productivity

How U.S. law firm Taft eliminated performance issues when it switched to compareDocs

image

Case study

An IT Infrastructure Manager explains

Managing compareDocs during a merger and O365 update

  • How a top firm uses metadata cleaning on the server as part of its data breach prevention strategy
  • Product training by DocsCorp empowered attorneys to get more value from their software
  • How Travers Smith, one of the world's most innovative law firms, uses compareDocs SDK
  • How MacRoberts simplified software management with DocsCorp
  • Madgwicks Lawyers increases productivity using a PDF editor with iManage integration
  • How DocsCorp and SeeUnity delivered a joint solution that cleans documents of metadata as they sync between systems
  • DocsCorp and Morae’s Phoenix Business Solutions: a partnership based on teamwork and trust
  • How Delphi uses technology from DocsCorp to minimize human error
  • How award-winning Benelux law firm Stibbe uses DocsCorp solutions for core legal workflows
  • How Stibbe used contentCrawler to index 28 million documents and emails for its enterprise search engine
  • Automating electronic binder production boosted productivity and morale at this leading Australian law firm
  • How U.S. law firm Taft eliminated licensing and performance issues when it switched to compareDocs for document comparison
  • How contentCrawler improves the user experience of searching in Microsoft SharePoint
  • An IT Infrastructure Manager explains how simple it was to manage compareDocs during a merger and Office 365 update
  • How confidence was restored in core applications like metadata cleaning and document comparison at UK firm Hempsons
  • How Top U.S. firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon automated OCR, resulting in more litigation items being filed in less time
  • How UK Top 100 Firm Winckworth Sherwood strengthened data protection for GDPR compliance
  • How DBL Law converts image files to searchable PDFs using batch OCR processing
  • How this insurance broker slashed paper usage with document comparison software
  • How Simpson Grierson found a better alternative for document comparison
  • How a PDF binder solution gave Simpson Grierson a competitive edge on billable hours, and their clients an even better experience
  • Preparing for changes to data privacy regulations: How Simpson Grierson improved and streamlined its metadata cleaning
  • A regulatory body in Australia’s legal industry reduces production costs for mandatory paperless Court Briefs by 84%
  • How an ISO 27001 certified law firm manages the risk of data breaches
  • Four solutions, one firm: How ByrneWallace uses the DocsCorp productivity suite
  • How Mobile Helix used compareDocs SDK to provide accurate document comparison in the LINK App for Lawyers
  • Seddons uses cleanDocs and contentCrawler to support their GDPR compliance goals
  • cleanDocs helps DBL Law protect against accidental data leaks
  • contentCrawler helps minimize the number of hidden files in Makinson d'Apice DMS
  • contentCrawler changed Becker & Poliakoff's OCR workflow from four steps to one
Home
  • About DocsCorp
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • GDPR Policy
  • Data Security
  • Accreditations
  • Service Level Agreement
  • Human Rights Policy
  • Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy
  • Anti-Bribery and Corruption Policy
  • COVID-19 Statement
Products
  • veroDocs
  • styleDocs
  • cleanDocs
  • cleanDocs Server
  • compareDocs
  • compareDocs Cloud
  • compareDocs Cloud API
  • compareDocs SDK
  • pdfDocs
  • pdfDocs Binder
  • printDocs
  • contentCrawler
  • contentCrawler Cloud
News
  • Press Releases
  • Events/Webinars
  • Industry Guides
  • Case Studies
  • Blog Posts
  • Infographics
  • Watch Our Story
myDocsCorp
  • Support Login
  • Pay2Go
  • myDocsCorp
  • Training Directory
  • Customer Support
  • Product FAQs
  • Find a Partner
  • Contact Us
  • blog
  • linkedin
  • twitter
  • facebook
logo

© Copyright DocsCorp 2021 - All rights reserved.