by Blair Carey

Sticking true to its name, ALTA’s inaugural Hour of Power delivered an hour of jam packed powerful pitches from Australian Legal Tech companies. With a special event sponsor, NetDocuments, the session featured nine leading legal tech companies, offering a glimpse into the future of the legal tech industry. The session’s co-hosts Dom Woolrych from LawPath and Karen Finch from Legally Yours dropped into a hot start, welcoming the audience before quickly moving into the first four minute pitch. 

1. thedocyard

Right off the bat we had thedocyard, represented by Daniel Kitt, Head of Sales. If there was any question as to what thedocyard offers, Dan quickly made it clear.

Their offering has 3 main focuses: for legal companies to win more work, drive efficiency and deliver a great experience for clients. As an ASX listed company and used by over 1200 companies, thedocyard experience speaks for itself. The new COVID-19 era has for many been a positive change, catalysing the development of technologies, processes and cultural changes. However, thedocyard team identified the increased need for a tool that eliminates the hassle of admin, unorganised files and back-and-forth emailing. Underpinned by compliance, thedocyard offers a powerhoused virtual data room, combining project management, workflow and transparency. With its established customer base and ASX listing, it doesn’t take much to see how thedocyard really might live up to their claim: doing deals safer, easier and better.

2. NetDocuments

Not to be outdone, Jennifer Cathcart from NetDocuments was up next. Leading cloud based email management in legal tech, NetDocuments looks to simplify email management to increase productivity. With 3000 clients globally, Jennifer and her team have proven their product value. With their Smart View technology, you’re able to see all linked documents, any important annotations and compare notes between different versions of the document. Experience the efficiency for yourself and try out Netdocuments. 

3. ContractProbe

The next company is developed by one of our own from ALTA, Michael Pattison. With ContractProbe, he wanted to “get rid of the drudgery from doing legal work.” To do so, Michael and his team created an online automated legal document review system using artificial intelligence. This service is customisable to view legal documents from different perspectives, including that of a supplier, customer or even as the recipient of an NDA. Not only does ContractProbe deliver an overall score of the legal document, it also identifies high-risk issues and provides suggestions for easy negotiations. They’ve furthered their offering through LeaseProbe, a similar solution that reviews commercial leases. The ContractProbe team is so confident in their value that they are offering a free trial for any legal teams still not convinced.

At this point, I’m starting to see the theme day seems to be ‘making life easy.’ As a man driven by blaring inefficiency and clunky processes, this is all music to my ears.

4. Law In Order

With that thought, our co-host Karen introduces the next vendor, ALTA Annual Partner, Law in Order. During my early years clerking for a boutique firm, a large part of my role was to compile briefs of evidence. I can not describe the relief felt when Law In Order were engaged to produce the brief instead. However, their service offering spans far beyond brief compilation, they provide a wide range of secure end to end document and digital solutions. While all their solutions are focussed on driving both efficiency and accuracy, today’s pitch centres around the Nuix Discover platform. It’s available as a feature of their job management system, or as part of the Law in Order paid offline program. Nuix Discover enables users to transfer data from external sources, and automatically applies the user company’s fundamental rules to new documents. 

5. inMailX

Presented by Megan Kennedy, inMailX is a fantastic risk management, compliance and productivity solution designed for emails. Designed to simplify and streamline the practice of your business, inMailX will transform your email experience and remove the unnecessary steps when it comes to attachment management. With inMailX, you’re able to convert attachments to PDF, rename and reorder email attachments as well and set a password to protect your documents. Even more, the handy option to clean metadata through inMailX is also included. Up your user productivity and compliance now with inMailX. 

6. Donna

Donna is an ALTA Annual Partner that is all about assistive intelligence through their plugin for Microsoft Word. This system is designed to help identify and rectify the mistakes in legal documents before you even notice them. Even better, it’s inbuilt with lawyer friendly workflows to streamline common tasks, such as inserting cross-references automatically. Donna’s system works straight away and is user-friendly which allows Donna to blend seamlessly into your company. Best of all, there is a two week free trial where it identifies who is using Donna and the impact it’s brought upon their work. As Donna is a pay-per-active-user service, you can be sure that you’re getting your money’s worth. 

7. Aerofiler

Next up is Aerofiler, who will help us say goodbye to contract administration. This system helps companies like yours to extract only the key information you want from different contracts. It also allows you to set reminders based on the contract to remind yourself or the client when a deadline is approaching and automatically recorded in the contract calendar. If contract work seems tedious and efficiency appeals to you, then Aerofiller is your best bet. 

8. FamilyProperty

Next up was Fiona Kirkman, the CEO of FamilyProperty that seeks to simplifyuncomplicate difficult family law matters by offering an end-to-end platform that delivers massive efficiencies. This system takes out the admin work and streamlines the matters from intake to agreement. The platform provides an intakes function to understand the client’s needs, a disclosure function to review and disclose documents securely between parties, a balance sheet built in to calculate the value of properties and a generator that produces a variety of documents. Experience the difference that FamilyProperty can bring for your company with their free 14 day trial!

9. RapidMATION

Last but not least, we had RapidMATION introduced by Shaun Lesiegang, who are all about releasing you from the business mundanity. This product combines human forces and software bots to automate business processes and enables owners to free up more time for higher value tasks. This process reduces costs and increases efficiency, law firms are already using this system for conflict checks, billing and time sheets. To demonstrate how RapidMATION is a great fit for your business, they have a Poof of Value pack, with 10 days of their service and test out the product before committing. See for yourself how business automation can improve your business performance. 

After wrapping up the pitches, our presenters left us with a warming message in these cold, isolated times: ALTA is about fostering the Australian legal tech community, helping professionals find their tribe. Working around their 3 pillars of building, implementing, and adopting legal tech, ALTA brings events like this for the benefit of the broader legal industry.

Now confirmed as a monthly offering, I look forward to November’s Hour of Power and the innovation it will spotlight. Until then, check out the event recording and reach out to any of the featured vendors – they are all more than excited to discuss how their products can bring value to any team.