Thomson Reuters is forging closer links between its market-leading know-how solution, Practical Law, and its innovative document automation software, Contract Express, to help lawyers draft contracts more easily and more effectively.
The closer integration will provide Contract Express customers with up to 300 pre-automated templates and standard clauses prepared and maintained by the editorial experts behind Practical Law. Contract Express users can quickly create bespoke versions of the existing Practical Law templates for their own use and will be notified when the original templates and clauses are updated by the Practical Law editorial team. The closer integration will widen the appeal of Contract Express among law firms of all sizes
In a further step, the company has replaced the ‘engine’ behind the Fast Draft tool within Practical Law with the technology from Contract Express. The move puts the innovative technology at the heart of the company’s drafting tools for lawyers and offers a more streamlined, user-friendly and faster drafting experience for its customers.
The developments come as Thomson Reuters releases the latest version of Contract Express (version 7.0) which introduces a host of new features including; Negotiator, Contacts, questionnaire drafting notes and – for users in the UK – Companies House and postcode ‘look-up’.
“It is little over a year since the acquisition of Contract Express by Thomson Reuters and I’m extremely pleased with the advances we’ve made in this timeframe,” said Lucinda Case, managing director of the UK&I Legal business of Thomson Reuters. “The closer integration of Contract Express with our existing solutions has always been an aim for Thomson Reuters and it’s a direction that is supported by many of our customers who want to work in new and more effective ways.”
“Today’s announcement is great news for customers of Contract Express and Practical Law. It has been a long held ambition of our development team to combine the document automation capabilities of Contract Express with the best legal content available. The steps we have taken today help us to realise this ambition and they will offer a more robust and user-friendly technology enabling lawyers to do more with their legal content,” said Andy Wishart, global head of Contract Express at Thomson Reuters.
