Homburger is a leading Swiss corporate law firm that advises and represents enterprises, and entrepreneurs in all aspects of commercial law – transactions, proceedings and complex cases both in a domestic and a global context.
Described as the “Swiss M&A powerhouse” by Chambers, they are actively involved in corporate acquisitions, auctions, mergers, as well as public tender offers, and place special emphasis on cross-border transactions. The firm’s services are aimed at public and private companies, their directors and investors, as well as entrepreneurs from all economic sectors.
This requires the firm to review large volumes of legal contracts for their clients, across multiple different teams and in a variety of languages. As part of Homburger’s commitment to delivering significant value to their clients, they have implemented Kira across their transactional teams, ensuring lawyers have the best experience and clients reap the benefits of an enhanced due diligence and contract analysis service.
We sat down with David Oser, Partner at Homburger, to understand the firm’s goals and experience with searching for a partner for contract review projects.
Use Case
Due Diligence, Multi-Language Reviews
Site
About
• Founded in 1957
• Located in Zurich, Switzerland
What is your role at Homburger?
I am a partner in Homburger’s Corporate | M&A practice team. My practice focuses on domestic and international mergers & acquisitions, capital markets, corporate governance, and general corporate law matters. I am also responsible for our information technology services.
How did you identify the need for contract review & analysis software?
We have a large transactional practice, which we believe we can further improve and make more efficient in various ways, including through contract review and analysis software. We have been closely following the various software offerings available in the market for quite a while and have actively reviewed a number of the available offerings.
What have you been most impressed with so far?
Kira has had the clear edge among the various software offerings that we piloted. It delivers what it promises to deliver, at the level of accuracy that we expected. The initial set-up of the system has been straight forward, and the tested use cases Kira provides will allow us to share the benefits of the offering with our client right upon launch within our firm.
How many software solutions did you look at?
We have more closely looked at three different software providers. We have found that Kira meets the requirements for our expected use cases best.
What made you happiest about working with the Kira Systems’ team?
Support from the Kira Systems' team during our pilot phase was excellent. The training at the beginning of the pilot focussed on our needs, which allowed us to start working with the system within a very short time. Any issues that arise are immediately addressed.
What surprised you the most during the onboarding process?
We were surprised how intuitive and advanced the system already is. Training Kira in German and French turned out to be straightforward. The outcome of the document review during our pilot, both using Kira’s pre-trained models and clauses trained by ourselves, exceeded our expectations.
How will contract review & analysis software support your firm’s long-term goals?
We believe Kira will be an important addition to our existing service platform. We have been leveraging e-discovery tools in our investigation practice for quite a while, and we are confident that we will be similarly able to use Kira in a way that brings significant value to our client.
What’s your top advice for colleagues?
Our objective is to enable all of our fee earners to use the system as quickly as possible to have the full benefits of the system for us and our clients.
