I’m happy to report that we now have a website that says what we do. Which is build software that helps users review contracts and organize their findings. More specifically, our system reads electronic versions of contracts for certain provisions and puts its findings into summary charts, which users can then manipulate and store online or download. Our website says it more elegantly than I can here, so check it out. Essentially, you could think of our system as like a junior associate on a diligence project, except that it’s way quicker—documents get reviewed in about 30 seconds each. Regular readers know that we think junior lawyers have nothing to worry about from our system and tech like it (see, e.g., this and this). And in fact we see a main use of the system as helping junior associates prepare more accurate diligence summaries much faster. And way less painfully. I know I would have loved it as a junior, and I hope today’s juniors will be as enthusiastic about the system as we are.
Has DiligenceEngine Launched?
We now have test users on the system and are using their feedback to make DiligenceEngine thouroughly amazing before getting it out to more people or actively promoting it. So no, we haven’t yet launched. Stay tuned—we hope you’ll be hearing lots more about us soon! And let us know if you would really like early access—we may be able to make it happen in limited circumstances.
Why Wait to Have a Descriptive Website and Launch Open Access to the System?
We know that the trendy thing to do in tech these days is to get an imperfect product out as early as possible, get feedback, and iterate. We think that may be the right idea for a lot of products. But we knew that the technology behind what we were trying to do was tricky, and thought it was better to wait to be sure we could do what we were trying to do before telling people about it. We’re not crazy—we talked to a number of lawyers before building the system. And a number of them wondered if our product was even possible. It is. We think DiligenceEngine as it now stands is pretty terrific. But we’re waiting to launch. The lawyers we know are busy people. And we remember our Biglaw obsession with getting clients great work product, think a lot of our future users will have the same perspective, and would like to make sure the product we launch is outstanding.
