MELBOURNE, Australia, July 21, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Exari, a global contract management and document assembly company, announced today the launch of SmartDocs – a high-quality, online clause and agreement creation resource for members of the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association (ACLA).
Built in partnership with the ACLA and leading international corporate law firm Minter Ellison, SmartDocs is a Web-based service that provides in-house corporate counsel a better way to quickly and accurately draft Confidentiality Agreements and Liability, Exclusion and Indemnity clauses.
The resource provides ACLA full members with access to an unlimited number of agreements and clauses. It also allows for additional edits and customisation for each scenario.
"ACLA came to us regarding the need for this tool after a roundtable with their members where the conversation centered on these specific clauses and the bottlenecks they were creating for lawyers and their partner organisations," said Justin Lipton, CTO and co-founder of Exari. "Many of us are ex-lawyers, so we were excited to use our skills to give ACLA members access to a powerful way to create documents and track the clauses that are included."
The first phase of the project includes tools for creating and negotiating contracts using the SmartDocs Confidentiality Agreement and Liability, Exclusion and Indemnity clause. These documents cover a range of different scenarios. The goal is that they will eventually become established as de facto starting points for corporate lawyers.
"We are excited to provide this tool to our members. It's a great addition to our suite of online resources dedicated to assist in-house counsel face the many challenges that come with their role," said Trish Hyde, CEO, ACLA.
SmartDocs works on any Web browser, without the need for external software downloads. It starts by collecting the answers to a series of questions meant to customise the document. This cuts back on time spent drafting, reducing the length of the document assembly process from hours to minutes.
In order to model the platform options as efficiently as possible, Minter Ellison offered real use cases and standards for clauses to help build in typical scenarios that make up the SmartDocs forms. Minter Ellison Technology and IP Partner Paul Kallenbach noted, "Our contribution to this project reflects the innovative approach we take to the services we provide to our clients, including using technology to deliver online and tablet-based solutions. We were thrilled to assist with SmartDocs."
"Negotiating limitation of liability and indemnity clauses is often the most time consuming and difficult of the provisions to an agreement – they're especially difficult because they allocate risk and need to be negotiated very carefully," added Lipton. "Our collaboration with Minter Ellison allowed us to combine high-quality content with our flexible system to provide a unique and customisable solution for in-house counsel."
To learn more about SmartDocs, or how Exari is helping businesses across industries improve the contract management process, visit www.exari.com.
About the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association (ACLA)
ACLA's mission and primary objective is to be, and be recognised as, the leading association in Australia for the advancement and better understanding of the practice of law in the corporate and government sectors by members and the public. With over 4,000 members, ACLA is the peak national association representing the interests of lawyers working for corporations and government in Australia ('in-house lawyers'). ACLA membership caters for all in-house lawyers including those new to in-house through to General Counsel working in ASX 200 companies and government departments.
About Minter Ellison
Minter Ellison is one of the Asia Pacific's leading law firms. Established in Sydney in 1827, the firm today operates in Australia, Hong Kong, mainland China, Mongolia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom through a network of integrated offices and associated offices. Success has been driven by the vision of partners, the in-depth industry expertise of our lawyers, and commitment to work closely with clients to deliver seamless service wherever needed. Minter Ellison's large and diverse client base includes blue-chip public and private companies, leading multinationals operating in the region, global financial institutions, government organisations and state-owned entities.
About Exari
Exari (http://www.exari.com) is a global leader in Intelligent Contract Management. The system – used worldwide by legal, sales, insurance, investment banking, and government professionals – improves visibility into contract data and reduces costs, cycle time and risk. Exari's Document Assembly software empowers business users with self-service documents and automates document intensive processes while its template and forms management module enables creation, modification, storage and management in one flexible system. A major advantage of the Exari solution is the automatic capture of and easy access to critical data that can be used to generate reports and key insights.