CHENNAI: Drafting legal contracts — be it employment documents or the highly complex merger agreements — has been a constant pain for larger corporates. For smaller enterprises that may not be able to hire legal organisations to vet such documents in detail, it is even harder to manage and map laws to particular contracts.
With the development of Artificial Intelligence, legal contract mapping and management has been automated to a large extent and is turning out to be an area of growth for technology start-ups such as SpotDraft, which makes about $5 million in revenue every month.
Amid Indian players like VakilSearch, Legal Desk and Near Law, SpotDraft is one of the first few to provide contract management services using Artificial Intelligence.
The legal tech start-up, founded by Harvard Law School graduate Shashank Bijapur, along with Madhav Bhagat, a former software developer at Google, looks to expand its operations from its home base in India to European countries, Singapore and Hong Kong, among others, this year to cash in on the rapid growth in the $80 billion contract automation market.
“Every company, irrespective of the industry they are in, have to handle commercial contracts that are legally binding. Legal contracts are, in fact, mission critical for these companies and with automation, they can use such data to make critical decisions,” said Shashank Bijapur, CEO, SpotDraft.
The start-up provides end-to-end contract management services with lawyer-vetted templates. When the contract is created, payment for such services is also automated, where invoices are generated and payment reminders are also sent out once they are due.
Users can also upload existing documents on the website, where the AI software analyses them to classify clauses, highlight missing laws, provides an update if there is a change in law and manage such contracts online.
“Our clients range from banks to co-working enterprises, hospitals, SMEs and large IT corporates. We’re looking to break even in another six months,” Shashank added.
The company has priced its services at $200 per month for small businesses and $8,500 per year for corporates.