Drafting contracts with
vs. without Henchman
Looking everywhere for that one clause you know you’ve written before. Contracts buried in folders, emails or colleagues’ hard drives? Not finding precedents because you can’t remember which client had a similar case? Do you recognise this?
Then you’re not alone, most of your fellow lawyers struggle on a daily basis to find clauses in precedents because they can’t remember where to look.When you take a moment to stop and think about it, this way of working is really outdated. It creates a number of problems lawyers tend to overlook because it’s simply the way it’s always been, and they don’t know how else to act. But we stopped, we thought about it, and we came up with a solution to these problems: Henchman.
Henchman is an add-in that helps you draft contracts faster by retrieving your previously written clauses from your contract repository and presenting these clauses to you within your trusted Microsoft Word environment.
To showcase the usability of Henchman, we made a quick comparison between how you’d “normally” work and how you could work if you’d use Henchman. Read away!
Without Henchman | With Henchman |
| You walk past your colleagues’ office or send an email asking; “Has anyone drafted something similar to this in the past?” Those disturbances/emails not only slow you down but will interrupt your colleagues’ workflow as well. Everybody loses valuable time. | You connect to a shared database or upload user data to your team’s Henchman account and effectively create a sizeable collective memory. This way everyone can easily access each other’s clauses and definitions and there is no need to interrupt your colleagues. |
| You might not remember exactly which former case is similar to the issue at hand, or maybe your colleague worked on something of the sorts but you just never knew. This could not only result in wasting precious time looking for the right precedent but it might leave you drafting new clauses only to find out later that there were very decent precedents available from colleagues. | You can find contracts, clauses and definitions faster. Easily search for the client name, clause title, contract type or even just a few words and get appropriate suggestions for you to compare with or to simply add in your text. Looking for very specific variations of a particular clause? Just drag and drop the clause and Henchman will find similar clauses in an instant. You can open the original contract, from which a suggestion was fetched. With the click of a button and in a matter of seconds you can even dig deep into the entire contract looking for further inspiration. |
| When you are drafting a contract, you probably have numerous folders and several Word files open and overpopulating your screen. You scroll through precedents or templates, just to find a suitable clause to recycle’. | Henchman is a true in-app experience for which you don’t need to leave your Microsoft Word environment. All your precedents are searchable and presented within the Microsoft Word add-in, without even having to change a single window. |
| You notice everyone drafts contracts a little differently because there are often no clear guidelines, or no one is keeping track of the subtle changes. As a result, great nuances that were once made and some best practices that came from well-written precedents get lost and contracts from the same firm differ without good reason. | You can easily recycle and indicate best practices in the Henchman add-in for your firm. Your firm’s contracts will not only become stronger and more consistent, but also remain high in quality, because you can build on each other’s experience and keep track of particularities and nuances. |
| When you think about creating a database full of great precedents or templates for your team to use, do you immediately dread a mountain of work and unrealistic working hours in order to keep it up to date? | Using Henchman, all you need to do is a data dump. Select and upload all your folders without even having to make a choice between contracts and non-contracts. Or even easier, connect your cloud storage space and get back to drafting right away. Henchman’s AI recognises and extracts contracts for you, without the need to label or manually input clauses. |
| Spent 70 minutes searching and inserting | Spent 10 minutes searching and inserting |
Now that you have taken the time to stop and see where your workflow could use some improvements, you probably won’t be able to unsee it. We’re really sorry about that. But if that happens, and you decide to do something about it, we’re here, ready to welcome you with open arms.