Arntzen De Besche reuses 80% of their time to focus on client needs

Arntzen De Besche is one of Norway’s leading law firms with a team of nearly 180 people. The full-service law firm serves clients across all industries and legal disciplines. To provide their clients the best possible service and differentiate themselves from the competition, they invest in legal tech.

Knut Martinson, an M&A lawyer at Arntzen De Besche, truly believes that a lawyer with technology outperforms a lawyer without technology: ​“In any law firm, there’s a huge untapped potential in the archives of the law firm, and in the minds of every person working in that firm. Technology helps us tap into that potential.” So having access to the entire legal archive increases the quality of Arntzen De Besche’s drafting.

More efficient and smarter

When Martinson saw Henchman’s demo, it only took him about 10 seconds to realize that the tool would add value: ​“It’s exactly what we do, but in a more efficient and smarter way.”

Arntzen De Besche started using Henchman to draft share purchase agreements, shareholders agreements, and corporate contracts. Previously, associates at the Norwegian law firm would search the archives for different examples to compare with the drafts they were working on. They spent a lot of time looking for documents previously written by the partner they were working for, so they could adapt to the style of this particular partner or the specific type of case. It was a lot of manual work.

​“With the time I save, I can invest more in actually interacting with my clients. Instead of spending 80% of my time drafting contracts, I can now be more attentive to my client’s needs and deliver higher-quality services,” says Annette Walaker Hansen, M&A associate at Arntzen De Besche.

Fast Implementation

Arntzen De Besche had just gone through a larger IT project in which they moved many of their systems to another vendor – a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process. When they came across Henchman, Martinson and his colleagues were amazed at its ease of use: ​“We didn’t really have to do anything other than sign on the dotted line. A few days later, Henchman was up and running.”

Annette Walaker Hansen couldn’t agree more: ​“Setting up Henchmen was really easy and quick. All I had to do was log into my Microsoft account and I got an add-on in Word that I could use right away. It was a swift process.”

The M&A team is the first team at Arntzen De Besche to use Henchman. ​“But we have many different professionals drafting different types of contracts, and I think it would be applicable to them as well,” concludes Walaker Hansen.