Knowledge sharing during YPOG’s fast growth

Hariolf Wenzler, CEO at YPOG, describes YPOG as ​“a law firm of the next generation”. Why? Because they manage their law firm the same way their clients (start-ups, scale-ups, and VC’s) manage their companies. With its fast growth to 250 employees in only 5 years, Hariolf was facing some challenges. ​“We want to run YPOG like a business. To support our ambitions we needed legal tech to support us with building out processes and creating efficiency. Henchman is a smart solution that helps us face those challenges as it makes people more productive. It’s the future of work.”

Increased knowledge sharing

The main frustrations for YPOG’s legal professionals when drafting contracts in the past were looking for precedents or asking a colleague for precedents. It could take days before someone found relevant references and would get back to you. ​“Since using Henchman, I immediately find the clause I need. It helps me think of how I should tweak the clause a bit for the case I’m working on. It saves me a lot of legwork.“ says Stefan Witte, Partner at YPOG. ​“Henchman helps us to push knowledge sharing to another level. We find the clauses quicker and we benchmark them to previous contracts. This makes the drafting process much easier.”

From a tedious task to automated labels

Stefan’s favorite Henchman feature is the use of labels for knowledge sharing. Previously, he added labels to all contracts by manually going through each document, locating all clauses, and added the right label to each specific clause so he and his colleagues could find each precedent faster. ​“By using Henchman, I now add labels on the go. Either when I search for a clause or when I’m working on a clause I immediately add a label so that I can quickly reuse it in the future.”

Creating a mindset shift

For Hariolf, the obvious benefit of using Henchman is that it’s making the YPOG team more efficient in their way of working. ​“I think Henchman creates a different kind of mindset within people and a different work attitude. It’s not just the tool, but what we are doing with Henchman and the direction we are taking, making this the future way of work.”