Schoenherr outpaces its competitors with a sharing mindset

‘Given our international context, collaboration and sharing knowledge are core values for us’, says Thomas Kulnigg, Partner at Schoenherr. He strongly believes that the leading firms of tomorrow will focus on knowledge preservation, using knowledge, and documenting experience. And then, of course, providing legal advice based on it. Andrei Salajan, Head of Digitalization, joins Thomas by labeling the firm’s knowledge as a​‘crown jewel’ and​‘the core of their profession’. Both men clearly agree on using and adopting new technology to leverage and share this knowledge.

Technology attracts high-potential

Thomas sees two main forces at play in his firm to live up to these core values. One is working with smart people who are willing to manage know-how (and at the same time have an affinity with technology). Second, is the technology itself.​“Legal talent, in particular high potentials, are attracted by technology and legal tech in particular, and we at Schoenherr can attract that talent with our legal tech initiatives such as Henchman.”

For Thomas, legal tech is an important asset within the firm. He sees legal tech as an assistant to lawyers. It is there to make their lives easier, increase efficiency, and explore new legal advice and products. Andrei likes the concept of the​‘augmented lawyers’. He speaks about a tipping point where lawyers will embrace technology, work better with it, and therefore will be able to amaze their clients with the quality they deliver.​“So I think there are two dimensions. First, the way we provide our legal product and the quality of it. Second, the way our product is delivered to the clients can also be spiced up by technology,”

“Did you check Henchman?”

Before Schoenherr used Henchman, contract drafting was done​‘old school’. They started from a blank page or used a template and worked from there. Thomas often got questions from his team.​‘Do you have a precedent for this, or do you have a similar clause for that?’ His answer now is simple:​‘Did you Check Henchman?’

Henchman serves as a painkiller in a manner of speaking. It relieves Schoenherr’s lawyers of the struggle to find a particular template or similar clause in their extensive database. With Henchman, they only need a click of a button to find the right clause and can customize, enhance, translate, or compare it.​“Henchman allows us to have our data, our knowledge ready and available in a structured way fully integrated into Microsoft Word for drafting.”

From his role as Head of Digitalization, Andrei is naturally quite keen on the other features of Henchman which are developing rapidly. They enable an easier review of documents, checking clauses that you get from the counterparty and adapting these clauses as you go.