SalesTechStar Interview with Gary Sangha, CEO at LexCheck

Gary Sangha, CEO at LexCheck discusses the benefits of contract intelligence platforms and their benefits to sales teams:

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Welcome to this SalesTechStar chat Gary, tell us about yourself and also more about LexCheck and what inspired the platform? How has the journey been since founding the entity?

Thank you, Paroma. I’ve been immersed in the legal field for nearly two decades. I’ve been a lawyer, law professor, and serial entrepreneur who has over 15 years of experience in the legal tech space. Prior to LexCheck, I founded Intelligize, which transformed lawyers’ ability to research regulatory filings. At that time, Intelligize was one of the fastest-growing legal technology companies in the U.S. and was subsequently acquired by LexisNexis, marking one of the largest legal tech acquisitions of the last decade.

As a lawyer and entrepreneur, I’ve experienced firsthand the complexity, heavy workload and time constraints faced by corporate legal teams, as well as the prolonged delays contract negotiations can cause. I started LexCheck to address these challenges and minimize the friction.

Since the founding of LexCheck, we’ve experienced significant growth, including international expansion in Toronto, Canada, and London, England, in addition to new product offerings, a new New York Headquarters and multiple award wins.

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Kudos on your latest funding, we’d love to hear more about this and the near-future roadmap for LexCheck: what can users expect from the platform in the next few months?  

Our funding process went pretty smoothly, all things considered. However, it hasn’t been easy for the sector, as shown by the fact that few legal tech startups successfully fundraised in Q3 and Q4 of this year. Despite legal tech funding being sparse, Mayfield Fund and our investors understood the value LexCheck brings to the entire enterprise, not just the legal team. At a time of macroeconomic challenges, companies need a solution that accelerates key business processes.

We will use this latest funding to fuel the expansion of LexCheck’s trusted contract review capabilities to accelerate growth across an organization. Specifically, we’re focusing on sales and marketing, and R&D of the platform over the next few months.

How are you seeing contract intelligence platforms play a crucial role in the B2B sales / marketing ecosystem? How is AI driving change and impact here?

LexCheck can help sales and procurement leaders move contracts forward faster by standardizing the contract negotiation process, which lessens the burden for and preempts escalations to legal teams. This gives other areas of the business, like sales and procurement, more autonomy without compromising quality or introducing risk.

Right now, we live in a time when businesses need to do more with less, including cuts to legal budgets and reductions in headcount. LexCheck enables businesses to drive revenue and quickly actualize on business decisions by accelerating contract negotiations and deal cycles to improve sales velocity. The ability to move contracts forward quickly leads to an increase in customer satisfaction as well.

For example, RSM turned to LexCheck to speed up deal flow by automating the review of over 1,400 NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). NetApp is another example of how contract intelligence can impact B2B sales and marketing. The company’s presence at industry events is key to its growth. But NetApp’s procurement team had to manually review agreements before committing to events. By partnering with LexCheck, the company was able to streamline its review process and reduce the total time to contract execution by more than 33%.

What are five factors you’d share with a B2B team that is still in its early stages of identifying contract intelligence tools?

1. Contract acceleration and intelligence tools have the ability to increase business opportunities and revenue for businesses by expediting sales cycles. Without effective contract governance, companies can lose up to 40% of a contract’s value. Businesses that want to succeed and thrive require visibility into the contracting process, tools to automate document management, and efficiencies that free up productivity so top employees can focus on value-added tasks.
2. As businesses look to cut costs wherever possible due to the current recessionary environment, contract negotiation tools have the ability to help cash-strapped legal teams get more work done with less resources. Many legal departments are shrinking as the work is increasing, which has caused teams to rely on outsourcing and in-sourcing work, neither of which are cheap. Instead of hiring more resources, contract automation enables the work to be completed more efficiently or shared by other employees without introducing unnecessary risk. The automation of contract review can also reduce escalations to senior lawyers by 70%, freeing up their time for more value-driven work, such as developing strategic positions.
3. Take the time to investigate the contract management system that is best for your business and makes the most sense for the processes you have in place. There are many different types of contract management solutions for legal teams to consider. Some are overarching workflow tools (such as CLMs) that help organize contracting processes, while others focus on optimizing the legal work where bottlenecks are most likely to occur. Other needs may include cloud storage, drafting templates, digital signature capabilities, or post-execution analytical tracking.
4. Vet potential technology partners to assist in your efforts. Take time to read reviews and case studies and request demos to preview and understand how the specific technology can help fill your business’s workflow gaps. The most advanced tools use Artificial Intelligence (AI), natural language processing, and machine learning to deliver the best results.
5. Implementation is a critical component for contract management to work. Businesses will need to rely on their legal teams to upload essential documents, such as contracts to the associated system. Keep in mind that any good contract automation software company will offer full support to help companies seamlessly integrate their existing tools with the new technology.

A few dominant features/trends that will dominate the B2B tech / digital marketplace ecosystem through 2023?

Distributed teams working under more pressure as a result of an economic downturn will need to increase the speed and efficacy of business processes wherever possible, including the contract review process.

The need for quicker business processes will lead to an influx in AI innovation and ultimately, AI becoming mainstream in legal tech. AI-powered contract redlining, risk analysis, and review tools will enable businesses to move quickly on and accelerate contract negotiations. This is done through the system inserting contextual notes to explain how and why a section should be improved. This, in turn, clarifies positions and eliminates unnecessary back-and-forths between parties during negotiations, which will be table stakes in the coming year as businesses continue to navigate the do-more-with-less economy.

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