Business Integrity

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Business Integrity
Type Private
Industry Computer software
Founded London (07/03/2000) [1]
Founder(s) Phil Vasey
John Mawhood
Clive Spencer
Henry Steen
Andy Wishart
Richard Newton
Tim Allen
Headquarters 8-11 St John's Lane, London, EC1M 4BF
Area served UK, USA, EMEA
Products ContractExpress
Website www.business-integrity.com

Business Integrity Ltd is a privately held software company headquartered in London, with offices in New York and San Mateo. Business Integrity develops, licenses and supports a range of Document Automation products for the Microsoft Windows platform. Business Integrity's flagship product is ContractExpress, a document automation system used by law firms and corporate legal departments. ContractExpress is an on-premises solution integrated into the popular Microsoft SharePoint platform. In February 2010, Business Integrity launched ContractExpress.com, a cloud based version of the document automation software. The most recent edition of the software, released in January 2013 is version 4.3.[2]

History

The company was founded in 2000 as a joint venture between Tarlo Lyons, a London based law firm and Logic Programming Associates, a software company specializing in artificial intelligence software and Windows-based Prolog compilers. Founders Phil Vasey and John Mawhood devised a new approach to document assembly which enabled users to create document assembly templates in Microsoft Word using a text based mark-up language which would then be automatically compiled into a web-based questionnaire form.[3]

In 2000, Standard Chartered Bank became the first corporate customer to license Business Integrity's products for the generation of procurement contracts. In 2001, Linklaters became the first law firm to license Business Integrity's document assembly products for use in their award winning[4] Term Sheet Generator product.

Legal Influence

Business Integrity was incorporated to provide document assembly solutions primarily to the legal arena. An example of this is the use of "the natural and inherent editing, styling and annotation methods that lawyers and legal personnel use to mark up contracts and other legal documents".[5] Another feature of this is the emphasis upon legal certainty. The software developed draws upon pre-approved template precedents and administrators have the ability to 'lock' documents so that changes are not possible. Alternatively where alterations are made, the document can be automatically dispatched to the legal department for approval. The intention of these features is to reduce the opportunities for errors to enter the process, while ensuring legal departments are only required to review work when it is necessary.[6] Some have termed this disruptive technology as it alters the underlying processes of drafting.[7]

One of the main formative influences for Business Integrity the has been the work of Richard Susskind,[8] in which he argues that law firms in order to evolve and compete in the modern market need to embrace technological change. A similar theory is also expounded by Kenneth Adams who contends that the common features of legal drafting (e.g. reuse of precedent templates) and the inherent inefficiencies (e.g. ensuring compliance and certainty) lend themselves well to utilization of document automation.[9]

Awards

  • Best of Show for ABA Techshow 2010 by Technolawyer [10]
  • Microsoft Gold Certified Partner [11]
  • 'Best of Breed' at Legal Technology Awards 2007 [10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Companies House WebCheck - Business Integrity, retrieved 2010-06-28 
  2. ↑ Business Integrity, retrieved 2011-06-13 
  3. ↑ Document Assembly and Contract Management Patents, retrieved 2010-08-20 
  4. ↑ FT Innovative Lawyers Awards, 2007, retrieved 2010-07-13 
  5. ↑ Business Integrity Solutions, retrieved 2010-07-02 
  6. ↑ Disrupting Conventional Law Firm Business Models using Document Assembly by Daryl Mountain, retrieved 2010-07-02 
  7. ↑ Susskind, Richard. The End Of Lawyers?. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-954172-0 
  8. ↑ Law.com: Retooling Your Contract Process for the Downturn, 2009-02-26, retrieved 2010-06-29 
  9. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Law.com: ABA TECHSHOW 2010: The Year of Living Practically, 2010-04-12, retrieved 2010-07-14 
  10. ↑ Microsoft Pinpoint: Business Integrity, retrieved 2010-07-14 

US patent 7,757,160, Vasey; Philip E., "Debugging of master documents", issued 2007-30-01 
US patent 7,818,304, Vasey; Philip E., "Conditional Text Manipulation", issued 2006-02-23 
US patent 7,380,201, Vasey; Philip E., "Checking missing transaction values in generated document", issued 2004-09-03 
US patent 7,363579, Vasey; Philip E., "Mark-up of automated documents", issued 2004-09-03 
US patent 7,506,251, Vasey; Philip E., "Cross-reference generation", issued 2004-09-02 
US patent 7,472,343, Vasey; Philip E., "Systems, methods and computer programs for analysis, clarification, reporting on and generation of master documents for use in automated document generation", issued 2003-05-09 

External links

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