Shared storage – an incomplete solution
Being able to find the appropriate agreement is a step towards managing your information. However, while a hard drive of scanned contracts on your network can be useful in providing access to information, the volume of information can make contracts very difficult to find. Even if you have tools to help organize these scanned agreements through a licensed application, you still have to read and understand the agreement. The business issue rarely stops with the mere act of locating the agreement. So, your organization pays personnel to read and decipher the legalese of an agreement to obtain the necessary information to solve the business issue of the day.
An image copy of an agreement cannot:
- ensure that you receive information on a timely basis;
- compare terms with other agreements;
- locate related amendments, exhibits, and attachments; or
- decipher the terms and explain in easy-to-understand language.
OCR – Pandora’s Box
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the process of scanning a document and having an automated system to convert the images into searchable words. OCR has many useful applications, but contract management is not one of its strengths. Why?
- Technical Issues. OCR is dependent upon the quality of the image, the type font utilized, watermarks, the orientation of the type set (tilted), the brightness or darkness of the text, and a myriad of other issues that can cause words to be misread or missed entirely. These missed words can be important like “not” and materially change the interpretation of the agreement.
- Inadequate search ability. Lawyers are very clever in drafting agreements and use defined terms and references to draft material provisions within agreements. For example, Section 17, Termination may provide the language for how to terminate the agreement, but Section 32 modifies the language in Section 17 and never utilizes the word “termination.” A search based on OCR would miss Section 32 in its entirety, but the user of such a system believes that they have captured all the relevant terms of the agreement.
- Words can have multiple meanings. A hot dog is not always a sweaty canine. A school is not always a group of fish. Many word searches bring back unnecessary or inapplicable information regarding the terms needed for review. From a practical perspective, if you were looking for diversity language in your vendor agreements and searched for “diversity”, then you may get results ranging from a “diversity” of products, “diversity” jurisdiction, and “diversity” in employment practices. The user then has to find the relevant information, decipher the legalese, and create their own interpretation or understanding of the information. This leaves the user of the system with a great deal of work to perform.
The Power of N™
Ncontracts® paralegal contract review & implementation process
Network Contract Solutions provides paralegals to create useful summaries of any type of agreement for your organization. This contract management service begins with an initial consultation to identify the categories that need to be summarized. We employ a dual paralegal review process to accurately summarize and analyze agreements. Our first team of experienced paralegals actually reads and summarizes all existing contracts, amendments and related documents, based on the categories selected. Our second team of experienced paralegals reviews all of the summaries and compares this with the actual contract to ensure accuracy. Our paralegals then create custom email reminders of key dates by category to make sure critical deadlines will never be missed. Our paralegals are:
Experienced.
Each paralegal has at least 3 years of paralegal experience and is proficient at reviewing and summarizing complex contracts. (certification or screening/testing, how chosen?)
Educated.
Our paralegals all have degrees from accredited paralegal programs.
Specialized.
We have paralegals that specialize in reviewing contracts in nearly every industry including healthcare, banking, real estate, insurance, entertainment, construction, IT, etc.
Reliable.
All of our paralegals must pass background checks, sign confidentiality agreements and provide substantiated references prior to employment.