Document assembly and contract automation specialists
Linklaters unveils online banking first
6th March 2003. Linklaters has launched a new Blue Flag product based on document automation technology, which the firm describes as "the first ever online legal document creation system with embedded advisory capability designed specifically for banks".
The new product, Blue Flag Term Sheet Generator (TSG), which the firm announced on 3 March after more than a year in development, automates the drafting of term sheets, which are vital documents that bankers put together in the early stages of financial transactions.
Developed by Linklaters' banking practice and piloted with four lead arranging banks, the TSG promises to reduce the time taken by bankers on syndicated lending desks to produce term sheets - from around two hours to about 30 minutes - while feeding them relevant legal advice for structuring deals.
The TSG system uses IntellX software from Business Integrity as a drafting engine. The content for term sheets is controlled by professional support lawyer (PSL) Kirsty Thomson and is drawn from a 200-page master precedent, which contains every possible permutation and combination of the variables contained in the Loan Market Association's standard term sheet.
Thomson said the precedents had to be built by technical staff, but the PSLs would do all the updating work themselves.
Jeremy Stokeld, the banking partner in charge of TSG, said that price structures would be negotiated individually with each client and would represent a significant cost saving compared with the price of instructing Linklaters to do the drafting.
He said the four banks' pilot trials have all used the generic demonstration system, but Linklaters will produce a tailored version of the TSG application for each of the 10 to 20 individual banks that he expects to subscribe.
Stokeld said the underlying technology could also be used to automate documents such as confidentiality agreements, fee letters and mandate letters for syndicated loan agreements, but there would be less benefit to subscribers as these are less burdensome for bankers to produce. He added that there were probably a number of good applications for document automation in the capital markets practice.
Stokeld said: "Maintaining [TSG] will take a lot of resources, but we have to generate this knowhow anyway, so it is just a case of diverting it into the system."
John Tucker, Linklaters' head of banking, said: "This is the first stage of development. New and expanded online services for clients are to follow, so watch this space."
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