Contract Corridor: from piles of paper to data-driven legal
Sasfin Bank Limited's Group Legal team, headed by Howard Brown, embarked on a transformation journey to enhance the bank's legal operations — and found a game-changing solution in Legal Interact's Contract Corridor.
The challenge
A unified document management system that stayed highly secure
Taking document management head-on in one of South Africa's most tightly regulated industries.
Built on Microsoft Azure, the platform doesn't just centralise 20,000 documents; it also uses artificial intelligence to analyse contract clauses, making post-signature management a breeze. Questions like “What does this confidentiality clause mean?” are instantly answered, while Power BI dashboards provide real-time snapshots, moving from guesswork into data-driven decision-making.
Nicole Jude, Senior Legal Adviser at Sasfin Bank, has been involved in the procurement and implementation of the new system. After qualifying as an attorney and earning a Master's in Banking and Finance Law at the London School of Economics, Jude worked at various law firms in South Africa specialising in banking law and project finance. Six years ago she joined Sasfin Bank and began navigating the nuances peculiar to in-house legal teams — a department that manages everything from drafting agreements and contracts to arrears collection and litigation.
“Given the strict regulatory landscape for banks in South Africa and globally, it was crucial for us to implement a unified document management system that remained highly secure,” Jude explains.
20,000
Documents migrated and centralised
30+
Legal document templates uploaded
Azure
OCR, SQL and OpenAI Service built in
Transforming in-house legal management
“Sasfin Bank was looking for a simple system, to keep a smooth workflow, especially to ensure seamless handovers,” shares Jude. The legal team's criteria were straightforward. First, the new system had to be capable of centralising document storage. Second, it had to offer the ability to manage agreements post-signature to help the legal team track obligations and key dates.
“Legal Interact's Contract Corridor solution met these needs and even offered bonus features, such as a self-service portal for logging requests for legal assistance,” Jude notes. The team wasted no time tailoring the solution to its workflows. “If we felt certain terminology didn't suit us, Legal Interact changed it. They surpassed our expectations to make it bespoke for us.”
Contract Corridor — built using Azure Cognitive Services for optical character recognition (OCR) and Azure SQL for database management — was customised to a tee. “We have already uploaded 30 templates for legal documents and are planning to expand the library to even more templates,” said Jude.
Additionally, 20,000 documents were migrated and centralised on the solution, enabling the legal team to quickly search through relevant documentation. “Not only does Contract Corridor pick up the name of a document, but it also searches within the document. If I search for the word ‘guarantee’, it will find every agreement that mentions ‘guarantee’ within the body text.”
Azure OpenAI Service enables more advanced search features. “Questions like ‘What does this confidentiality clause mean?’ can be answered by the Azure OpenAI Service built into the solution, enhancing the quality of our work.” Anyone in the bank — from a facilities manager needing a services contract reviewed to the CEO requiring legal counsel — can now submit requests through the self-service portal or Microsoft Teams integration.
The solution also revamped the way agreements are managed. Once the required fields are filled, the system auto-generates legal documents. Third-party agreements are easily uploaded, marked up and disseminated to relevant stakeholders. AI automatically identifies crucial contract clauses, such as termination dates and notice periods, making post-signature management more efficient.
Legal driven by insight
While document centralisation and agreement tracking were the legal team's primary concerns, the platform offered so much more. “One unexpected benefit is the Power BI dashboards. They show activity and status of contracts and arrears at a glance and are extremely useful both to our legal team and Sasfin Bank's management in keeping track of our matters,” notes Jude. This eliminated time-consuming guesswork and facilitated quick, data-driven decisions.
Beyond these benefits, Jude praised Legal Interact's commitment during and after the implementation to train staff to get the most out of the solution. Weekly training sessions quickly made the team proficient in using the platform, ensuring advanced features were not just checkboxes but tools actively driving value for the bank. “We've also identified additional features that could enhance efficiency, such as the most recent addition of a plugin in Microsoft Word documents. This will allow us to access the solution from Word and will remove the need to manually upload documents to Contract Corridor.”
Charting the next frontier
With the system already proving its value, Sasfin Bank's legal team has their sights set on the future. They're exploring how the bank's other departments might leverage Contract Corridor's features, given its industry-agnostic capabilities. “Because Contract Corridor passed all of our security measures and met ISO and compliance requirements, we can extend it beyond the legal department to include procurement, human resources, finance, and governance,” Jude states.
Aside from expanding use cases, Jude is keen on optimising data reporting. “I expect that the dashboards will greatly assist the management team with reporting in committees and audits.”
“The traditional attorney's office is changing; instead of piles of physical documents and a diary, it's becoming digital. While transformation requires perseverance, it's both rewarding and essential for us moving forward.”
Nicole Jude, Senior Legal Adviser, Sasfin Bank
See Contract Corridor in action
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