"Working with Lexoo is like working with a colleague. They really are an extension of the in-house team.”
Commercial contract review
Trustpilot
Tom Goodman
Director Commercial Legal
Trustpilot’s in-house legal team reduces contract turnaround times by 87%.
Company
Trustpilot
Trustpilot is a consumer review website which hosts reviews of businesses worldwide. Nearly one million new reviews are posted each month.
Employees
900+
Problem: risk of becoming a bottleneck
Industry
SaaS
- Bottleneck: Trustpilot’s in-house legal team was at risk of becoming a bottleneck to the business on the business-as-usual (BAU) commercial contract work, including SaaS agreements, recruitment contracts and other vendor agreements. The backlog was delaying the company’s ability to get going with new SaaS tools and service providers.
- No time for strategic work: the BAU work was getting in the way of progressing strategic work which the in-house team is uniquely placed to handle.
In addition, any solution would need to provide:
- rapid turnaround times;
- competitive fixed fees as opposed to hourly rates; and
- no rework: Trustpilot wanted to avoid having to spend time answering questions or reworking anything.
Location
London, United Kingdom
"Lexoo has a team of excellent, commercially-minded lawyers who know exactly when to escalate issues and put things on our radar, all the while without flooding us with more work!”
Lexoo’s solution
Get started immediately: From day 1, Trustpilot’s team members could email the contracts to Lexoo. Lexoo’s team of in-house lawyers then negotiated the agreements end-to-end.
No rework due to playbook: Lexoo uses its own ‘battle-tested’ detailed playbook to review and negotiate contracts. Trustpilot could add any preferences specific to its organisation. The playbook operates as a checklist so nothing is forgotten but also contains detailed dynamic fallback positions, which adjust depending on the risk profile of the contract. This meant that Trustpilot was confident the contracts would be negotiated in a commercial yet responsible way without them needing to check.
“Lexoo was quick to understand our business, map out internal processes and develop a playbook. We immediately felt relieved, trusted the quality and consistency of their work, and were able to focus on strategic work”.
Outcomes
- Reduced average turnaround time from 15 to under 2 business days (an 87% drop)
- No more backlog: the backlog of contracts was dealt with in 2 weeks.
- In-house team gained over 80 hours per month to focus on strategic work: Truspilot’s BAU work is now off their plate for good (no rework, escalations, limited calls that they need to join).
- Contracting Data: Lexoo logs all contracting data on an ongoing basis, including contract value, indemnities, liability caps etc. This has enabled Trustpilot to have a deep understanding of what is ‘market’.
- Reducing ‘time-to-close’: Lexoo uses the contracting data as well as ‘process maps’ to run weekly continuous improvement cycles to: (i) continue to speed up turnaround times by spotting and resolving bottleneck; and (ii) Reduce the number of negotiation cycles and thereby reduce the ‘time-to-close’.
- Scaling: When their contract volume increased, Trustpilot could scale the engagement with Lexoo up.
“There was no need to chase and rework. Lexoo understood our business, refined the playbook and ran continuous improvement processes”
Does your business need help reviewing contracts?
We can negotiate your commercial agreements end-to-end for a fixed fee, and build a detailed playbook to make the process more efficient, and scalable now and into the future.
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If you could use a hand with your commercial contracts or with a multi-country project leave us a message and we’ll get back to you asap (usually same day!)
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