# A different kind of year 🤔
We started 2020 with grand plans here at Donna. Soon to find out that it would turn out to be a year of pivots and adapting. One of the things we look forward to most is meeting with you and hearing your feedback and inspiring stories and it was gutting not being able to do that in person this year. Still over 160 of you joined us in our onboarding calls this year, and your stories and suggestions really helped inspire and shape our year. 

# The new online reality 💻
Home working became the new reality in March and brought with it its own challenges. Juggling a home office without key equipment like a printer, quickly became the new norm for many of you. The thought of completing a 100-page contract review completely on screen was daunting. Many of you decided to take us up on our ‘[work from home offer](https://www.donna.legal/blog/covid-19-response-helping-you-go-from-paper-to-screen)’ and made the switch to a digital sidekick. Thank you 💝

Moving rapidly online, meant that we had to embrace Zoom or similar platforms for staying in touch with colleagues, clients and even family members. Yet despite all the calls, it was hard to recreate the buzz that you get from spontaneous office conversations. Being tech curious our team experimented with a number of different tools this year, and we wanted to share a few of our favourites with you. [Tandem](https://tandem.chat/) & [Collabify](https://collabify.app/) - really helped us get into the flow of spontaneous virtual working.

# A giant leap for legal 🎿
Innovation did not stop this year, in fact it jumped forward tenfold in the legal industry. Moving to the cloud, better knowledge management systems, hardware upgrades we’re just a few of the big projects you told us about. Many of you also gave us the opportunity to run Donna pilots with your firms this year. We’ve collected [all our learnings](https://www.donna.legal/blog/pilot-projects-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly) and hope these are a source of inspiration to you, when you’re next evaluating a new piece of legal tech. 

# Feedback that made us melt 🥰
In a year that’s mostly described as doom and gloom, you surprised us with some really positive feedback. You really enjoyed the addition of the [quick fix options](https://changelog.donna.legal/pain-free-cross-references-467ogo) and the noticeable [speed improvements](https://changelog.donna.legal/from-0-to-100-pages-in-5-seconds-4D6qZi) when analysing larger documents. But the number one thing we continued to hear from you is how usable Donna is following our big [suggestions makeover](https://announcekit.app/dashboard/post/121912/edit). Thank you! It melted our hearts hearing this. 

# Looking forward to 2021 🎇
And we’re excited to announce that we are expanding our design/UX team this January. Making legal tech software that is useable by everyone including the biggest skeptics in your firm, is our number one goal. So you can expect an even more intuitive Donna experience from the moment you download right through to tracking team adoption on our new dashboard.

As we head into the new year, the primary focus for us will be making sure that any ‘suggestion’ mistakes are genuine edge cases that rarely come up. You should already see a big difference in January, when we launch the second part of Donna’s AI update to cross-references, dates, and amounts. Which means finally those annoying cross-reference suggestions will be a thing of the past. We'll continue to refine edge cases throughout the year, so please help us train Donna’s brain by sharing any anomalies you see via our in-app chat.

And finally the big update that we’re most excited to reveal in 2021 will be the launch of Donna’s snippet / clause library. When it comes to contract drafting, so many of you have those favourite clauses that have been perfected over the years. Or even client-specific text that you end up searching for over and over. The goal will be to make sure that these are as easy to insert into your document as one of Donna's cross-references. So stay tuned for more details.  

# Farewell 2020 👋
As this unusual year finally comes to an end, now is the time to reflect and celebrate all of your achievements, big and small. You’ve persevered, adapted and connected online in a way that most of us never even imagined back in January. For this we salute you.

From all of us here at Donna.  


A giant leap for lawyerkind

2020 a year like no other

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Why are we talking about pilot projects? Because in legal technology, sadly a lot of software is bought but often not used. Which is why we recommend that firms try before they buy. We do this by encouraging law firms to take part in a 4-week structured pilot programme with us, so their teams can get a good sense if Donna is the right tool for them. 

Today we want to share with you our best tips on how you can run successful pilots and evaluate software like a pro. 

But first, does this sound familiar?

> John, one of our M&A lawyers has expressed a very specific problem and it looks like your tool could be a good solution. Can we do a 6-month pilot with all our lawyers? We will just need all our partners to sign off on it. By the way can you do onsite deployments? Oh, and John won’t actually be able to join. He's currently working on another project for the next few months.

It might seem obvious, but we've heard this one plenty of times. Which is why we've collected these tips for you to try before you buy your next piece of software. We’ve even arranged them into an easy to remember mnemonic, PILOT (People, Incentives, Limit Scope, Outcomes and Transparency).

# People are the engine 🏋️‍♀️
People are the single biggest factor in the success of your pilot. Are you picking participants or are users self-volunteering? There’s a big difference in results between the two. We usually see the best outcomes when users self-volunteer, because they are normally more passionate about a problem. Funnily enough when you let users self-volunteer you might also be surprised to see assistants, paralegals and others ready to engage and be really valuable pilot participants. So how do you get your staff to volunteer? Have the vendor record a 1-2 minute pitch video, and share it across your firm. We also sometimes combine this with a very short (3 question) survey to get the best results.

Once you have your volunteers ready, make sure that they are clearly given the status of a pilot user and that they have the time to commit to test the product. We do this by exclusively excluding anyone who is unable to complete a short onboarding call with us in the first week of the pilot. If someone is unable to dedicate 15 minutes on a call, then they probably don’t have the capacity to really test out a tool and provide valuable feedback that will help you evaluate the product.

# Incentives are the fuel ⛽
If you want your firm to be more innovative, look at what systemic incentives might be working against it. One example we see is with IT teams, who are often incentivised by their response time to support tickets. In this case bringing in a new tool might actually have a negative impact on their metrics. The same goes with your lawyers, are there incentives beyond the billable hour that encourage innovation? Remember incentives don’t always have to be monetary - we’ve seen firms send their IT staff to industry conferences or allow their lawyers to work on a pro bono case, just as a few examples.

# Limit the scope 📅
The goal of the pilot is to learn, not to implement a solution, that comes later, if ever. That’s why we encourage a 4-week pilot program. We usually, spend the first week getting everyone onboard, week two and three are about really testing the tool and the final week is to provide feedback. 

You can also make it easier for your team to test without having to worry about oversharing confidential information. Spend some time cleaning up some sample documents and distributing them as test documents. This is a great way to enable anyone really to go out and try new tools. 

It's better to spend a few weeks playing around with 3 different products, then it is to spend 6 months piloting a single product that you may not even end up using. You’ll rarely find that single unicorn solution that solves everyone's problems. Instead focus on smaller solutions that solve someone's problems.

# Outcomes that are trackable 📝
If you want to see a real impact from your pilot, figure out what you want to measure before you start, because what gets measured gets managed. At a minimum you should at least track usage during the pilot. But a real tangible outcome might look something like “those who used this product for more than 5 hours a week saw a 2% improvement in their utilisation rate’. Now 2% might seem small but think about this compounded over the course of the year and across an entire department. And remember big vendor promises often fall short.

# Transparency is key 👓
Transparency matters both when it comes to the vendor and with your own team. The great thing about software today is that you can see all sorts of metrics. Starting with which features are used right down to who is using them. So, hold your vendors accountable and insist that they share these key usage metrics with you. 

Don’t forget to encourage transparency within your team. This will help to encourage innovation in the long run. Make sure you are sharing key metrics and learnings from a pilot, especially when something goes wrong. Involve your team in decisions big and small, you might be pleasantly surprised with the suggestions and outcomes. 

We hope you get a chance to read this before you start evaluating the next new legal tech tool. So you can be confident in the success of your trial and that you’ve made the right decision.


Dog in the cockpit of a plane

Pilot projects the good, the bad and the ugly

# Why does Donna only cost me $25/month?

Every so often I have a chat conversation with someone on our website that looks a bit like this:

> “I would like to double check your pricing, is Donna only $25 / month?  Are there any other hidden fees or extras costs?”

> “You read it right! Donna is $25 / month if you’re a single user and $35 / month per active user if you’re a team. There are no other hidden fees”

> “So why is a competing product charging me more than twice the amount”

> “Yes, sorry about that”

> “So, your software just doesn’t have the same features, right?’

> “Actually, it’s pretty extensive, why don’t you sign-up to our 14-day free trial and test out Donna to see if it works for you.” 🤷‍

# Why we price Donna the way we do…

##  🛑 Let’s stop the ‘enterprise-ness’ of legal software

For too long the legal industry has been led by enterprise-grade software. That’s why you’re stuck using that tool that looks like MS Word from the 90’s. We believe that legal tech software should look, work and cost like the consumer apps we use in our daily lives.

Forget that expensive sales team, leaving you countless voicemails and demanding endless meetings for 9 months. We want to set the expectation that free trials are the norm in our industry and that every lawyer should be able to test software for themselves. Making software so prohibitively expensive that it needs to go past your CFO for sign-off only puts a limit on innovation. The best innovation comes from self-realisation, when your lawyers test tools and figure out what works for them.

That’s why I get equally excited when I see someone sign-up to Donna using their gmail address. It tells me they are trying out our tool in their own time. Why should we put up any more barriers. Often, we’ll even see these users pay out of their own pocket because they don’t want the hassle of going through countless approvals and purchasing. If this is you - you’re our hero! Don’t hesitate to reach out, and let us know, we’ll help you find a way to bring Donna into your organisation.

## 🏃‍♂️ Pay for active users, what is that?

We have a similar ‘no barrier’ approach with our team and enterprise users, for whom we offer ‘pay for active user’ pricing. 

How does it work? You pay for those who use Donna in that given month. Because not all software is always adopted by all your lawyers straight away, some users take a bit more time to get onboard. We don’t want to penalise your business for your team’s inclination to adopt new technology. This model isn’t often seen in legal tech, but it’s worked in plenty of other industries by removing a common barrier to adoption.

Plus it gives you added flexibility, because your business is not static. Sometimes you have a slow month, sometimes team members go on sabbaticals and sometimes the dog just ate your contract. 😉 It works because it incentivises us as a company to build great legal software that your lawyers will use, and it doesn’t stop you from adopting great legal software because you need to figure out who will use it. It’s a different approach but it’s not rocket science.

# Want to find out more?

Whether you’re running a small law firm or you’re an associate working for big law, kicking yourself, because the software you're using is too clunky. 

Now there's something you can do about it. Just try [Donna](https://my.donna.legal/).


Every doggies has its price

Every doggie has its price

Why we price Donna the way we do…

# How to use Quick Parts to save frequently used text

Do you have boilerplate text that you constantly reuse in certain legal contracts or documents? Text like a favourite or client specific clause or even an eSignature. To stop you searching and copying/pasting repeatable information, you can use the Quick Parts feature in Microsoft Word. 

Quick parts or Autotext as it's sometimes referred to, allows you to save a frequently used piece of text or image, so you can quickly insert it in any new document that you’re creating. It's a great time saver that stops you from searching through the contract management system, time after time for that specific clause or text. 

# How to save text or an image in Quick Parts

1. Select the piece of text or image that you would like to save to Quick Parts
2. Find __‘Quick Parts’__ on the __'Insert tab'__ and click on it
3. Click on the __‘Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery’__
4. Name the piece of text or image you want to save so you can easily recall it
5. Create a new category so you can easily group favourite text together
6. Select __‘Ok’__

# How to insert Quick Part text into your legal document

1. Find __‘Quick Parts’__ on the Insert tab and click on it
2. You should see all your saved text populated
3. Just click on the specific text that you want to insert into your legal document  

You can also follow along with our video guide.

<div style="text-align:center; margin-bottom: 2rem;">
  <iframe style="margin:auto" src="https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/cafjzvgm0d" title="Word Hacks - How to use Quick Parts in Word Video" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen width="640" height="360"></iframe>
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# Creative uses of Quick Parts for lawyers

- Favourite or client specific clauses
- eSignatures or an entire signature block
- Requests for depositions
- Discovery letters
- Affidavits 
- Headers (with your firm's logo)


Go ahead build your own personalised library of your most used legal content so you don’t have to waste anymore time those drafting legal documents.

If you're looking for more Word time saving tips, take a look our post - [How to create shortcuts for all your legal symbols.](https://www.donna.legal/blog/insert-legal-symbols-into-your-word-documents "How to insert legal symbols into your Word documents")


Laptop with Word Open - Green

Laptop with Word Open Green

How to use Quick Parts to add frequently used text in Word documents

Whether it's for a brief or a long legal contract sometimes you’ll need to add in a table of contents (TOC) into your documents. If you have used Styles to build the headings in your document then follow along with the steps below to set up a TOC in just a few clicks. If you haven’t worked with Styles previously then you’ll first need to set up Heading Styles in your document. Take a look at our post '[How to use Word Styles in your legal documents](https://www.donna.legal/blog/how-to-use-word-styles-in-your-legal-documents "How to use Word Styles in your legal documents")'.

# If your Heading Styles are already setup

1. Find the __'References'__ tab 
2. Click on the __'Table of Contents'__ 
3. Select one of the __'Automatic Options'__ if you want to use the default Word TOC formatting
4. Alternatively, choose to create a custom FTOC

Or follow along with our video as we walk you through it step by step.

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  <iframe style="margin:auto" src="https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/9d5qp0n0fn" title="Word Hacks - How to quickly add a table of contents into your Word document Video" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen width="640" height="360"></iframe>
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We recommend creating a custom TOC, if you would like to edit any of the below items: 

- The number of heading levels that appear in your TOC (the default is Headings 1-3).
- The tab leader. The default is the dot, but you can use dashes, lines or nothing at all. 
- If you would like to hyperlink your headings so that they are easily clickable. 
- The formatting of page numbers. 

# Amending your TOC
If you spot a mistake in your TOC, don't make the fix directly in your TOC. Otherwise when you update the TOC all your changes will be lost. Make sure to make the correction to the Headings in your document. 

Before you send out your document, just make sure that your TOC is updated. Click within the TOC and an __'Update the TOC'__ button should appear. Make sure to update the entire table.


If you enjoyed this Word hack? Take a look at our other time savings tips for Word.



Laptop with Word on the screen yellow

How to quickly add a table of contents into your legal documents

# How to use Word Styles in your legal documents? 

If you’re a lawyer that hasn’t used Word Styles before, or you’re just looking to brush up, then you’ve come to the right place. 

Styles are a great time saver and a quick way to apply major formatting changes throughout your entire document. Instead of using the 'paint format' button to individually edit each heading, you can use preset Styles to make formatting changes in your document with just a few clicks. Which means, finally all your Heading 1, Heading 2 text will be consistent and all it takes is a few clicks of a button. 

And if your document requires a table of contents (TOC), using Styles will allow you to auto populate a TOC in a few seconds.

# Where to find Styles in Word?

In most versions of Word since 2007, you’ll see a Quick Styles gallery in your Home tab. Use the little downward arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Quick Styles gallery to expand the Styles pane, so you can see all the predefined Style options available in Microsoft Word. Depending on the template you have open, you will either see Word's default Styles, which you'll recognise by the navy Heading 1, like below. Alternatively your template may have its own preset Styles. 

![Quick Styles Gallery in Word](//images.ctfassets.net/uuashwub9umv/1mu4ItpH5Iig2EzTHMMlSp/5946a96e6258b90b1c4f26f51f84341b/Quick_Styles_Gallery_1.png)



# How to apply Styles? 

Chances are if you’re using a firm wide template, you may already have predefined Styles set up in your legal document. If this is the case you can start by highlighting the piece of text you want to format, like a heading and applying an existing Style from the Quick Styles gallery. Watch our video to see where to find Styles in Word and how to apply them.

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  <iframe style="margin:auto" src="https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/qajptuu4dv" title="Word Styles - How to work with Styles Video" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen width="640" height="360"></iframe>
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# How to modify existing Styles?

Let's say you’ve just been on a legal design course and you’ve decided to make some format changes to some of your existing legal documents. In this case you would want to open up an existing document and modify the preset Styles. Follow these steps or follow along with our video.

1. In your Quick Styles Gallery find the Style you want to modify
2. Right click and select __'Modify'__
3. Make your formatting changes
4. Choose between saving __'Only in this Document'__ or for __'New documents based on this template'__
5.  Click __'OK'__

<div style="text-align:center; margin-bottom: 2rem;">
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# How to create new Styles?

Before you create your own Style format, take a minute to read through these different Style selection options below that are available for you to choose between. 

__'Style type'__ asks you to choose the elements you want to format.

- The Character option will only allow you to make text formatting changes.
- The Paragraph option will let you format text, plus indentations, line spacing and more.
- You can also use Styles to recreate perfectly formatted tables and lists.

__'Style based on'__ lets you choose an existing style as a base starting point. It's a nice shortcut if you just want to make a few tweaks to an existing Style. 

__'Style for following paragraph'__ lets you choose the style for the following paragraph, great for Q&A or similar documents with alternating styles types.

Now you're ready to create your own Styles.

1. Find the arrow icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the Quick Styles Gallery or you can also use the shortcut (Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S)
2. Select '__Create new Style'__
3. Enter in the name for your new Style
4. Select your __'Style type'__
5. Choose an option for __'Style based on'__ if you want to use an existing style as your base
6. Make your formatting changes
7. Don't forget to tick the checkbox to add the new Style to the Quick Style Gallery
8.  Specify whether you want to apply your new Style to your current document or others like it.
9.  Click __'OK'__

<div style="text-align:center; margin-bottom: 2rem;">
  <iframe style="margin:auto" src="https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/1hm7dennvo" title="Word Styles - How to create your own Styles Video" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen width="640" height="360"></iframe>
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# How to use Styles to create numbered headings?

Using numbered headings in MS Word can get frustrating, especially if you have more than one type of numbered list in your document. There’s a better way of adding in numbering into your headings, that's using Styles. Follow these steps or watch our video to see how it's done.

1. Select your heading
2. Click __Modify Style__
3. Click the __Format__ button in the bottom left-hand corner
4. From the drop-down menu select __Numbering__
5. Choose an existing format or create your own __Define New Number Format__
6. Click __Ok__

<div style="text-align:center; margin-bottom: 2rem;">
  <iframe style="margin:auto" src="https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/n25a4fhohh" title="Word Styles - How to use Styles to add numbered headings Video" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen width="640" height="360"></iframe>
  <script src="https://fast.wistia.net/assets/external/E-v1.js" async></script>
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Now that you’ve gotten a hang of Styles you can even use them to create a quick Table of Contents. Stay tuned for our next hack coming soon.  








Laptop with Word Logo Blue Background

How to use Word Styles in your legal documents

# How to quickly add legal symbols in Word 

As a lawyer, you probably frequently use legal symbols when drafting legal documents. But stopping to search and insert a legal symbol with your mouse can be disruptive when you’re right in the middle of drafting a document. Did you know you can stay in the flow with the help of keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys). 

We’ve put together a quick guide that you can refer to for all the standard legal key shortcuts. 

If you're not a fan of memorising lots of Windows or Mac shortcuts, you can also set up your own or hack Word's Autocorrect feature, to help you input symbols in just a few steps. Make sure to read on below or watch the 'how-to' video.

# The standard legal symbol shortcuts


| Symbol    | Used for   | Windows    | MAC Shortcut
| ----------| ---------- | ---------- | ---------- |
|__ §   __      | Section (Silcrow)| Alt + 0167     | Option + 6      |
|   __¶__     | Paragraph (Pilcrow) | Alt + 20       | Option + 7       |
|   __©__     | Copyright       | Alt + 0169      | Option + 1       |
|  __®__      | Registered Trademark       | Alt + 0174      | Option + R       |
|   __™__     | Trademark       | Alt + 0153      | Option + 2      |
|  __—__     | Em Dash       | Alt + 0151     | Shift + Option + Minus        |
|    __–__    | En Dash       | Alt + 0150      | Option + Minus      |
|   __Π__     | Plaintiff (Pi)       | Alt + 227       | Option + P       |
| __Δ__       | Defendant (Delta)       | Alt + 30       | Option + J       |


# How to customise your own shortcuts

You can easily customise your own shortcuts in Word. Select the legal symbols that you use most frequently and follow these steps to setup your own shortcuts or watch our video to see how it's done.

1. Find '__Insert Ω Symbol__' in the Insert tab
2. Click on '__Ω More Symbols__'
3. Locate the legal symbol you want to create the shortcut for
4. Press the '__Shortcut__' key
5. Type your shortcut in the ‘__Press New Shortcut Key__’ box
6. Click '__Assign__'
7. Click '__Close__'

<div style="text-align:center; margin-bottom: 2rem;">
  <iframe style="margin:auto" src="https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/a0j1aku5iu" title="Legal Symbols - How to create easy to remember keyboard shortcuts for adding in legal symbols Video" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen width="640" height="360"></iframe>
  <script src="https://fast.wistia.net/assets/external/E-v1.js" async></script>
</div>

# Use autocorrect to add the legal symbol for you

Instead of assigning shortcut keys for each legal symbol, you can also hack autocorrect to insert your legal symbols for you by assigning a quick phrase to each symbol. In our video example, we will assign the word 'sects' to autocorrect to the section symbol.

Follow these steps to create your own autocorrect shortcuts:

1. Find '__Insert Ω Symbol__' in the Insert tab
2. Click on '__Ω More Symbols__'
3. Locate the legal symbol you want to create the shortcut for
4. Press the '__AutoCorrect__' key
5. In the replace box enter in the letters to assign to your legal symbol
6. Click '__Add__'
7. Click '__OK__'

Now type your legal symbol letters, hit the spacebar and AutoCorrect will add the symbol into your Word document.

<div style="text-align:center; margin-bottom: 2rem;">
  <iframe style="margin:auto" src="https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/vir72vdp5x" title="Legal Symbols - How to use AutoCorrect to quickly insert legal symbols Video" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen width="640" height="360"></iframe>
  <script src="https://fast.wistia.net/assets/external/E-v1.js" async></script>
</div>

If you’ve tried all of these tips but you’re still not convinced then we can also recommend the [LegalBoard](https://legalboards.myshopify.com/), a keyboard specifically designed for lawyers. 




How to quickly insert legal symbols into your Word documents

# Can 20 hours make a difference in a year?
The answer is yes! Last year, we found out from the [Clio Legal Trends](https://www.clio.com/resources/legal-trends/2019-report/read-online/) report that fast growing law firms are increasing their revenues by 20-30% every year. How? It all comes down to finding an extra __10-15 minutes per day__ to spend on valuable work. Those extra minutes a day may feel insignificant but over the course of the entire year, the compound effect is huge.

It turns out spending just an extra hour per week on valuable work adds up. Even when, practice area, firm size and an increase in staff were accounted for, it boiled down to utilisation. Utilisation simply measures how many hours a lawyer puts into billable work each day. At the average firm this works out to roughly 2.5 hours a day. Ten minutes a day seems simple enough, but practically how do you find them? Lawyers are some of the busiest people we know.

# Ground Rule 1: What gets measured gets managed
The solution is to figure out how you’re spending your time. Most of us already have a “good sense” of how we divide our time. But Peter Drucker’s 70-year-old adage “what gets measured gets managed” takes it one step further, because what is measured can also be improved. 

__Step 1.__ Start tracking what a typical work day and work week looks like for you. This will give you a better sense of the tasks that are taking up your work day. You can try using a journal, spreadsheet or even a browser extension tool like [Toggle](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/toggl-button-productivity/oejgccbfbmkkpaidnkphaiaecficdnfn) (free for Chrome) that prompts you to fill in details every time you start a new task. At the end of the week, set aside some time to review and collect your learnings. Divide all your activities into core areas: client work, administrative tasks, meetings, business development, management time and anything else.

__Step 2.__ Once your time is categorised, you'll be to pinpoint time-wasters that are stopping you from spending an extra 10-15 minutes a day on valuable work. Time wasters come in different forms and sizes. They can be administrative, they can come from organisational drag, like too many unnecessary meetings or a really manual expense process. Also be weary of any activities where you completely lost all sense of time, when something that should have taken a few minutes took an hour or more.

Having identified a realistic list of time wasters, you can commit to tackling and improving them over time, either through changes in behaviour, processes or tools. 

# Ground Rule 2: Use single-tasking and compounding
Our advice is, always tackle one task at a time, otherwise known as the science of single-tasking. You’re not going to be able to fix all your time wasting problems in the first week. Neuroscience confirms this, multi-tasking may seem fun and productive, but it actually has the opposite effect. “Attempting to do two challenging tasks at once will lead to a drain in productivity” points out [Hal Pashler](https://qz.com/722661/neuroscientists-say-multitasking-literally-drains-the-energy-reserves-of-your-brain/), psychology professor at UC San Diego. By focusing on fixing one task, you’ll become fully engaged in figuring out how to solve that problem. You’ll be an expert in how to complete that task a lot more efficiently which also means you’ll be able to solve the problem quicker and move on to fixing the next time-waster. Over the course of the year, these mini fixes and time savers will start to compound to an extra 1-2 hours a week. 

Similar to the Tesla approach, which we’re big fans of. Rather than taking on one long massive rebuild, Tesla optimises its production line, by making constant tweaks all the time. Those small tweaks compound over time to a lot of innovation. Or in your case, this could be time for more valuable and meaningful work.

# Ground Rule 3: Make technology work for you
We’ve all seen the profound impact that technology can have. But how come you are still stuck with that stupid time-reporting app, built by consultants in the 80’s, which crashes if you use a “.” instead of a decimal? Well, that’s because the legal industry traditionally has been a typical enterprise software market.

The “enterprise-ness” of software used to imply that it was safer and better supported by the company behind it. However the last few decades, the rise of software-as-a-service, and an explosion of consumer tech means that even free open-source projects can have resources, support and security teams farr beyond an “enterprise” focussed company. The rise of consumer tech has pushed people’s expectations of what good software looks like and it’s been slowly changing the enterprise landscape as well.

The availability of free-trial and freemium consumer software, is actually also shifting how employees interact with technology at work. The expectation is that software should be ergonomic, and that you should be able to test it out yourself. A lot of innovation is starting to happen from the bottom up as employees sign up, test tools and realise these tools are also very usable in the workplace. Don’t wait, instead find technology that will work with you to reduce the drag on your time, not against you.

# Practical Time Saving Recommendations
Our team at Donna tries a lot of new tech each month, to help reduce the amount of manual work and mundane tasks we do. That’s why we wanted to share some of our top time saving picks with you, which will help you gain back those valuable hours in 2020. Depending on your role, team size and organisation, all or some of these tools may be a good fit. But most importantly you’ll be able to give most of these a try out on your own. 

## Do you have to cope with any of these time-wasters? 

__Problem: I spend a lot of  time scrolling up and down, looking for defined terms when I’m proofreading legal contracts.__

The average legal document contains roughly 50 terms per document, so if you’re reviewing 3 documents per week that can add up to 11 hours of scrolling a year. Try [Donna](https://www.donna.legal/) (free 30 day trial) and endless scrolling and looking for defined terms will be a thing of the past. Donna’s handy pop-ups bring up defined terms and definitions right in context as you’re reading through your document. Plus Donna will also identify over a hundred typical drafting mistakes that are easy for the human eye to miss and handy suggestion pop-ups which you can fix or ignore as you go. Donna is available as a Microsoft Word add-in that installs within seconds.

__Problem: Every Wednesday I spend 15 minutes looking for our Friday meeting notes to figure out which clients I should be focusing on this week.__

Try [Otter.ai](https://otter.ai) (free 600 minutes per month), it transcribes meeting notes automatically for you. It records the conversation or meeting, transcribes it instantly and lets you share the notes with colleagues so they can leave their comments or keep track of follow-up actions. Plus you can easily search transcriptions, so you don’t have to waste any more time leafing through your notes. Otter is available as a mobile app, or in your desktop browser. 

__Problem: Ironically, I spend too much time figuring out how much time I spent this week on billable work. __

Try [Timely](https://timelyapp.com/) (14 day free trial). Timely sits in the background and records every activity for you, so you don’t need to spend that hour trying to figure out how you managed your time this week. It's all summarised in a handy dashboard, so you can see time spent on a particular client or how much time you spend on billable work in a week. It integrates with most of the tools that lawyers use and will only interrupt you to describe the new task you are working on. Timely is available on most devices including mobile.

__Problem: I visit about 20 external clients a week and often spend Saturday morning looking for all the train receipts and putting them into a spreadsheet.__

You need a [Pleo](https://www.pleo.io/) company card. (Give your accounts team a heads up about their free trial). With Pleo you get a company card and real-time notifications every time you make a purchase, which reminds you to take a snapshot of the receipt. All your spending is then automatically categorised and sent directly to your finance team, so you don’t have to worry about filling in detailed expense sheets at the end of the month. Pleo is also available on mobile app so you can keep track of things on the go.

__Problem: I’m constantly getting distracted by colleagues asking me where to find a specific template in our DMS. __

Try [Notion](https://www.notion.so/) (test it out for free), it's an easy to use Wiki for you and your work colleagues.  It's a time saver because everything is in one place, so you don’t have to crawl through folders, emails and remember where those case commentaries live. And it lets you collaborate on spreadsheets, databases, notes, calendars and to do lists. It can act as a project planner and tracker and so much more. It probably gets rid of 3-5 different apps that you were using to do each individual task. Notion is available as a desktop and mobile app.

Of course these are just some examples. The goal shouldn’t be to take this list of tools but to really spend some time to notice the small things that are taking up your time. Seemingly insignificant moments can add up to a significant amount of time in the course of the year. Luckily it works both ways. So tackle one task at a time, become a time-efficient pro in that task, and move on to the next time waster. Don’t forget to figure out what valuable work you will focus on in your new found time. Set clear goals for yourself, either in monthly or quarterly intervals and stick to these timescales. Get ready to feel an amazing sense of achievement!


go-sign-with-alarm-clock-as-o-and-copy-space-52N8FB8

Gain back 20 Hours

How to find an extra 20 hours in 2020?

# We have some big news to share today

We’ve raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Christoph Janz at **[Point Nine Capital](http://www.pointninecap.com/)** to support our mission of building Donna, our legal AI (Assistive Intelligence) that helps with the tedious parts of writing and reading legal contracts and makes it much more fun and productive.

![Donna Founders](//images.ctfassets.net/uuashwub9umv/1BvAtFfR7EZpTOoJ8cHaKa/97307ee74b52875bdf790173da19265a/8ba1ae26.jpeg)

We’re really excited to have the backing of Point Nine as we move into the next phase of our growth. The team’s experience with investments in companies like Typeform, Zendesk and many other SaaS and consumer based companies is invaluable to us. They really understand that we are building a consumer friendly app for lawyers and not just another hard-to-adopt enterprise tool. We’re also excited to have Jack Newton from Clio (the law-practice management software company) onboard - Jack knows the ins-and-outs of the industry like no one else and they similarly build a very end-user focussed product. A strategy that seems to be working as they also raised $250 million in funding earlier this year.

We started Donna 2 years ago when we realised that lawyers spend a lot of time on robot-like tasks - proofreading, formatting documents and pouring through hundreds of pages looking for tiny details. As developers this was a problem we could relate to. Whether it's spending hours pouring through code or legal documents, the real value lies in the more engaging aspects of both jobs, creative problem solving. So we set out to build an AI assistant that could free up lawyers to focus their time on the ‘more human’ aspects of their jobs.

The debate around AI is largely polarising in the legal sphere. Our aim is to advocate and educate lawyers about the potential for AI to replace **‘the robot within the lawyer’**. We’re starting by recoining AI as **Assistive Intelligence**. Technology and tools that can be used for enhancing and complementing skill sets rather than replacing them. Because Assistive Intelligence tools like Donna still rely on the user's intuition and experience to make a judgement. Their benefit lies in accessing and reading data, identifying patterns and providing concise information at exactly the right time. Allowing lawyers to make more informed and quicker decisions. And instead of spending hours checking every comma we allow for more time to spend on work that a client will actually perceive as added value helping build a stronger relationship.

# So what’s next for Donna?

Our current focus is to “Underpromise and Overdeliver”. This means simplifying the tool in a couple of ways for new users and making tremendous improvements to Donna’s ability to understand contracts.

We’re aware that Donna can make some mistakes. That’s why behind the scenes we’ve been working on a new neural network that not only has learned to mimic the rules we programmed but also how to apply those rules in edge cases. When this new engine is rolled out in the coming weeks our goal is to make sure that if Donna does make a mistake it should not feel like an obvious mistake to the user.

We’re also going to be investing a lot of resources in you, our users. We’ve already started with 1-on-1 onboarding calls to help new users get started. But we really want you to succeed (not just with Donna) and so we’ll be expanding our customer success team. With the idea to help experienced users adopt some of Donna’s more powerful features into advanced workflows. Whilst firmly standing by our business model where you only pay for monthly active users.

Later this year we’ll also be adding more multi-user features that will link your Donna to your colleagues. This will allow Donna to keep track of frequently used snippets and make that information accessible in a convenient way for others. Inspired by many of you, who said that someone at your firm might have already drafted a great definition for a particular client that does exactly what you need.

And finally we’re also looking at expanding to both more languages and platforms. Although Microsoft Word covers a lot of use cases we’re always looking for new opportunities to have an impact. We see a big push within organisations to move to the cloud and currently Microsoft’s offering in this area isn’t very strong. Office Online lacks a lot of the features used by lawyers every day and as such we’re increasingly seeing users adopt Google Docs and Apple products into their workflows.

These are really exciting times ahead of us. We cannot thank our users enough for having shown so much passion and excitement since the very early iterations of the product. The money we raised will continue to make Donna a great partner to have by your side. We’re looking forward to sharing more of our journey with you, so stayed tuned.

rocket-launch

rocket-launch-cover-page

Donna raises $2.5 million seed series led by Point Nine Capital

Alex Solo is serial entrepreneur and co-founder of [Sprintlaw](https://sprintlaw.com.au/) a new type of law firm whose focus is simple: make legal services accessible and affordable for startups and small businesses. 

In the last three years Sprintlaw has grown to a team of 15, has won numerous innovation awards and is now looking to expand outside of Australia. Alex is also one of Donna’s biggest fans and today we wanted to share his story with you and find out what is fuelling growth at Sprintlaw.

**Tell us a little bit about your career in law?**

As a lawyer, I specialised in the technology space, initially acting for blue-chip clients on a range of tech, media and commercial deals. Whilst working at a top tier law firm in Australia, I got involved in advising startups and led the launch of the firm’s startup practice. Here, I had the chance to work with a lot of early-stage, disruptive online businesses. Working with these innovative businesses was inspiring, and the nimble, lean way in which they ran their businesses stood in juxtaposition to my experience working in a large corporate firm. 

**What pushed you to start your own firm?**

The in-efficiency of traditional law practice and the massive under-servicing of small businesses is really what pushed us to start Sprintlaw. 

We saw a way to re-invent the law firm model using the same sort of thinking that tech companies do - be lean, scalable, tech-forward and highly customer-centric. In doing so, we’d be able to make legal services more accessible, affordable and relatable to these startups and small businesses.  

**How does Sprintlaw operate?**

We’re a fixed-fee law firm that provides packaged legal services to startup and small businesses. We’ve also recently launched a tech-powered legal service for larger corporate businesses. Our services are provided by a team of expert lawyers, who use our custom-built automation technology, plus other efficiency tools like Donna, to provide better, faster and more affordable legal services to our clients. 
We provide all of our services online and over the phone, which allows our team to work remotely and flexibly from around Australia. 

**You keep winning innovation awards and so we’re keen to hear your view on technology? **

Technology is at the core of our business model and our culture. We use technology to cut out any task that is process driven or automatable. For every task we do, we’re always asking: is there a way that this could be automated or made more efficient using technology. This means that most of the administration that exists in traditional firms is gone, and so our firm doesn’t have any administrative staff. 

This allows our team to focus on doing the stuff technology can’t do – like empathising with clients, and helping find creative solutions to their legal problems. 

**How do you know if a tool is adoptable?**

I would say that the number one most important thing is user experience and onboarding. If I can get the team using it in under 20 minutes, whilst making it look good and fun - it's a winner.

**How did you come across Donna?**

We focus a lot on transactional work - drafting contracts like intellectual property or shareholders agreements are a big part of our workflow and preparing legal documents is one of the most time consuming aspects of our job. So we are always looking for tools to make the contract drafting process a lot more efficient. To begin with, I probably tried every single tech tool that you can imagine for contract automation or drafting efficiency - including a lot that weren’t great and didn’t save that much time. We ended up building a number of tools in-house. 

When I came across Donna about a year ago, I could immediately see it was different from the rest - the developers clearly understood the real time-sinks of drafting and proofing contracts, and had made a tool really focused on time-saving . But what really set it apart for me was the design and user experience - Donna actually feels like a non-legal tool, it is much lighter and faster than other legal tools and it is very intuitive to use, which is crucial in getting our lawyers to actually use it!

**What’s your take on the role of the lawyer and how that’s changing?**

Software is helping lawyers become much more efficient in their jobs, getting rid of routine mundane tasks. I don’t think it is replacing the need for lawyers, contrary to what lots of news headlines might suggest. I would say in the near future lawyers will be a lot more focused on the more ‘human aspects’ of the job - using their judgement and empathy - rather traditional administrative tasks, which technology can take care of.

**What would you say to any lawyers looking for a role at your firm?** 

I would say we look for lawyers who are efficient, process-orientated and tech savvy. This doesn’t mean they need to code but they should be curious about technology and enjoy using technology tools  in their day to day life.  We also look for great oral and written communicators, who are able to effectively explain and break down complex legal concepts to our clients. 

**Alex - thanks for sharing all these insights with us, we’re really inspired and wish you all the best as you and Tomoyuki Hachigo expand Sprintlaw. For any startups and small businesses looking for legal advice, [look no further](https://sprintlaw.com.au/).**


Donna user Alex Solo from Sprintlaw

Simplicity, efficiency and technology -  a new breed of law firm

Have you ever used a tool or app that was so intuitive and helpful that you couldn’t stop yourself recommending to a colleague or friend?

Traditionally technology for lawyers has been feature-rich but overly complicated. Software systems take a long time to configure and adopt within a firm, often falling short of their promises.

Now there is a new wave of startups building extremely intuitive **Assistive Intelligence** tools that will help law firms of any size thrive. By combining simplicity with a great user experience, they’re overhauling mundane everyday work tasks, with the help of AI.

**Here’s a round-up of our favourite Assistive Intelligence apps that will help you boost productivity, grow your law firm, and put a smile on your face.**

# AI powered Assistive Intelligence

## [Otter](https://otter.ai/)

**Meeting transcription, at the speed of thought.**

Whether its internal meetings, client conversations or witness interviews, Otter lets you record conversations on your phone or web browser. It instantly transcribes them, which means you can actually focus on your meeting rather than note taking.
Otter is smart enough to keep track of different speakers and lets you easily polish any mistakes it might make. Plus anytime that you do, Otter’s AI gets better at identifying your voice and vocabulary.
Transcribed notes mean you can also search conversations for keywords and share with team members and they are so much more accurate than hand notes, an added bonus for meticulous attorneys.

> What users love about it: simple to use, incredible time saver, affordable for individual users or small firms.

## [Timely](https://timelyapp.com/)

**Automated time tracking, without wasting time.**

No more manual time tracking of billable hours, Timely’s AI works it out for you. It runs in the background on your laptop and phone and tracks which apps you use and which documents you open, and silently assigns them to projects being worked on.
Timely’s beautiful interface makes it really easy to teach the AI to interpret signals to specific projects for a perfect record of your time and billables.

> What users love about it: setup-and-forget, recaptures lost time.

## [Donna](https://www.donna.legal/)

**Document drafting you’ll fall in love with again.**

Donna is an AI add-in for popular word editors like Microsoft Word that helps lawyers draft and review agreements in a fraction of the time and with a lot less mistakes.
Need to remember a defined term, no need to scroll endlessly, Donna will be ready to show you the definition. Doing a final review, let Donna highlight only relevant information. Donna identifies over 100 typical legal drafting mistakes that the human eye might have missed and provides Quickfixes where possible. Together with an intuitive interface and a friendly tone this is an app to fall in love with.

> What users love about it: no training required - start and go, incredible time saver, amazing team and chat support.

## [Intercom](https://www.intercom.com/)

**Chat app that turns website visitors into new clients.**

Intercom provides a chat button for your website that allows visitors to send you a message. Unlike a traditional “Contact Us” form you can reply instantly and catch potential leads when they are ready to speak to you. Too busy to answer, just build your own custom AI chatbot to collect all the information you need to deal with the request later.
Plus you can nudge visitors at the right time to ensure they don’t leave the page without giving you a way to follow up.

> What users love about it: brings in more business, simple enough to add to any website even if you’re not a developer.

## [Index](https://www.index.io/)

**Google alerts for your CRM.**

The easiest way to grow your bottom line is by getting more work from your existing clients. Index knows this and invest a lot of time towards nurturing those relationships. How? Index will notify you when there’s an opportunity to reconnect. Maybe a client you drafted a legal agreement for last year announced a new funding round. Or how about a quick congratulations to a client who just received a promotion.
Index finds and makes sure that you seize every opportunity to follow up with key contacts at exactly the right time, so you can stay top of mind.

> What users love about it: like Google alerts but smarter, does the reminding for you, relationship builder.

## [Pleo.io](https://www.pleo.io/en/)

**A spending tool that eliminates receipts.**

Expense tracking can turn into a nightmare every month. Pleo has completely simplified and automated the experience so your accountant no longer needs to waste countless hours chasing for receipts. Just assign Pleo’s payment cards to employees, who take photos of receipts, so you as a manager can keep track of spending in real-time. All the data is synced from Pleo to your accounting software, with just a few clicks.

> What users love about it: saves a ton of time, slick app, automates finance.

## [Clio](https://www.clio.com/uk/)

**Case management with complete flexibility.**

Solo lawyers might be able to keep track of all cases in their head. But once a firm starts to grow it’s important to ensure that cases are handled in a timely manner.
Clio makes it easy to take your firm to the next level by providing a complete and intuitive package to help you organise calendars, handle billing and invoicing, organise projects, and engage with clients. Even larger firms have started to abandon their own custom tools in favour of Clio’s proven ecosystem.

> What users love about it: complete package, great onboarding and helpful support.

Improving law firm productivity

Simple AI (Assistive Intelligence) tools with a big impact

# It all started with a Tweet…

A while back Elon Musk arrived in a spot of bother with the SEC for Tweeting that he was considering to take Tesla Motors private.

<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776" class="embedly-card" data-card-width="100%" data-card-controls="0"></a>

The SEC took offense to Elon's use of the phrase **funding secured**. The SEC felt that Elon's handshake deal with the Saudi sovereign fund that he was refuring to was not concrete. Morever they objected to Elon's method of distributing material information to shareholders via Twitter.

Although there were some questions around wether the SEC had a legitimate case ultimately Elon decided to settle with them. This settlement would include some form of oversight Elon's tweets regarding Tesla Motors. All seemed well; Tesla went back to making cars, the media went back to making a big deal out of other things.

# But Then…  

Only a few months later we find ourselves in another interesting legal battle between Elon and the SEC. All over another tweet…  

<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1098013283372589056" class="embedly-card" data-card-width="100%" data-card-controls="0"></a>

Contrary to what most people think the SEC isn’t upset that Elon musk disclosed a number he shouldn’t have. Even the SEC agrees that the tweet did not contain any “material” information. Or in other words, he didn’t say anything wrong. What they object against is that Elon didn’t get written consent from Tesla to **verify** that this tweet indeed did not contain any “material” information.  

Elon/Tesla’s argument is that there is no need for such approval as per the terms of the settlement. And that even if it did have such terms they would be unconstitutional. In other words; Elon is free to tweet whatever he wants but **if** he tweets something with material information he needs prior approval. That leaves the case of “did he tweet material information” as something for courts to interpret in the case of a dispute, not something he needs written consent for every time he wants to Tweet something.  

# So Now…

Let's start by saying that Elon already has an amazing lawyer. If you read the argument they put forth in the 30-page response to the Courts you’ll see that they present a very broad argument that tries to attack the claim from as many angles as possible.  

So obviously we’re not naive enough to think that we can provide any better argument. But when we ran the SEC settlement through [Donna]([https://donna.legal](https://donna.legal/)/) we did however find some interesting other points that weren’t mentioned in the response. 

In particular, …we found some bugs 🐛. They’re small but could present a real headache for the SEC when it comes to enforcing their idea of what the agreement should do. That is because the agreement was drafted by the SEC and as such a judge would likely apply [Contra Proferentem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem) (i.e. give Elon the most beneficial interpretation if considered reasonable).

So we thought we’d present a few of these bugs here. Partially because I wanted to show how small mistakes (even typos) can have huge legal implications, and partially because I would love feedback from the community and real lawyers.  

**Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer myself so the things I present here could be 100% wrong. So if you don’t agree, please leave a comment and we can update the post.**

But for now, download the [Settlement Agreement via this link](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4951964/SEC-Settlement-With-Elon-Musk.pdf), make a cup of tea ☕️, and continue reading 🤓

# Problem 1. They Forgot to Reference an Important Clause  

So the bulk of the SEC’s punishment is set out in Clause 5. Here they make three statements `a`, `b` and `c`. If we remove the legalese they essentially say the following:  

> `a` That Elon must step down as chairman in a certain timeframe.
> `b` that Elon must comply with Tesla’s procedures to verify the correctness of material information that he discloses  
> and  
> `c` that, and here I will quote **“certify, in writing, compliance with undertaking `a` set forth above.”**  

In the SEC’s argument, they bring forth that Tesla did not provide a written certification and evidence to support that Elon complied with Tesla’s. Elon’s lawyer argues that they were given an unreasonably short timeframe, but from these clauses, it’s not clear that they actually have to provide any such certification! Because the certification only applies to (a), which is that Elon undertakes to step down as chairman. Oops?  

# Problem 2. Elon’s Babysitting Only Applies to Written Information  

Again in Clause 5 we find another interesting detail.

> comply with all mandatory procedures implemented by Tesla, Inc. (the “Company”) regarding (i) **the oversight** of communications relating to the Company made in **any format**, including, but not limited to, posts on social media (e.g., Twitter), the Company’s website (e.g., the Company’s blog), press releases, and investor calls, and (ii) the **pre-approval** of any such **written communications** that contain, or reasonably could contain, information material to the Company or its shareholders; and  

They say that (i) Tesla must **oversee all communications**, but that Elon only needs **pre-approval for written communications**. In other words, if Elon discloses new material information in an earnings call (i.e. non written) he doesn’t actually need Tesla’s pre-approval!

So Elon…here’s a top tip: say things to reporters and get them to write it down! 😉

More than that we also see the other argument Elon’s lawyer is making, namely that Elon only requires **pre-approval for “communication that _contains_ material information”**, he doesn’t need pre-approval for communication in general. Wether communication contains material information or not isn’t for Tesla to decide, and therefore the lawyers argue, subject to Elon’s constitutional rights of free speech.  

# Problem 3. Sloppy Writing  

To me, it seems that the SEC wrote the agreement in a hurry. The nice thing about this document is that you both get to see the SEC’s original document as well as the court’s final judgment. When you compare the two you see that the Court had to correct the language in several places because it just didn’t make sense.  

For instance, the SEC wrote: 

> To preserve the deterrent effect of **the civil penalty argue that he is entitled to,** …  

Which the Court changed to: 

> To preserve the deterrent effect of the civil penalty, Defendant shall not argue that he is entitled to …  

To me, that looks like that at some point they had a list of obligations on Elon’s part that they combined into one sentence but forgot to check the grammar. In this case, the Judge’s order will prevail but this could have been a problem if there had only been an agreement.  

# Conclusion

Those were just some of the initial things we found. Again, I’m not a lawyer and we’re still running more in-depth analysis especially in the other documents surrounding this case. But I hope that it at least was interesting to some of you that wanted to dive a bit deeper than most media headlines.

oopsie

Elon Musk’s “SEC Settlement” analysed by AI 

# Try Donna the super spell-checker! 

We managed to catch a bit of time with Callum Close, a trainee litigation solicitor at London law firm Mishcon de Reya, about his experience with using Donna, the AI assistant that helps lawyers produce higher quality documents, faster. In his line of work Callum is usually the first to illustrate the complex story behind a case -  drafting lengthy witness statements and affidavits that need to stand up to layers of scrutiny, both in court and at the firm. He’s been using Donna for document review and here’s what he had to say.

# First impressions count
Callum was genuinely surprised at how straightforward it was to get started with Donna and navigate in the app.

> “I’ve not used a tool like Donna before, but you can’t really go wrong, the app is really simple to navigate. I didn’t have to sit through any training video or manuals, Donna works just the way you would expect it to. ”

# From draft to review 
A typical work week for Callum will normally involve drafting hundreds of pages of lengthy legal documents from scratch.

> “When I start a new document, I like to get into the flow of writing, that’s when it's really easy to forget the smaller details - like capitalising definitions or cross-checking references. Donna is really visual and brings to the forefront any undefined terms, names, dates or other key items I might have missed when writing in the moment.”

Which is really handy because Callum’s document will normally move up the internal chain of command at the firm. Firstly to be reviewed by an associate and later by a partner, and neither wants to spend his or her time fixing a draft for simple legal typos.

>  “This is how Donna acts as a safety net - more importantly she helps me make sure that any of my documents that go to court, look professional and are taken seriously by a judge” adds Callum.

# From paper to screen
A surprising perk we discovered, whilst observing Callum in the flow - he now feels more comfortable reviewing documents on his screen, rather then printing out copies to review by hand and re-scan. 

We’re really glad to hear that Donna not only makes reviewing documents on screen more user friendly but that she’s helping to save some paper and trees in the process too!

# Thank you for the feedback
Whilst Callum has been using Donna, he’s also been able to provide us with plenty of feedback on how to customise Donna even further for litigation work. We always appreciate hearing directly from our users on how we can make Donna even wittier and more useful. Thanks Callum! 


Callum Close Trainee Solicitor

A trainee solicitor’s tip on how to improve your legal writing

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned along the way, it’s that we have the most amazing users! By sharing some of these more intimate details I hope to paint a vision for the future of legal work (and the adoption of AI as a whole) that hopefully excites you as much as it excites us. Because we will need your help to achieve it.

But before I talk about the future, let me take a step back and explain how Donna evolved.

# A company we hated…

It all started in early 2017 when Anton Gerdes and I co-founded a company that tried to build a structured database from “fuzzy company data” (somewhat like [Diffbot](https://www.diffbot.com/) and [Clearbit](https://clearbit.com/)). We did things like crawl company websites to detect people profiles on “Team” pages, then turned this snapshot into “Company A has 3 developers and 5 salespeople” in our database. We were tracking hundreds of these signals and we indexed over 2 billion company websites.

On a technical level it was very stimulating; Anton got to apply his love for NLP (Natural Language Processing). And thanks to Google Cloud (who offered us €100.000 in server credits) I got to play around with massive server clusters. But one thing was missing, we didn’t have a clear end-user, someone that we could make happy and talk with. We wanted to build a product for people, not a data-layer. There was no “product-founder” fit. So in late 2017 we decided to look at some alternative uses for our technology, to see if we could pivot (I recently did a talk on this story for Sony, so feel free to email me if you would like to hear more). We spent an afternoon brainstorming ideas and gave ourselves a week to try them out.

# Seed of an idea…

An experience I had in my childhood/teenage years stuck with me. I wrote my first “export control & license agreement” at age 12. My mother was an IP lawyer at Shell at the time and I was desperate for a summer job. So I spent the summer turning Word Perfect agreements into Microsoft Word templates.

I was given a list of common mistakes that creep into legal agreements. Often typos occur when you create placeholders for the `[Company Name]`. For example, if the agreement was for “Amazing Inc”, you would just use find-and-replace everywhere, right? Unfortunately, because lawyers often copy-and-paste clauses from other agreements, it's easy for another entity name such as “Amazing LLC” to sneak in. Or to even leave an entirely different name such as “Mediocre GmbH” in the original agreement. When you’ve been working on a 200-page draft for weeks, it’s so easy to read over such little mistakes, but its mistakes like this can turn out to be quite costly.

Jumping back to 2017, while brainstorming ideas for our pivot. We had built a piece of technology that would extract information from the Terms & Conditions pages on company websites. T&C documents contain a lot of valuable information including the official company name and where the company operates from. But when we first used the new tool it kept extracting  incorrect company names.
Initially we thought this was a bug, but we soon realised that the Terms & Conditions actually contained the wrong company name. In fact __20% of websites on the internet__ had the wrong company name somewhere in their Terms and Conditions, simply because people had copied-and-pasted them from somewhere else and missed a name. We began to build a tool that could recognise this mistake and correct it.

Falling back on what I had learned from my summer as a law intern, we connected the idea that we could use this system to help lawyers with essentially similar mistakes. To test and validate the idea we launched a landing page that said 

> Lawyers, send us your agreements and we will highlight undefined terms.

To our surprise, we received several highly confidential documents and it became very clear that we were onto something.

# Finding our Core…

Over the next few months we got to re-use a lot of our core technology and experience in NLP and we married it with our insights and connections into the legal industry.

Donna started out with a very simple rule based system. But we quickly realised that these more traditional machine learning methods led to too many false positives. Our early users had to dig through a lot of uninteresting suggestions to find a few good pointers. It’s a bit like having an office intern that constantly runs into your office confused about how to deal with trivial matters.

We wanted to offer our users a more executive experience…

> “These are some important things for you to look at. I’ve fixed these for you, can you double check that they are correct. And these things you might want to look at if you have time. Oh and also I’ve made sure to send your client a little gift because they closed that deal you drafted for them last week”.

![Donna Gif Im Donna I know everything](//images.ctfassets.net/uuashwub9umv/4RIJN292zsvy6VgJfAASgm/ff5ff81367b0d077ed44c890c0a46d59/Donna_Gif_Im_Donna_I_know_everything.gif)

# Diving Deeper…
So we started to build deeper and more advanced neural networks to teach Donna how to prioritise and evaluate her own comments. We were essentially using the same algorithms used by Facebook and Google to optimize clickthrough on ads. But instead of using those algorithms to make you buy more things, we use them to help you be more productive.
A real breakthrough came when a few early users requested we help them to identify some very complex and subtle issues. They wanted to make sure that certain key dates happened before certain events.

Our earlier tests made it clear that this was not a trivial problem as we would have to teach Donna a lot of "common sense", something which AI is generally very bad at.

We did manage to teach Donna how to recognise important details, such as key dates. But, instead of having Donna figure out if there was a problem we used Donna's understanding of the agreement and had her create a simple overview for the lawyer in the form of a suggestion pane. And the response was overwhelmingly positive.

We realised that the future for Donna was as Assistive Intelligence. Just like the TV character I jokingly mentioned before, we could use Donna's understanding of the contract to provide lawyers with relevant information at the right time.
Although Donna is a simple tool to use, she saves a lot of time and scrolling back and forth in the document. It's absolutely magical! 

We already saw that for every 10 issues that Donna finds, 6 get accepted by the lawyer. But we also saw that by providing the lawyer with more relevant information, they themselves find another 6 issues that would have been impossible for us to find. 

**That is the true power of machine-human collaboration.**

Interestingly, the feedback we received didn't just focus on the time saved, or the improved quality...Donna genuinely made people happy!

# On a Mission…

Lawyers spend a lot of time having to do robot-like tasks such as proofreading, formatting documents and copying-pasting snippets. This is not the strategic, and engaging work that most lawyers enjoy. It's frustrating, error prone and time consuming work, that is often not billable either.
We don't think our AI will or should ever replace a lawyer. Our mission is to replace the robot within<sup>™</sup> a lawyer. By taking care of robotic tasks we free up a lawyer's valuable time to creatively design solutions and provide a better service to their clients.

Donna isn't about saving time, it's about helping lawyers invest their time into work that they find engaging that will set them apart from their competition.

We hope that one day Donna can serve as a role model for machine-human collaboration in the same way that Salesforce became an example of the SaaS business model.

# Next Steps…

Over the coming months we will continue to improve the Donna add-on for Microsoft Word. But we can’t do this without you, so please keep sharing your feedback with us. As we bring on a few new team members, we can focus on updating Donna based on your feedback more frequently.

In the slightly longer run we plan to leverage Donna's ability to read and understand agreements to bring some exciting new knowledge sharing features. We hope to make information, snippets, and best practices more accessible to everyone within your team or firm.

And of course we will be working hard on sharing Donna with as many lawyers as possible. We already have users in more than 37 countries mainly because of your recommendations! We would love your continued help in sharing Donna with colleagues or friends. If you know someone that might (or should) be interested you can always make an intro to [refer@donna.legal](mailto:refer@donna.legal) and we'll make sure to give them VIP treatment on your behalf.

**Thank you for being a part of our journey.**

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