CMS Germany rolls out ClauseBuddy firm-wide to enhance legal drafting

CMS Germany decided to roll out ClauseBuddy to all lawyers in the firm to empower their legal drafting. The decision comes after careful evaluation of a crowded landscape. We sat down with the team at CMS to discuss how and why they made their decision.

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Best value for money

Rather than adopting a solution that focuses solely on AI, CMS sought a balanced approach. One that blends more traditional and deterministic technology – e.g. document automation and curated clause libraries – with advanced AI features. ClauseBuddy stood out as a platform that not only offered this combination, but also delivered the best value for money.

Frederik Leenen, Head of Legal Tech at CMS, describes this as follows:

“It covers the best of the old world and also includes the new world of AI and blends them into something that is very neatly done. ClauseBuddy is kind of a Swiss army knife. It has many different tools that all help you do what you expect them to do.”

Placing the firm’s knowledge at lawyers’ fingertips

While traditional, deterministic technology doesn’t make headlines in the age of Generative AI, it is still a highly valuable addition to any lawyer’s arsenal as it provides the kind of consistency and knowledge development that pure AI tools are unfit for. For example: CMS invested in pooling its knowledge in a curated clause library that immediately gives access to the firm’s know-how. This can in turn be combined with the AI-powered drafting components to provide the best of both worlds.

Katja Grabka, Senior Legal Tech Specialist at CMS adds to this:

“ClauseBuddy is one of the tools also covering the whole topic of knowledge management. That means you have your own clause libraries with your own templates. With AI, you can rewrite them and edit them, and when you are drafting new contracts, you don’t have to start from scratch.”

Adoption beyond the early adopters

One of the biggest challenges in legal tech is user adoption. Here too, ClauseBuddy exceeded expectations. As Frederik Leenen puts it:

“What’s funny is that we see ClauseBuddy even being popular among the ones that usually don’t adopt tech that early and that’s probably because ClauseBuddy really has a button for everything and makes it quite understandable what you can do with it. It feels much more like an augmentation of what lawyers have been doing than a replacement or a complete change of everything."

Deep integration with Microsoft Word

This sense that ClauseBuddy forms a natural extension of how CMS’s lawyers do their work can largely be attributed to the fact that ClauseBuddy is an add-in for Microsoft Word. It meets lawyers where they are already accustomed to working. That said, this is not the unique value-add it once was. There are many solutions on the market nowadays that offer Word add-ins. So what makes ClauseBuddy different?

As Katja Grabka puts it:

“ClauseBuddy has a really great layout-awareness where you can create different versions of clauses and compare them. When you find your perfect clause, you can insert it in Word and don’t have any formatting issues afterwards.”

Unlike other solutions where the Word add-in is often an afterthought, ClauseBuddy was designed with this kind of layout-awareness at its core.

Something Frederik Leenen also appreciated:

‍“ClauseBuddy came from a different direction. It came from being a Word plugin and helping with annoying formatting and that’s where they are still good at. While other tools get into the space of also offering a plugin, ClauseBuddy originates from it and that’s something you feel and see.”

What's next for ClauseBase and CMS?

The success of ClauseBuddy at CMS Germany has sparked growing momentum across the wider CMS network. Other firms in the European CMS network have adopted ClauseBuddy in the wake of CMS Germany’s decision and more still are currently running trials.

But the team at CMS is not content with just focusing on internal adoption. It sees potential for broader use of the tool by external parties. As Frederik Leenen puts it:

‍“All of this are also reasons why we see it being popular among our clients, in-house legal teams specifically.”‍