Features
Clause-based drafting
Store your best content
Most knowledge systems want to be everything to everyone, storing any kind of knowledge, in any format. Jacks of all trades, but master of none.
In ClauseBase, knowledge management revolves around clauses and clauses only. You can centrally store a clause’s body text, title, translations, legal nuances, internal comments and references to case law and legal doctrine.
Build your clause libraries
Store your best content
If you ever consult a database of clauses, you will undoubtedly realise that quality trumps quantity. Good luck hunting through a database with thousands of almost identical clauses.
You need an organised clause library instead. ClauseBase allows you to neatly store all your clauses and enrich them with extra information, so you can always retrieve the right content. In mere seconds.
Accelerate your drafting
Go beyond knowledge management
Previous-generation knowledge systems only store and retrieve knowledge. This works for doctrine and case law — but clauses want to be inserted in legal documents instead of gathering dust. So knowledge management becomes knowledge deployment.
Draft at a higher level
Mundane contract drafting tasks — such as endless searches in old files and dull grammatical changes — are one of the main sources of attrition in legal teams. Intelligent clause libraries allow lawyers to find clauses in a matter of seconds, and focus on higher level work.
Faster onboarding
Finding a relevant clause is easy. Selecting the right clause in a heap of conspicuously similar clauses is the real challenge. Intelligent clause libraries allow you to filter clauses on legal nuances. Combined with the right internal comments, even new team members can immediately find the right clause, with the right legal nuance.
Ripple Changes
No matter in how many templates a clause is used, any change to it will be automatically and immediately reflected in all templates. No more wasting time making the same update in hundreds of documents, or risking errors because some clauses were not updated.
Use auto-adapting clauses
Clauses can be built to automatically adapt to the contract they are dropped into — like a chameleon that will automatically change its colour to match its environment.
Words, sentences or even entire paragraphs can be dropped or inserted, while correct numbering will be ensured.
Idiomatic expressions can be made shorter or longer, depending on the document.
Gender, name and (for languages such as German and Polish) grammatical cases will automatically adapt.
Terminology is automatically kept consistent and coherent even as new clauses enter the document.
Apply a uniform look & feel
Over 80% of legal departments do not generate documents with uniform styling, even when house styling rules (“corporate visual identity”) apply. Thanks to its separation of content and style, applying uniform styling becomes trivial.
Define your corporate visual identity in ClauseBase once for a perfectly styled document every time, or upload multiple styles to choose from, and apply each with the click of a button.
Enforce consistent legal styling
ClauseBase is the only software package that allows you to automatically enforce a legal drafting styling. We offer over a hundred controls to finetune how you express lists, defined terms, references, definition lists, dates, numbers, and so on.
Consistent and compliant documents are just a click away.
Stop fighting your numbering
In all likelihood, your Number One Frustration in MS Word is getting the automatic numbering right. Ask yourself: how many times have you "fought" with Word’s arcane numbering system?
ClauseBase uses an ingenious numbering system tailored for the needs of complex legal documents. Whether a clause is inserted at the top level, or at some deeper level — it will always be correct.
Integrated with ClauseBuddy, your friendly Word plugin
ClauseBase shares its engine and database with ClauseBuddy — an innovative plugin for MS Word. Both products are part of the same ecosystem, and allow you to seamless share clauses, legal knowledge and even entire questionnaires.
Your curated legal knowledge should not be limited to generating a first draft. ClauseBuddy allows legal professionals to use the same intelligent clause library during negotiations.
Search clauses using keywords, folder browsing or by automatic similarity matching. Easily filter clauses by legal nuance, so everyone can immediately find the right clause in a matter of seconds.
All clause intelligence created in ClauseBase is available right from within MS Word. Legal terminology and datafields used to generate a first draft will be remembered, so when you insert new or alternative clauses later on during negotiations, they will immediately be in the right shape.
Add interesting clauses to your clause library by selecting some text in an existing MS Word document, and choosing the relevant legal folder. Iptionally augmented with legal nuances, case law references or legal doctrine.
ClauseBuddy can be learned by anyone in a matter of minutes.
Control your versions
You can keep track of each clause's history, and easily swap between an old and a new version of a clause, at the moment you choose. For example, the old version of a certain clause may need to be used for three more months before being replaced by the newer version.
This version control is perfect for compliance reasons, or when legislative changes do not neatly come into effect at the same time.
Full drafting control
Change defined terms with 100% certainty
Defined terms can be changed by choosing an alternative term from a predefined list. You no longer have to worry about capitalisation, including or removing articles, conjugations of verbs, required changes to pronouns and adjectives, etc. The built-in dictionary and grammatical knowledge of ClauseBase will take care of this tedious editing.
Automatically generate definition lists
Defined terms can be changed by choosing an alternative term from a predefined list. You no longer have to worry about capitalisation, including or removing articles, conjugations of verbs, required changes to pronouns and adjectives, etc. The built-in dictionary and grammatical knowledge of ClauseBase will take care of this tedious editing.
Create automatic comparisons
To facilitate internal reviews or negotiation ping-pong, legal professionals like to create both “clean” and marked-up versions of contracts. ClauseBase allows you to automatically output such markup — you can even automatically convert the marked-up version to PDF, to avoid it from being used for future editing.
Instantly show changes
Defined terms can be changed by choosing an alternative term from a predefined list. You no longer have to worry about capitalisation, including or removing articles, conjugations of verbs, required changes to pronouns and adjectives, etc. The built-in dictionary and grammatical knowledge of ClauseBase will take care of this tedious editing.
Say goodbye to "corrupt" Word files
Everyone receives those strangely bad Word-files — often circulating for many years — where only some paragraphs are automatically numbered, or the layout jumps around. Each Word-file created by ClauseBase is built from the ground up, and will have correct cross-references and styles.
Protect your files
ClauseBase provides plenty of options if you don’t want others to change your files. You can, for example, prevent counterparties from inserting sneaky changes or fiddling with your layout, or only allow to fill some predefined fields. Or you can go for the nuclear option: only allow to output PDF-files.
Deep grammatical support for 28+ languages
ClauseBase offers deep language support for 28 different languages *, with grammatical knowledge and automatic translations. That’s far beyond the bilingual functionality offered by a few other drafting software packages, and infinitely more than the zero language support offered by most.
* Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
ClauseBase’s multilingual support is not simply bolted on because our marketing team thought it would be cool. It has been a core functionality from its design, and is very deeply embedded in every part of the software. No other commercially available software allows you to generate a multi-lingual document where article translations are automatically aligned, in any number of languages.
Create a custom language version of every clause and definition.
Translate all the legal knowledge (case law, legal doctrine, or internal memos) you associate with each clause and document.
Create translations of your bespoke documents with the click of a mouse that require no human review — instead of performing almost the same manual translations for the nth time.
Multi-lingual table export
In non-English speaking countries, it often happens that legal documents must be translated and presented in a side-by-side comparison, to allow foreign stakeholders to understand the contents of a document.
Even if the translation is available, creating such a side-by-side comparison easily takes an hour to prepare. ClauseBase is multi-lingual by heart, and allows you to create such a comparison with the click of a single button.
Integrated machine translation
Across the platform, texts can be automatically translated to other languages with the click of a button. We proudly make use of the language services of DeepL.
Simple questionnaires, sophisticated documents
ClauseBase allows legal professionals to create questions for any template. Using answers to easy questions, changes can be introduced to the contents of the document.
Such changes can be very diverse:
filling in missing information (such as the name or address of a party, or the price of a product)
altering existing clauses, swapping clauses for alternatives, removing clauses
styling and layout
legal terminology
document export options (e.g., password protection, file format, export language, etc.)
Enforcing business rules
All questions and all corresponding changes to a document can be accompanied by conditions. This effectively allows legal experts to model company policy into a contract.
For example: raising the maximum liability cap, or switching from state courts to arbitration, may only be allowed if the contract value is above a certain value, except if a specific product/service is being sold for which deviating rules apply.
Fully interactive
Each question can react to its surroundings, for example by:
hiding when some other question has been answered in a certain way
presenting different possible answers when certain conditions are met
Entire decision trees can be modeled in this way, offering a very smooth user experience.
Wide range of use cases
Questionnaires are typically used by commercial teams, but many other scenarios are possible:
giving junior associates a head start
helping lawyers who are unfamiliar with a certain area of law to quickly draft a basic contract
giving your clients better access to your template documents
Self Service Portals
As a legal professional, you need to keep control over the contracts that are being written. At the same time, your responsibilities are always expanding, while you are facing increasingly tight deadlines. Self-service portals can bring relief.
Self-service portals allow your users to generate error-free contracts themselves on the basis of intelligent questionnaires that will both adapt their contents to your users’ requirements and respect all rules.
So focus on your true added legal value, and rest easy knowing that all your bases are covered.
Easy integrations
e-Signing
E-signing can get quite addictive. Once you’ve experienced its efficiency and ease-of-use, the whole “print, sign, scan, and send” routine seems to lose its lustre.
ClauseBase integrates with leading e-signature providers, allowing you to immediately export and e-sign Q&A documents.
Excel, Word & PDF
Don't worry if you do not have the assistance of an IT department. Many of the most common ways to avoid copy/pasting can be established directly from within our software.
Machine translation
Across the platform, texts can be automatically translated, with the click of a button, from any of language to any of the 27 other languages.
Companies database
For most jurisdictions, the name, address, company number, entity type and company status can be looked up interactively — facilitating easy data entry.
Google Maps
Granular access rights can be imposed on all clauses and documents, to reflect your working practices.
Bulk Excel export
Create dozens of versions of the same document in one fell swoop, with detailed but easy customisation options.
This feature comes in handy when dozens of similar documents must be produced at once, with various diverging elements — e.g., employment type, salary and various social perks.
Law firm case management
We are in the process of integrating with several case management software packages for law firms.
Advanced API
We play nice with others
ClauseBase is an open system that can easily integrate with other software, through its advanced connectivity features, including batch uploading ("API").
We support both a traditional REST-based API and a modern GraphQL implementation, for advanced interactive querying.
Through this API, for which the specifications are publicly available, developers can interrogate the server of ClauseBase, and send relevant data that will then result in MS Word or PDF files. Such functionality can, for example, be used to generate legal documents in batch, or to allow end-users to generate legal documents from within software packages that lack advanced text editing capabilities.
ClauseBase documents can also be embedded inside your own website, through so-called "iframes".
Advanced Security
Data center
Our software runs on servers in the state-of-the-art, secure, datacenters of premium hosting provider Upcloud.com.
For our European customers, we use the data center 100% energy redundant data center in Madrid.
For our US customers, we use the datacenter in Chicago.
Other geographical locations are available at request.
Software security features
Our software contains several advanced security features to protect the confidentiality of your data. In addition, our servers and software are regularly audited by independent security experts.
Data protection features beyond competition
ClauseBase’s founders are former data protection lawyers. Having negotiated data processing agreements many times, we know how important the legal requirements are for you. We therefore go beyond what EU legislation (GDPR) requires, to offer you true compliance peace of mind.
Refined access rights
Granular access rights can be imposed on all clauses and documents, to reflect your working practices.
Single Sign On (SSO)
ClauseBase allows customers with an Enterprise subscription to allow users to login through Single Sign-On (SSO). We currently support Microsoft Azure, Okta, OneLogin, Salesforce and Google SAML.