From G2 Venture Partners: Why We Invested in LinkSquares

This was originally posted on the G2 Venture Partners blog. Check it out here.

Over the past 15 years, almost every business function has undergone a digital transformation. Sales, marketing, engineering, product, procurement, people — all of these groups now leverage multiple software platforms and AI-enabled analytics to do their work.

However, one function has been left out of this transformation: legal has not yet had its digital moment. Everyone reading this is likely familiar with the way most legal work is still done today, exchanging red-line pdfs over email. And, once those pdfs are signed, they are stored in an online folder with 1000s of other agreements and rarely, if ever, referenced again.

LinkSquares is changing this.

With intuitive workflow and embedded AI, LinkSquares streamlines the process of executing an agreement. It enables users to leverage pre-built templates, and then easily identify areas where revisions differ from standards. It also pushes the documents to the right person for approval, at the right time. Post-execution, LinkSquares leverages cutting edge NLP to enable easy searching and reporting on existing agreements.

As we talked to customers, we heard about the incredible and diverse value the LinkSquares product delivers for them.

Efficient: Many legal teams spoke about how LinkSquares enabled them to work more efficiently. They could get NDAs, sales agreements, or supplier MSAs drafted, reviewed, and approved. “It keeps the process moving” and “makes it easy”.

Strategic: One common complaint from legal teams is the sheer volume of questions they get from the business. “Can I do this?”, “When does this renew?”, “What are the risks if I do this?”.

LinkSquares enables lawyers or paralegals to more quickly find the right document, identify the relevant terms, and answer the question. More impressively, though, it is so easy to use, you don’t even bother the lawyers. We talked to a customer who had users from finance, sales, and procurement jumping into the LinkSquares platform to answer their own questions. “It just gives folks a ton of power”, he told us.

Then, LinkSquares takes it one step further with reporting, generating insights on key terms across the entire set of contracts. For example, a user can quickly see “which contracts renew this month” or “what is my margin spread across retailers”? We even spoke with one customer who had organically started using LinkSquares as their core sourcing tool, informing procurement’s monthly meetings.

Compliant: “This gives us peace of mind” that we understand our obligations and are meeting them, one general counsel told us. “I love the ability to sum up our risks, and share with management in a structured way”, another said.

As ESG rises in importance across the business world, so too does risk management. A platform like LinkSquares is essential to both ensure and prove that core business values are being consistently codified in agreements, and, conversely, that the business is living up to its commitments.

LinkSquares has a massive opportunity in front of it. Every company, in every industry, should and will be using a platform like LinkSquares within the next 5–10 years. And, as we spoke with customers, they repeatedly told us LinkSquares’s product “just works.”

Going forward, LinkSquares will leverage its core contract management capability to continue to build additional tools that empower in-house legal and their “customers” (the business) to operate more efficiently, strategically, and compliantly.

If you want to help build the future of the legal function, LinkSquares is hiring! Click here to search open positions.