By Pablo Yannone Sancho, Journalist at GLTH
Alejandro is someone very special at the GLTH. He was a co-founder in 2018, he is an Advisor within the Technology area, and he also belongs to the “proud father’s area” of the Association since he had a child 3 years ago. And now he is waiting for another one!
A lawyer with 15 years of experience in Corporate and M&A, nowadays he is CEO and co-founder of Bigle, a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software. Usually, I ask Advisors “what motivated them to join the GLTH,” but, in this case, it seemed more appropriate to ask, “what motivated you, Alejandro, to co-create the GLTH?”
“There was a group of people who were talking, I think it was Francesc”, he says. “Legaltech was starting to take off, and we wanted to speed up the adoption of legal technology. So by creating the GLTH and setting up a group of advisors, we thought that this would help lawyers, because we know they are sometimes a little bit lost.”
Thinking about his career
By studying law, Alejandro acquired some skills that were very useful for his current role as an entrepreneur, a role that makes him feel very happy. Although it is not always easy… “When you are the CEO of a tech company”, Alejandro says, “it feels like you're eating glass and staring at the abyss most of the time, because usually the bad things in a company tend to go up.” This phrase of Elon Musk reflects that when you are a CEO, “you have to solve a lot of problems.” Alejandro has an interesting trick for that: “I try to remember that I have to behave or I have to be like a thermostat, not the thermometer, meaning that I have to put rhythm in the company in order not to be affected by the problems that surround me or the economic context or whatever. And on the contrary, to motivate and to establish what temperature the rest of the organization needs to be.”
Alejandro loves talking about work, but he has a lot of hobbies, such as traveling to Asia, one of his favorite parts of the world; watching Sherlock, and participating in the never-ending discussion: Friends or How I Met Your Mother? We were diplomatic and focused on another less controversial topic: legaltech.
Benefits of using a CLM
“CLM shines at helping lawyers to be efficient and saving time in those tasks that are mundane, that are low value,” claims Alejandro. “I've seen many lawyers suffer because they spend so many hours at the office. But they have a family. So it helps lawyers to have a good balance between work and life.”
CLM also helps to increase security and regulatory compliance. Why? “When you have a company, you can start drawing the procedures that they have to run. And with the CLM, you can really take some of these procedures out of the hands of people. And it's usually the case that the problems or the mistakes are made by humans”.
“So, by having a process that is standardized, that is transparent, that is going to work always the same, you are going to mitigate risks for the company. One example would be not so much on the risk side, but it's costing companies a lot of money: renewals.”
“Most companies sign contracts where the contract is going to be renewed every year. But, once they sign, they have no control over the contract. So next year it's going to be renewed and the company is going to have to pay again and again.”
“If you're not early in order to terminate the contract, it's going to have to be renewed. And this, again, is going to be costing the companies thousands, if not millions of euros.”
And here comes one powerful solution: by having a CLM, explains Alejandro, you can have notifications that prevent the company from renewing unnecessary contracts, and you can have a conversation with the responsible person to at least analyze the case… To renew or not to renew? - that's the matter.
The adoption of legal tech in recent years
“Since COVID, we have been forced to adopt technology”, says Alejandro. “And since AI, we have had the tool to incentivize even more that adoption.” “So both AI and COVID have helped a lot.”
“Whereas some years ago”, he follows, “some lawyers would be afraid because they thought that technology would take their place, now you see the world is still there, the same lawyers and the same problems. However, now we are being more efficient at solving them.”
As an Advisor, Alejandro recommends that if you want to have an interesting conversation, just join the GLTH. It is a good opportunity to hear and change perspectives about legaltech: “Sometimes it's very important to stop what you're doing and to analyze if there is any way that I can do this better” says Alejandro. “So, I would encourage everyone to just stop for a bit, listen to what's out there, and implement it bit by bit. There's no need to change dramatically, at least to a small change. The thing that we encounter, the biggest problem, is culture. People are afraid of change. And they shouldn't be. They should be embracing change. Because if they do so, they would be two steps ahead of their competition.”
CEO & Co-founder, Bigle
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