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. LawVu Draft stood out as a platform that not only offered this combination but also delivered the best value for money.
“It covers the best of the old world and includes the new world of AI, blending them into something that is very neatly done. LawVu Draft is kind of a Swiss army knife. It has many different tools that all help you do what you expect them to do.”
Dr. Frederik Leenen, Former Head of Legal Tech – CMS
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. As an 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.
“LawVu Draft covers 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.”
Katja Grabka, Senior Legal Tech Specialist – CMS
One of the biggest challenges in legal tech is user adoption. Here too, LawVu Draft exceeded expectations.
“What’s funny is that we see LawVu Draft even being popular among the ones that usually don’t adopt tech that early and that’s probably because LawVu Draft 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.”
Dr. Frederik Leenen, Former Head of Legal Tech – CMS
This sense that LawVu Draft forms a natural extension of how CMS’s lawyers do their work can largely be attributed to the fact that LawVu Draft is an add-in for Microsoft Word. It meets lawyers where they are already accustomed to working.
There are many solutions on the market nowadays that offer Word add-ins. But, unlike other solutions where the Word add-in is often an afterthought, LawVu Draft was designed with this kind of layout-awareness at its core.
“LawVu Draft has a 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.”
Katja Grabka, Senior Legal Tech Specialist – CMS
The success of LawVu Draft at CMS Germany has sparked growing momentum across the wider CMS network. Other firms in the European CMS network have adopted LawVu Draft 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.”
