Abstract

beLab is an alternative legal service and Legal Tech provider wholly owned by BonelliErede – the market leader for legal and tax services in Italy. beLab exploits legal technologies for contract and compliance management, e-Discovery, litigation support, investigations, KYC and third-party due diligence, and other transaction services.

The president of beLab and partner at BonelliErede Alessandro Musella shares his view on Legal Tech and how it can provide real added value to in-house legal teams. Alessandro discusses how automation and analytics are two technologies that are already bearing fruit – especially when it comes to automated contract drafting and legal decision-making tools, contract lifecycle management platforms, and compliance management tools.

An overview of beLab 

beLab is a provider of alternative legal services and Legal Tech solutions mainly for the Italian market. It offers a wide range of tools and services for contract and compliance management, e-Discovery, litigation support, investigations, KYC and third-party due diligence, and other transaction services. 

The company is wholly owned by the law firm BonelliErede – the market leader for legal and tax services in Italy. beLab was spun off in 2020 after a two-year incubation period inside the firm during which the focus was on market analysis, recruitment, and technology scouting and development.

beLab now boasts 46 professionals, serves more than 150 clients, and operates a multi-million euro business with a growth rate exceeding 40%. 

beLab has its own Legal Tech ecosystem, which – because it brings together partner companies and experts with state-of-the-art technologies and first-rate technical skills – allows to optimise ur services and provide clients highly customised solutions. In a nutshell, beLab’s capabilities are the result of its cutting-edge solutions combined with know-how cut from BonelliErede’s cloth. 

Technology and the legal world

Technology and innovation will continue to be fundamental drivers for the legal market in the coming years. 

Technology is growing at an exponential rate and providing us tools that were inaccessible just three or four years ago. And expectations are high for the future of AI, predictive analytics, blockchain technology and more.

That said, it is important to distinguish between hype and reality: i.e., between technologies that sound good on paper but are not yet ready for practical application and technologies that are already able to deliver real value and are thus worth investing in.

Businesses obviously need digital solutions that can have an immediate positive impact on their operations for a reasonable cost. 

In the legal world, that means solutions must deliver the following value: ensure automation and human augmentation, draw better insights from existing legal data, simplify work, and be agile and able to adapt easily.

But it is not just a matter of technology. The road to legal innovation is paved with a combination of data strategy, process mapping, data science, and data production.

A focus on Legal Tech solutions that are already bearing fruit

In line with this vision, beLab’s focus is on providing operational technology solutions based on automation and analytics.

It is a well-established fact that automation streamlines workflows and frees up employees’ time for higher-value activities – and thus boosts productivity. 

Automated contract drafting and legal decision-making tools can be built in days or weeks using no-code platforms that support expertise automation, document generation and workflow automation capabilities.  

For example, beLab has developed vertical tools that allow clients to create a contract by simply completing a set of Q&As – gone are the days of outdated Word file templates that need tailoring every time.

Similarly, the contract approval process and decisions on settling serial litigation can now be automated. 

The ROI for these tools is quite impressive as their costs are limited – and the advantages include not only simplifying the execution stage but also reducing risks related to inconsistent practices, which is a critical aspect of legal operations.

Contract lifecycle management is another area where digital transformation can deliver higher value, thanks to operational tools that support digital signatures, contract repositories, lifecycle alerts, and contract drafting, negotiation and analysis.

When it comes to compliance management, the technologies that bear the most fruit relate to policy management, risk assessment, employee engagement and third-party due diligence investigations.

And excellent results have been achieved using analytics to perform massive reputational screening and identify risks in operational data. 

beLab’s strengths

beLab’s combination of a portfolio of vertical tools, a deep knowledge of existing digital solutions and BonelliErede’s renowned tradition of excellence is undoubtedly a strength: it is crucial to have legal expertise and knowledge when bringing this technology to the legal sector – being a software vendor alone would simply not be enough. 

Our approach is in fact much different from that of software vendors and other market players: it involves an initial phase of analysis and prototyping, during which needs are established, processes are analysed, a roadmap is established directly with the client, the best legal technologies are scouted, a general solution is designed and, finally, a proof of concept of the prototype is delivered.

Not only does this strengthen both parties’ technical understanding, but it also enables us to deliver new capabilities fast – and clients to better protect and grow their businesses.