Repapering

Repapering is a service that has increased in intensity. As result of regulatory reform (for example the introduction of GDPR or the phase-out of LIBOR) companies see themselves confronted with the need to change thousands (and sometimes hundreds of thousands) of documents to reflect the regulatory change. The process is complex, and requires streamlining and automation to scale for the volume of contract remediation generally required. Step 1 is typically legal advice by a law firm: what is the impact of the new regulation or the change of regulation.? Step 2 is development of a playbook. Step 3 is contract review, from categorizing contracts in bulk to identifying and extracting relevant clauses. Step 4 is process automation, generating a review workflow that imports the extracted data and leverages the platybook to guide reviewers through a decision tree upon which a decision is made as to whether, for each contract, an amendment note is needed. Step 5 is the generation of draft amendment documents, often leveraging templates and document automation as an output of the review workflow. Step 6 is sending documents to counterpart for signature but often involves negotiation following the playbook with law firms as escalation. Step 6 is execution and step 7 is storage of the executed documentation. Some law firms have established their own workflows (combining contract tools such as Kira or Eigen with workflow tools such as Bryter or Neota Logic), but in order to perform this work at a cost the client is willing to bear they still typically require support from lower cost timekeepers from ALSPs. ALSPs such as the Big 4, Factor, Cognia, and Elevate have also established end-to-end automated workflows, which can be leveraged alongside their flex legal teams.