The legal contract process is broken. Collectively, we need to declare bankruptcy on the current state of the world for managing contracts and start fresh. Wave the proverbial white flag.

We have all been there, drafting a precisely-framed legal document using Microsoft Word and then proceeding to exchange countless drafts through email with no insight into any data in our contract, no software-driven framework for negotiating and managing legal risk in the contract, and no strong tools for collaborating with stakeholders inside and across business lines. There has to be something better.

A new paradigm

At Aline, we believe a new model is needed to take contracts firmly into the digital era. Most importantly, we have to build software that embraces:

1. Contracts are highly-collaborative documents. Frequently, many stakeholders are involved in negotiating, executing, and carrying out a contract. Internal business professionals assessing economic terms, legal professionals advising the business and minimizing legal risk, customers determining the economic and legal impact of a contract's terms, and everyone tasked with understanding and carrying out the contract after signing.
2. Contracts are data-rich documents. But, existing mechanisms fall short in providing valuable data-driven insights into a business's contracts.
3. Contracts need to "talk to other systems". It's not enough to extract meaningful data from a contract. That data needs to be consumable by other systems in a meaningful way. Contracts also need to be able to ingest and consume data from the same systems. It is a two-way street.
4. Reusable contract templates should be shared with the community. Re-creating the same template or clause again and again is a waste of time. As a community, we can contribute to a growing body of legal knowledge that's universally valuable.

Aline, a next-generation contract software platform 🚀

When starting Aline, we took the principles outlined above to heart in designing our software. The first thing we tackled was the age-old word processor. How boring you say? 🤦

The thing is, the word processor is where attorneys create. It's where we live 24/7. Understanding that, and given how inadequate existing word processors are for the task of truly digital contracts, we built Aline's product to include a web-native editor purpose built for legal contracts.

Aline's software links contract stakeholders together in a seamless, collaborative web. Everyone has visibility into their contracts in a way never possible before.

Our new editor allows any contract drafter, with no training, to easily create the most complex contract templates and clauses, define a data model underpinning each template and clause, and collaborate with anyone involved in a contract within the document itself. The contract data model is exportable into other systems, and is amenable to parsing and manipulation in any programming language. And, the editor includes everything a contract drafter has come to expect from their favorite word processor.

Get early access

We're excited by what we are building. If you are too, head over to our sign-up form and get early access to Aline. We're letting a select few kick the tires on Aline's platform while we prepare for our public launch later this year.

About Aline

Aline is a technology company based in New York, New York building next-generation contract software. Aline's web-native editor makes composing contract templates, clauses, and workflows simple for legal teams, allowing all stakeholders in the contract process to collaborate, in a data-rich way, like never before. Learn more about Aline on its homepage.