Marking the 365-day countdown to Brexit, alternative legal services provider Axiom has today (29 March) launched a purpose-built service to aid companies revise millions of financial services contracts as the pressure to update paperwork increases with the UK’s exit from the EU looming.
Designed specifically for in-house legal teams, the service, named ‘BrexitBridge’, will incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to help companies update and rewrite their contracts they begin one of the largest contract-renewal endeavours ever undertaken.
Axiom estimates that financial services companies spanning the UK and EU will need to revise more than 7.5 million contracts due to Brexit. Over 100 types of contract would be involved, with numerous European regulations and domestic laws needed to be taken into account as companies made their changes.The newplatform will seek to use data aggregation tools to organise existing contracts into information packages and convert contract text into structured data.
Chris DeConti – executive vice-president of global solutions at Axiom – said: ‘With a year to go until Brexit, companies need to get their contracts ready now. In practice, this means repapering massive volumes of contracts of all types to ensure continuity. ’
In Axiom’s BrexitBridge guide, the firm suggests all financial products and services sold cross-border will be affected, placing strains on traditional approaches to contract revision. Axiom has pedigree in contracting support, as in 2016 the firm signed a five-year contract with consumer giant Johnson & Johnson to support the company’s global procurement contracting function.
However the platform may have significance beyond Brexit, as the cost and complexity of contract revision becomes untenable. DeConti told Legal Business: ‘This sort of work will become more tech-enabled for some time to come’.
thomas.alan@legalbusiness.co.uk
