Legal Studio and Emixa Assist the Legal Sector in Digitizing Workflows

The legal sector is known for being traditional and conservative. Digitalization is making strides, but most methods have remained the same for decades. The new KLEA platform (Knowledgeable Legal Entity Automation) helps legal organizations and departments digitize workflows and repetitive legal work. The platform is currently operational in more than 50 countries for companies such as Levi Strauss, Imerys, and Carrier. KLEA has assisted various legal departments in achieving a 60% time savings and a 40% reduction in operational costs. Emixa built the platform's first prototype within two weeks.

Filip Corveleyn, co-founder of Legal Studio, was a lawyer with a keen interest in technology. He observed that lawyers spent much of their valuable time on tasks that didn't necessarily require a law degree and could easily be automated.

"For complex legal issues, it's common to pay a lawyer a significant hourly rate," says Corveleyn. "But for repetitive legal work, this is neither logical nor necessary. Also, the processes for drafting and validating standard shareholder or board resolutions were not efficient and consumed many resources."

Corveleyn decided to further explore the possibilities of digitizing these processes. At the fashion brand Levi Strauss, the first company he examined, he discovered that paperwork, even around basic tasks such as formally appointing a new director or convening a shareholders' meeting, was a time-consuming and expensive challenge. Simply replacing directors in different countries, approving financial statements, granting powers of attorney, or essentially managing the entire legal backbone could be handled more intelligently and efficiently.

Taking it to the next level without an army of developers

With the KLEA platform, Corveleyn had a product but no company. He saw the potential of KLEA and, together with former Allen & Overy colleague Anthony Verhaegen, founded Legal Studio. CTO Bart Reyserhove joined, and with new insights and valuable customer feedback, they worked on the next version of KLEA.

Corveleyn asked Emixa to help build a solution to automate and streamline the processes. In just two weeks, Emixa delivered the first prototype of KLEA, built with the Mendix low-code platform. Low-code is a visual approach to application development that allows developers with varying levels of experience to create web and mobile applications using drag-and-drop components and model-driven logic through a graphical user interface.

Corveleyn: "With Emixa and the Mendix low-code platform, we could pivot quickly, leverage workflow functionality, and take KLEA to the next level in just three months, without needing an army of developers. Without Mendix and Emixa, this would have taken a year."

60% time savings and 40% lower operational costs

Together, Legal Studio and Emixa developed a secure, user-friendly cloud platform that links business data to automated workflows. These workflows can handle changes in directors, annual meetings, powers of attorney, and many more tasks. The platform further integrates Connective for digital signatures and Auth0 for robust authentication. With an ISO-certified backbone and end-to-end encryption, data security is also guaranteed.

"The problem in the legal sector is that there's no process thinking for repetitive processes involving different people," says Corveleyn. "There's no uniform way to efficiently manage documents and processes. This was a challenge for many law firms and legal departments. We also found that there was no good insight into legal costs within companies. Large companies have their own legal team but also collaborate with external lawyers. This means that the total costs associated with repetitive legal tasks are not always clear."

Bas van der Horst: "KLEA has significantly changed and accelerated the administrative processes for the legal sector. It automatically connects the right person to the right workflows and documents. Users can immediately see if all directors have approved a decision or dividend. Even if the appointment of a director needs to be ratified in multiple countries, KLEA ensures that the required passport information is available on time without requiring manual work from lawyers. Legal Studio's clients achieved a 60% time savings and were able to reduce their operational costs by more than 40%. This makes KLEA a true success story."

Want to know more?

There are plenty of opportunities to drive forward digital transformation in the tech industry. Would you like to improve the digital state of your organisation? And are you looking for a partner who can help you achieve this goal? In that case, Emixa is the right fit for you. We translate complex issues into simple, user-friendly IT solutions that accelerate your digital transformation and take your business to a higher level. Don’t hesitate to contact us. We would be delighted to meet you!