Our problem was that it took at least 4 weeks to negotiate an agreement end-to-end, and over a week before we had the time to even look at the contract in detail.
Matthew Saliba, Chief Legal Officer at JOKR, was up late one night running through yet another SaaS vendor agreement, this was the third week in a row he was burning the midnight oil. “No one wants to review and mark-up a 30-page contract last thing before bed”, Matthew said candidly.
In order to cope with the increasing volume of day-to-day contracts, JOKR’s legal team were forced to work very late. This process was made worse by difficult counterparties who couldn’t be ignored. The whole thing felt unnecessarily slow, and this feeling ricocheted onto JOKR’s business stakeholders who were also increasingly frustrated.
Not only was this process time-consuming but it also took attention away from more strategic priorities, such as supporting JOKR’s next funding round, M&A transactions, and its expansion in Latin America. Matthew explained that, “Ultimately, JOKR’s success will depend on navigating these more high-risk and complicated legal issues, not toiling over vendor agreements.”
Being valued at $1.2 billion and raising over $430 million in funding puts unique pressures on a legal team. Although exciting, each new milestone also brings more complex and bigger legal challenges. In order to stay ahead of investor demands, JOKR’s legal team needed to work smarter, not just harder.
Matthew’s immediate objective was to find a solution that could:
Lexoo’s delivery team, made up of former in-house lawyers, began by creating a tailored playbook for JOKR using our “battle-tested” contract positions as a starting point.
This provided JOKR with:
To keep things simple, JOKR subscribed to Lexoo’s legal subscription service on a fixed-fee basis. Commercial contracts covered by this subscription include SaaS MSAs, DPAs, affiliate agreements, as well as a range of other procurement contracts. Moreover, JOKR’s engagement can flex up or down, depending on changes in their contract volumes.
We were really happy to see the speed of progress at the beginning… Lexoo’s promises were met and we did not expect the service to be delivered at that speed.
Reduced contract turnaround time: From 6 to under 2 business days (an improvement of 66%).
Eliminated the backlog: Conquered JOKR’s contract backlog in under 2 weeks allowing Matthew’s team to focus on higher risk, strategic work.
Strengthened morale: No more time-consuming back-and-forth, no more looming backlog, no more impatient stakeholders, no more late nights working on SaaS contracts.
Contract insights: Equipped JOKR’s legal team with market contracting insights enabling them to fully trust Lexoo to identify non-standard terms and drive forward negotiations.
Scalable resourcing: Provided JOKR with scalable legal support during busy periods without the need to hire internally or work with an expensive law firm.
To anybody who is in a position like I am, Lexoo is the best bet to give you the comfort and reliance that someone has your back.
I needed to free-up my in-house team to do strategic work, but I wouldn’t be able to do that without the support of Lexoo.
