In my newest “Notes to My (Authorized) Self” interview, I sat down with Senne Mennes, co-founder of ClauseBase and former lawyer at DLA Piper Brussels. We talked about his journey from training IP regulation to constructing doc automation instruments. However what caught with me most wasn’t the expertise. It was how his relationship to threat modified.
This isn’t only a founder story. It’s a blueprint for in-house authorized groups attempting to modernize. In case you are in-house and nonetheless reviewing contracts like each mistake is catastrophic, this dialog is your permission slip to construct a special mannequin. One primarily based on iteration, calibration, and pace.
Threat Minimization Is Not a Technique
Senne put it plainly. “As legal professionals, we’re educated to show over each stone. That works in case your solely aim is to keep away from errors, but it surely additionally makes for very gradual progress.” That mindset could serve you properly in litigation or regulatory response. However it’s loss of life to innovation. Particularly in case your group is tasked with enabling industrial velocity, supporting product launches, or constructing inner tooling.
The outdated posture was shield and evaluate. The brand new posture is construct and enhance. Authorized nonetheless must handle threat, however not by defaulting to zero. As a substitute, authorized must get good at figuring out which dangers really matter, which of them are tolerable, and which of them could be flagged and remediated via techniques.
Cease Aiming For Excellent Drafts. Begin Constructing Suggestions Loops.
ClauseBase didn’t launch as a result of Senne had a grand imaginative and prescient. It launched as a result of he and his co-founder had been caught in a loop of inefficient drafting inside a worldwide regulation agency. They didn’t just like the instruments they had been utilizing. So that they constructed those they wished that they had.
That’s the half most in-house groups miss. Innovation doesn’t require a moonshot. It begins while you cease settling for damaged techniques. Possibly your group redlines the identical indemnity clause each week. Otherwise you spend hours harmonizing NDAs. Or your product counsel nonetheless copy-pastes playbooks into emails.
All of that’s fixable. Not by doing the work tougher. However by systematizing the judgment behind your work. What makes a clause acceptable? What language really triggers friction? Which phrases do you actually care about, and which of them simply should be tracked?
That is the place TermScout lives. Within the layer between uncooked contract textual content and actionable intelligence. Once you certify a clause or benchmark it in opposition to market information, you aren’t simply rushing up the deal. You might be making a suggestions loop. One which improves with each contract you contact.
Attorneys Hardly ever Really feel the Excessive. That’s the Drawback.
Within the interview, Senne shared why legal professionals typically concern threat. “As a lawyer, you’re educated to attenuate threat, however you don’t get to expertise the upside. The enterprise does.” That disconnection is a part of why legal professionals stall innovation. They see the price of errors, however not the advantage of pace.
To construct higher authorized techniques, that mindset should change. You’ll be able to’t calibrate threat in case you by no means join it to reward. One of the best in-house groups will not be simply blocking dangerous outcomes. They’re engineering for good ones. They see how quicker evaluate results in extra income. They see how clearer contracts scale back negotiation cycles. They monitor the upside. And so they personal it.
Perfectionism Is Not Professionalism
Senne additionally talked about how laborious it was to create content material within the early days. “A few of these three-minute movies took me ten or fifteen takes. I used to be attempting to be good.” Finally, he realized nobody cared about good. They cared about helpful. They cared about actual.
That applies to authorized too. You’ll be able to polish a contract eternally. However that doesn’t make it higher. Readability beats cleverness. Velocity beats precision when the danger is low. The aim is to not get rid of all ambiguity. The aim is to construct techniques that know when it issues.
That’s what TermScout’s clause rankings and contract certifications are designed to do. They assist authorized groups cease over-lawyering and begin standardizing. Not blindly. However strategically. You don’t must flatten nuance. You want to channel it the place it counts.
To Construct Belief, Codify Judgment
Senne’s transition from lawyer to founder mirrors the shift many authorized departments are beginning to make. From reactive to proactive. From craft to infrastructure. From intestine intuition to information.
None of this occurs in a single day. Nevertheless it doesn’t require magic. Only a totally different mind-set. One the place authorized stops being the division of no and turns into the engine of belief. The group that makes clear what’s acceptable, what’s honest, and what’s doable.
Threat administration isn’t about saying no. It’s about constructing techniques that permit the enterprise say sure: quicker, smarter, and with confidence.
Watch the complete interview with Senne Mennes here.
Then ask your self this: What would change in case your authorized group handled contracts as techniques, not artifacts? What in case you stopped aiming for good, and began optimizing for pace, readability, and studying?
The longer term isn’t constructed on intuition. It’s constructed on infrastructure. Let’s get to work.
Olga V. Mack is the CEO of TermScout, an AI-powered contract certification platform that accelerates income and eliminates friction by certifying contracts as honest, balanced, and market-ready. A serial CEO and authorized tech govt, she beforehand led an organization via a profitable acquisition by LexisNexis. Olga can also be a Fellow at CodeX, The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and the Generative AI Editor at regulation.MIT. She is a visionary govt reshaping how we regulation—how authorized techniques are constructed, skilled, and trusted. Olga teaches at Berkeley Law, lectures extensively, and advises firms of all sizes, in addition to boards and establishments. An award-winning basic counsel turned builder, she additionally leads early-stage ventures together with Virtual Gabby (Better Parenting Plan), Product Law Hub, ESI Flow, and Notes to My (Legal) Self, every rethinking the observe and enterprise of regulation via expertise, information, and human-centered design. She has authored The Rise of Product Lawyers, Legal Operations in the Age of AI and Data, Blockchain Value, and Get on Board, with Visible IQ for Attorneys (ABA) forthcoming. Olga is a 6x TEDx speaker and has been acknowledged as a Silicon Valley Girl of Affect and an ABA Girl in Authorized Tech. Her work reimagines individuals’s relationship with regulation—making it extra accessible, inclusive, data-driven, and aligned with how the world really works. She can also be the host of the Notes to My (Authorized) Self podcast (streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube), and her insights recurrently seem in Forbes, Bloomberg Legislation, Newsweek, VentureBeat, ACC Docket, and Above the Legislation. She earned her B.A. and J.D. from UC Berkeley. Comply with her on LinkedIn and X @olgavmack.
