Episode 54 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- A Conversation with Otto Hanson, CEO of TermScout

        
· Otto is CEO of TermScout, which provides data and analytics on market terms in contracts to reduce friction in negotiations.

· Otto was motivated to start TermScout after seeing startups overpay for legal services due to a lack of data on market terms.

· TermScout uses AI and human review to analyze contracts and provide market data on common clauses.

· TermScout's offering helps lawyers know what's "market" to resolve disputes over contract terms. TermScout's customers are both the contracting parties and their legal teams.

· TermScout also offers contract certification to validate a vendor's contract as balanced and have it labeled as such.

· Otto sees room for more contract standardization not only by way of the use of standard forms, but also through the standardization of various contracts' overall concepts.

· When it comes to the interoperation of various legal tech vendors' offerings, Otto and Charlie discuss how legal tech tools should ideally interoperate via APIs using a standard schema.

· Otto and Charlie also consider how the onus is on legal tech companies to coordinate standards and seamless interoperability to improve customer experience and reduce the drag on software use that comes from having to constantly shift among different legal tech applications.