After finishing the most recent cycle of the MDR Lab programme in late September 2022, Mishcon de Reya is delighted to announce that it has signed a new commercial agreement with US-based legal tech start-up, Version Story. Founded by Kevin O’Connell, a Stanford-trained lawyer turned software developer and Jordan Bryan software engineer, Version Story helps lawyers compare, track and merge documents with ease.
Kevin O’Connell said: “We were so excited to join the Lab this summer. It is clear for all to see that Legal collaboration has changed. Lawyers used to pass around and mark up a single typewritten draft. Now teams of lawyers collaborate and mark up drafts simultaneously in different formats, on different versions and in different time zones. This new workflow has new requirements that other current tools can’t solve for. But we believe Version Story can, and we had the chance to prove that through the MDR Lab programme.”
The pair spent 12 weeks in London, working side by side with fee earners and members of the strategy and tech teams to further develop their product and measure its impact for the firm. The MDR Lab team onboarded over 70 fee earners as part of the initial engagement, who made use of Version Stories’ core features thousands of times and generated 1500+ document versions. During the 12 weeks of the Lab, Version Story rapidly iterated on and shipped over 10 product updates.
Dan Sinclair, Head of MDR Lab, commented: “Positive usage stats, amongst other metrics that we track through the Lab are often a great signal for a company that can demonstrate problem-solution-fit. The numbers spoke for themselves, and our users were clearly enjoying the product. The exciting thing is that we knew that this would compound further post iManage integration, which has now been successfully completed.” The multi-year deal allows for up to 1000 licenses of the Version Story product, which is already being used across key transactional departments.
Kerstin Morgan, Head of Practice Transformation at Mishcon de Reya said: “We are excited to get this deal done so quickly. There has been a healthy amount of urgency due to how enthusiastic the lawyers were. They wanted to keep using Version Story, and they were eager to further incorporate it into their work by having it integrate with iManage.”
About Version Story
Version Story is a complete redlining and markup integration system that accommodates how lawyers use technology. Version Story organises a document’s history and generates comparisons in a way that is simple and intuitive. Version Story makes it easy for you to merge several versions into a single draft, in turn showing who introduced changes, and in which draft. By integrating with the firm’s document management system, Version Story helps teams to track document provenance and maintain a single source of truth.
About MDR Lab
MDR Lab was launched in 2017 to enable Mishcon de Reya to invest in the growing legaltech space. As the first dedicated legaltech incubator and investment arm in the UK, MDR Lab targets early-stage legaltech companies who are trying to transform the legal market and helps them build better products.
Selected start-ups spend 12 weeks on site in Mishcon’s offices, working closely with people across the firm to massively accelerate their knowledge of the problem space. Mishcon act as initial users of the product and provide regular feedback, enabling rapid prototyping and product development. Through this diligence, Mishcon is exposed to new technology that can improve the way its business is run, tools that its lawyers can use to work more efficiently and new investment opportunities.
