How Docusign and Lexion Will Empower Agreement Management

The agreement to acquire Lexion, a leading provider of AI-powered agreement management software, for US$165m, is subject to customary adjustments. The acquisition will bolster DocuSign's position in Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM), a growing SaaS category, and will add more powerful AI capabilities to the DocuSign IAM platform, as a company in e-signature and contract lifecycle management.

Docusign agrees to acquire Lexion

Lexion offers AI-based agreement technology that simplifies and centralises the contract process, allowing users to accelerate drafting, negotiations, and review agreements. With a suite of solutions designed for creating an automated workflow and extracting vital information from contracts, Lexion has established itself as a proven leader in streamlining agreement management.

"We are thrilled to welcome Lexion to DocuSign," says Allan Thygesen, CEO at DocuSign.

"We share a vision of smarter agreement management, and our joint AI-powered innovation will deliver increased value, productivity, and simplicity to our combined customers.

“This strategic acquisition underscores our commitment to providing our customers with Intelligent Agreement Management solutions that will transform agreement data into insights, accelerate contract reviews, and boost productivity to ultimately grow revenue faster."

The agreement will see the co-founders of Lexion — CEO Gaurav Oberoi, CTO Emad Elwany, and Principal Architect James Baird — join DocuSign in senior roles within product and engineering.

Gaurav will be a VP of Product Management, Emad will be a VP of Engineering, and James will be a Principal Engineer. The co-founders, who met at the Allen Institute for AI, have extensive expertise in AI and contract management. Lexion also brings to DocuSign a team of world-class AI engineers with backgrounds at Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, along with a broader organisation that has a deep understanding of the agreement management space.

"Our shared vision with DocuSign revolves around revolutionising how agreements are created, managed, and analysed for organisations around the world," adds Gaurav.

"We will drive innovation, deliver greater value to both DocuSign and Lexion customers, along with a broader organisation that has a deep understanding of the agreement management space."

Good news for users

Lexion has been well-received for its ability to offer quick and easy implementation, learning, and use. The company also has a strong track record of listening to customers' needs and delivering the solutions they need.

"From a business perspective, it's about speed and not just about saving legal professionals time, so when we get information into the hands of stakeholders and attorneys on the front lines, deals get closed faster," says David Wang, Chief Innovation Officer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. "The potential for meaningful efficiencies and clear operational advantages was central to what Wilson Sonsini first saw in Lexion in its formative stages."

Lexion technology integration

With the integration of Lexion’s advanced AI capabilities into the DocuSign IAM platform, businesses will be able to access richer insight and analysis from their agreements, expedite contract reviews and negotiations, allowing for seamless location of insights within documents and driving process automation. As well as bringing advanced document understanding capabilities to DocuSign, including contract reviews, negotiation, and a Q&A experience.

As well as a number of other key features, including:

• Richer insights and analysis: DocuSign will be able to help customers unlock insights into more critical information in their agreements to support day-to-day operations, answer business-relevant questions, and identify risks. Lexion technology will enable DocuSign to accelerate the pace of customers having granular understanding of their agreement structure, data, and attributes for a wider variety of contracts with better precision.
• Lexion AI Contract Assist: A word plug-in will substantially accelerate and intelligently assist in the contract review and negotiation process. Customers will be able to automatically review contracts from first and third parties for potential risks and deviations from approved playbooks. Where agreements don't align with company standards or customised playbooks, the feature provides suggested revisions with AI-generated recommendations.
• Answer agreement questions, effortlessly: Lastly, Lexion technology will enable users to more seamlessly find information in their agreements, via the Q&A experience. Imagine being able to simply ask whether a contract includes an indemnification or warranty clause and have your question answered instantly, without scrolling through the whole document.
• Seamlessly manage intake: Lexion's technology allows users to initiate tasks, provide approvals, and add comments simply via email, Microsoft Teams, or Slack. This seamless integration results in high adoption by the business and a robust picture of agreement-related tasks in one place.

Lexion's AI and legal workflow expertise, along with the world-class DocuSign AI team and scalable agreement platform, will drive innovation and value at a larger scale, enabling Lexion and DocuSign to serve more customers across more industries and use cases sooner. Combining forces will benefit DocuSign and Lexion customers. DocuSign will leverage Lexion's AI models for faster contract creation, enhanced negotiations, and strategic insights. Lexion customers will gain from integrations with DocuSign solutions while Lexion products will continue to be offered and improved for their hundreds of enterprise customers.

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