As a company, it is important for us to be part of a new industrial movement that formulates economic goals in line with sustainable criteria. On the one hand, this is intended to make an active contribution to environmental protection; on the other hand, companies also benefit economically by formulating a sustainable corporate strategy. Intelligent planning and the use of new technologies can reduce the use of resources and thus cut costs, and creating an attractive working environment for employees promotes their satisfaction. The latter has a positive impact on employee productivity.[1]

BlockAxs makes its contribution here by developing PACTA, a sustainable product that enables our customers to reconcile ecological and economic goals. In addition, we have created a corporate culture based on sustainable values that not only exists on paper, but is also lived.

Based on the Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the UN, we would like to show in our mini-series "Sustainability through LegalTech", which social and sustainable impact the use of LegalTech has for companies. Part 1 of the series looks at Goals 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth and 9, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.

Work environment, economic growth and innovation 

Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth.

Today's contracting processes are characterized by various inefficiencies. Work processes involve many error-prone, manual activities and are also time-consuming and tedious, noticeably slowing down business value creation.

Our digital contract lifecycle management increases the efficiency of our clients' daily work by 70-80% through automation of work processes, standardization of legal documents, and the use of the latest technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence or rule-based systems. In addition, error rates are reduced by 75% and staff productivity is increased by 40%. Thus, PACTA paves the way for sustainable economic growth. The time spent on activities in a contract process can be reduced by up to 75% and the process duration itself can be halved.

In this way, PACTA helps our customers to achieve or maintain competitiveness in international markets. Through this competitive advantage, our customers are able to fully focus on their value creation, drive innovation and thus retain and create jobs.

PACTA's digital approach also promotes work-life balance. Our customers' employees are able to work regardless of location, time and device. This allows them to perform their tasks much more flexibly and better align their daily routine with individual circumstances or needs. Research by the German Economic Institute (IW) has shown that employees are more satisfied when they have more freedom and self-determination in terms of working hours and location. It is important to promote this as an employer, since satisfied employees deliver more and better work results.[2]

Goal 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

As a LegalTech start up, we see ourselves as technology and innovation leaders. Even though new technologies and disruptive innovations are often viewed critically by traditional market players, they are necessary to achieve environmental goals such as increasing resource efficiency.

As described in the introduction, the use of new technologies contributes equally to cost savings and productivity increases. While cost savings in the past often went hand in hand with unpopular measures such as layoffs, nowadays, thanks to LegalTech, this is associated with an increase in employee satisfaction and a positive contribution to environmental and climate protection. PACTA thus paves the way for a sustainable relationship between employers, employees and the environment.

In the second part of our mini-series, we show what impact the paper consumption of European companies has on the environment and how this can be reduced with LegalTech.

Sources:

[1] https://greentarget.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2018-Legal-Industry-Outlook_Final.pdf

[2] https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/forms/alternative-legal-service-provider-study-2017?cid=70113000000w4IC&chl=pr