Ludivine Sellem
Tech&Law Intern
Recently, Ludivine Sellem, an intern for Robus, had the opportunity to discuss with the CEO and founder of CLIGAL, Dor Goldiner. Founded in 2017 and acquired in 2022 by Axioma Information Solutions, CLIGAL-tech is becoming a real benchmark for Israeli law firms.
In this interview, we learn more about this Israeli legal tech company, its drive for innovation, and its plans for the next few years.
- What is CLIGAL?
CLIGAL whose name is formed from the words “click” and “legal” is a software designed to help lawyers in their day-to-day work and especially for the preparation of legal documents. Thanks to different and various options provided by the program, legal professionals can easily and quickly prepare their documents like files and pleadings for the court.
Nowadays, CLIGAL is the most popular legal software used in Israel by leading law firms as well as public authorities such as the Ministry of Justice, the Knesset or the Tax Authority. Thus, over 15, 000 attorneys use this program to perform their routine tasks.
- How was Cligal born?
After graduating in electrical engineering from Tel Aviv University, I decided to study law. Intern then associate for a big Israeli law firm in Intellectual property and litigation fields, and my team handled complex litigation proceedings. One day, I worked on another motion. The preparation of his pleading for the court took longer than I expected, so I had to stay until late at the office to organize the legal documents required for submission to the court and had to edit, print, and number the several appendices that accompanied the request. When I thought that his work was done, I realized that one of the attached documents had to be removed. I had to start all the work he did from scratch. That’s when I came up with the idea of developing a software (“CLIGAL”) that would allow lawyers to perform substantial legal work such as the preparation of legal documents for litigation, in a record time.
- CLIGAL is the benchmark for Israeli law firms for the preparation of legal documents. According to you, what, from your perspective, makes CLIGAL stand out from its competitors?
Israeli leading firms use CLIGAL daily to prepare their legal documents such as Shibolet, Firon, Meitar, Herzog, or Gornitzky to give a few examples. According to the CEO, a number of reasons can explain the success of CLIGAL.
The first and principal one is that CLIGAL can be defined as a “product-centric company”. Products are still designed and developed to delight customers and provide value. CLIGAL constantly seeks feedback from its customers and takes into account their current needs to continuously improve its software and associated solutions. The program is regularly and frequently updated. Thus, the company prioritizes innovation in product design, features, and functionality and, ultimately stays ahead of competitors.
Then, the price of the different subscriptions offered by CLIGAL is very attractive. The customers can choose the most appropriate subscription for their operations. For now, no other companies in the Israeli market can compete in terms of value for money.
- How the software helps law firms streamline their legal document preparation process? Which tools does the software offer?
Lawyers save precious time in their day-to-day work because they can realize all their tasks with one solution. Therefore, the program developed is very handy. For any legal professional, there are many advantages to using such software.
To prepare their legal documents, lawyers can work with all the tools offered by this program such as the generator tool, the editing documents, the appendices tool, or the digital signature. With the first three tools, lawyers working in a litigation department can generate very easily the documents required for submission to the court like files and appendices. The digital signature is also an extension found very useful and much appreciated. With this one, you can sign the client remotely and finish quickly all the signature process required for almost any agreements.
In addition to these very practical tools for preparing legal documents, we developed solutions to generate the questionnaires imposed by law in certain fields. In the case of the provision of financial services, CLIGAL helps lawyers with the customer identification and recognition procedure required by the “Money Laundering Prohibition Act” of 2022. The company implemented an interface for the KYC (know your client) process. According to the relevant personal information filled in by the client digitally about his financial situation, a know-the-customer form is produced by the system according to the financial regulation. From the digital interface, the lawyer receives the answers of the client to the KYC questionnaire and can initiate an automatic risk assessment and so, decides if the client is reliable enough to benefit from the business service he would like.
Alongside the “documents” solution mentioned above, which is the flagship product of the company launched 6 years ago, another popular and useful tool has been developed: the management application. This solution is very helpful for lawyers since it’s a kind organizer that allows them to manage the tasks to do and to know the time spent on each of them.
- To maintain your status as the go-to in the field of the preparation of legal documents for law firms how do you plan to continue innovating in the legal tech space? What are your plans for the future?
The first concern of CLIGAL is to implement AI in its solutions because it can really leverage the work. Thus, it’s a real need and even, a must for CLIGAL to focus in that as well. The second one is to continue to make improvements to the product and solutions developed and particularly, enhance the latest product launched on the market (the management tool) by developing and improving features.
- How do you envision the future of your company in the next decade, in terms of growth and development?
In the coming years, we plan to strengthen our workforce by hiring additional employees. Indeed, for some tools such as the management application which are continually used by the customers, more support is necessary to pursue their development and support.
The next step for CLIGAL will be to introduce the product internationally. Indeed, we are eager to expand the business abroad. As a consequence, marketing its solution for foreign law firms is our future challenge. The application is already designed to be used abroad because it is available in English, Hebrew, and Arab versions. In the first stage, we will focus on English-speaking countries.
