Herzog Fox & Neeman speeds contract drafting and cuts IT support needs with Spellbook AI

Herzog Fox & Neeman's Tech Division, with over 70 transactional lawyers, handles complex venture capital, M&A, and cross-border commercial deals for clients developing advanced technologies. The firm needed to support scalability, consistency, and innovation across legal workflows, while attorneys spent significant time on repetitive, low-value tasks like proofreading, formatting, and boilerplate drafting.

Herzog piloted Spellbook, an AI contract review, drafting, and chat tool embedded as a Microsoft Word add-in, within its Tech Division before expanding it firm-wide to IP, regulatory, corporate, and commercial groups through a phased rollout with dedicated training. Attorneys use Spellbook Associate to generate key transaction documents from a single uploaded term sheet, alongside in-Word chat, redlining, and summarization features, after the firm conducted security, compliance, and ethical assessments prior to rollout.

Spellbook reduced time spent on repetitive tasks such as proofreading, formatting, and boilerplate drafting, freeing attorneys for higher-level work and helping junior lawyers get hands-on with meaningful tasks earlier. The firm reports lawyers need IT assistance with the tool less than 10% of the time, and leadership attributes the efficiencies to reduced HR costs, more competitive client pricing, and faster turnaround without compromising quality.

• Deep Microsoft Word integration and ease of use drove adoption beyond the initial tech-savvy pilot group to the full firm.
• The vendor's fast, engineer-led iteration cycle (e.g., a redline-capable chatbot shipped within weeks of feedback) built trust with the legal team.
• Low IT support burden (under 10% of usage) suggests the tool fits smoothly into existing workflows with minimal technical overhead.