How does time in the Brazilian rainforest translate into an innovative contract management application? Find out in today’s legal tech episode of The Legal Helm. Our guest is Dr. Elena Mechik, founder of INHUBBER, a revolutionary new approach to contract management that uses blockchain technology.

Tune in to hear how Dr. Mechik’s unique approach to this foundational business process not only brings contract generation and its use forward, but also supports climate health. 

Hello and welcome to the Legal Helm, the show where we talk all things legal plus tech.

Have you ever wondered how blockchain and legal contracts might actually benefit the rainforest? Dr. Elena Mechik, today's guest has, and her story is a fascinating one that you're not gonna want to miss.She also talks with BIM about why contracts are the lifeblood of companies and how blockchain can make them more secure and make corporate supply chains more efficient. And now onto the show.

I'm really excited to be talking to her today on the topic of contract management and digital signature software for law firms. Firstly, welcome Elena, and thank you for joining us.

Elena Mechik: Thank you very much, bim for the introduction.

Bim Dave: Sure. So before we dive into, in Hubber, it would be really great to just hear from you a little bit about your background and your journey to really explain how that kind of journey led you to build in Hubber.

And that's how my love for nature came out. I didn't know about it. it just sounded like it should be interesting. And I never thought of having this possibility of spending some time in the rainforest. And so I went there. I fell in love with the forest. They fell in love as this beauty of the nature and actually being there.

I heard the forest cut (? - Not sure what she says here) we didn't know where it was happening. There was no clear idea like what is going on? But it just sounded terrible. And so I actually was studying industrial engineering with a topic on engineering for airplanes. And it was my first py (Not sure) I would say. I, I decided to write my PhD on that topic after graduating, after writing my master thesis.

And by the end of my PhD I got to know the blockchain technology. And that technology actually gave me the idea that at the end we can't change the world or we can't change the existing challenges. The existing technologies, that's what we see. The illegal logging is continuing and continuing. We are trying the same methods as we were trying for the last 20, 30, 40 years and nothing is changing.

Supply chain steps starting with the logging of the timber, ending with the final product, furniture, et cetera. And so that's how the idea was born of in Harbor. And then we started investigating the situation on the market. We started talking to furniture producers and trying to understand here is the market ready for this kind of.

And what we saw is that, of course, in the economical, in the business world, and I was coming from research NGO world people are thinking totally different. Yeah. You need to make money at the end. Yeah. You And investing more in the production makes no sense as long as there's no pressure from outside, from the government to actually tell you.

Then the contracts regarding productions and the final contracts of selling the products, et cetera. So the whole supply chain, the whole production is based on contract, the initial contract or many. And then we started from here. Yeah, we, we said we create a transparent contract management solution where companies actually can.

it might sound a little bit complicated. I'm not sure. So just, just tell me that's actually it. Yes.

Bim Dave: That's very helpful and thank you for that background. That's really interesting to kind of hear the journey and how you from you know, some of the supply chain management from where you were in the rainforest all the way to, bringing that to firms and businesses that can really benefit from the technology platform.

So that's much appreciated. In terms of the, the technology, so you touched a little bit on. some of the underlying technology being blockchain based for our audience who may be new to blockchain and may have only heard it in the context of Bitcoin, for example can you help us just with like a, a simple understanding of what is blockchain and what does the technology actually mean?

Yes. So usually when I save a document on my pc, on my laptop, it just saved on my laptop. But what blockchain does, you saves the same document, but simultaneously, let's say on 10 laptops. Yeah, more or less. If we can tell it. Yes. At the same time, in the same moment. So in case someone wants to change this information, which has been saved simultaneously on 10 computers and tries to change it,.

All the nine other computers will tell no, there's something wrong. It can't be because this saving of information happens so simultaneously everywhere. And changing of some information just on one spot makes it impossible. so in that way we can provide actually transparent data protection, I would say yes, data protection in a way that we can see if something is being changed, manipulated et cetera.

If someone else would get access to a contract, a competitor, let's say It can have big challenges for the company. So having this transparency of who has seen the document, who has changed what, at what point of time has it happened yesterday or the day after, can also have an immense impact on negotiations later.

Yeah, it depends of course, on the contract, but all this information is very critical and the blockchain technology provides this possibility of. Having a full transparency of everything, what is happening around the data, and in our case, the contracts.

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And you get a digital signature, but ultimately it's kind of just a simple workflow based approach. For those firms that have something in place but are thinking of a shift to a platform like in Hubba help us understand, what are the main advantages? I think you touched on one of them, security and give us a feel for what that transition might look like from an implementation perspective.

So how easy is it to implement a solution like coming from like a more traditional software approach.

So you get this overview of all negotiated clauses, of cancellation periods, cancellation possibilities. You get a possibility of being reminded automatically and at the end, this mass import possibility gives you a very easy way of actually switching from one system to another. Of course, we have to look at particular contracts and to see company specific situation in order to tell exactly how it would work, but in general the companies who come to us, they just can upload a lot of contracts at once get a structured repository for contracts with access rights, access permissions, who can see which information, who can see which folders, subfolders, workspace, et, etcetera.

And because of it we can actually sign any document format. Let's say an Excel sheet, which you usually would have to save as a PDF first, or a video picture, whatever it is, we can actually upload and it can be signed and we can p rovide against the securities that nothing has been changed or manipulated afterwards.

Bim Dave: the a I P sounds like really interesting and definitely like a differentiator in terms of what your product brings to the market. Are you able to just delve in a little bit deeper there and help us with some examples of the kind of benefits of that kind of AI doing the analysis of the context of the contract?

Elena Mechik: So in a way it depends on, on the use case, of course. And we have been going deeper into real estate contracts as an example, let's say there's a transaction and building is on sale and someone wants to check all the documentation, all the contracts connected to this building with all the rental apartments, with offices being rented as well.

What are the rental conditions? So in a way to make the whole due diligence, in order to make a decision whether this building is worth the money people asking for. So as a legal firm or as a transaction as a real estate company. Someone needs to look at all the documentation, all the contracts, and of course, as larger the building, small documents, certain contracts there are.

It won't happen this year. It won't happen in 10 years. Yes, there's always this possibility of making mistakes by a human as well as by ai. So we should understand AI as a possibility to actually help us make decision. And help us work faster, work more efficiently, and that's what our AI is doing.

Yeah, it scans through the documents, scans through the contracts highlights the most relevant information. Shows it to the user so that the user can just go through this information by clicking on certain information. You can jump on the certain area within the contract and read it if you want within the contract.

Bim Dave: just to touch on a little bit further on the AI side of things, because obviously as I'm sure you know, AI and particularly open AI's chat, G p T platform has been plastered all over the news over, over the last few weeks and months. And some people are calling it as revolutionary as the internet.

And I'm really interested just to get your thoughts in terms of what impact do you think AI from what you're seeing in terms of some of the machine learning models that are coming out at the moment will have not just on, you know, the industries that we serve, but just overall from an impact perspective in the way we kind of look at AI and apply AI in our world.

and that's why we need to change the way we are learning. We are thinking and we are working. In my perspective, Google will have to think about something because Google is kind of a technology which, which is like library. We don't need to go to library anymore. We can open Google and find the information we are looking for, but still we need to go through various websites, through Wikipedia, whatever there is to find the answer.

And and I think the state and the regulations say they are, of course, they're not fast enough to go over this technology and to find a answers to these challenges, which we are about to

Bim Dave: face.

And I think just thinking about the generative writing capability of some of these models. Will transform probably the way that they think about writing content for the stuff that they have to do from an education perspective. So it'll be interesting to see how all of the different industries that are kind of leveraging AI in different ways as well as, you know, some of the young kids coming up in education at the moment will think about how to leverage the technology to their advantage, but also then how we assess how much we actually learn in the process as individuals, right? And as, as humans. So it's, it's definitely gonna be an interesting interesting few years ahead of us as, as we kind of come to terms with what impact it will make. So appreciate to hear your comments on that. So Elena, it's been really good learning a little bit about in Hubber and the product, and it sounds like an amazing solution.

Elena Mechik: Yeah. Very interesting.

Yes. So just do it. Just do it. If you have an idea, just do it and just try it out and I would tell her to start your entrepreneurship journey a little bit earlier. Actually, my, my time of traveling and getting to know the world, I would never want to miss it.

But maybe there was a very few possibilities of starting a business year. earlier. So all the challenges I'm facing now, or few years ago, I would already have learned from them. So of course it's and that's actually what I see how education needs to change. We need to try, we shouldn't just learn and just, you know, study and that, won't be possible anymore.

Bim Dave: Yes.

Elena Mechik: Yes. And that would be my advice. Yes.

Bim Dave: Yeah, no, I, I love that. I think that, and I think that is great advice because I think a lot of people will be familiar with procrastinating about making a decision to do something right. But nine times outta 10, the right thing to do is go with the gut, make it happen. And yes, you may fall over but that's when you learn, right?

That's when probably, probably you learn. The biggest biggest lessons of life is when you fall over and you pick yourself up and you

carry on going. Yeah. totally agree.

Elena Mechik: exactly.

Bim Dave: Next question is what one question you would've asked yourself today that I didn't.

Elena Mechik: Yeah. What is your vision? Maybe like is the vision, what's the big goal of Inhubber

Bim Dave: tell us, tell us about that. I'd love, I'd love to

Elena Mechik: hear it.

Like the PhD, you'll just write it long along and at some point of time you just want to finish and put it somewhere and never touch it again, to be honest. And that's what happens with contracts as well. Yeah, we just tried them as more complicated. It is, it's. , we want just to put it aside but at the end, all the processes, everything, what is happening within companies is based on this contract.

Yeah. On if we, if we go just very deep into, into the companies operations, the contract is the heart of it. And that's why, that's why we actually say, yeah, the contract should also seen as the heart of the company. And that's why a contract management solution can actually provide a total transparency into everything, all the processes, everything.

So actually being the first point of truth for everything, for the ceo, for the C level, for, for everyone being in the company.

Bim Dave: Yep. I love it. Thank you. And just finally, what is the best way for my listeners to contact you if they wanna learn more about your, your product offering?

Elena Mechik: Yeah, it's us through the website. Asking for a demo demo request, our website is Or my email. It's elena.mechik@inhubber.com That would be the best way. Yes. Or LinkedIn, of course. Yeah, LinkedIn is is a good, good way.

Elena Mechik: Yeah. Thank you Bim. Thanks a lot.