Taking the Next Step in Our Smart Agreement Journey

As we have evolved the Docusign Agreement Cloud platform over the past few years, we have paid particular attention to how agreements are evolving from static digital documents—simple “pictures of paper”—into living documents which include functionality that adds value throughout the agreement process.

Often known as “smart agreements”, they incorporate computer code and smart clauses that effectively bring agreements to life—connecting different computer systems together, enabling actions to be taken automatically, and helping business to get done faster, more cost-efficiently, and with lower risk.

It could be checking that the bank account details in a contract are correct, or that an internet service provider is meeting its uptime regulations. It could also be about solving problems—i.e. preventing the contract from being signed if those account details are wrong, or initiating a claim if the ISP misses its targets.

It is a compelling and exciting frontier of technology, and it’s an important enabler of making our Agreement Cloud smart. It’s against that backdrop that Docusign has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the IP rights and hire the team from one of the industry’s smart agreement pioneers, Clause.

Clause is a close partner of ours already, and we joined its Series A funding round in 2019. The company has built a smart agreement platform that enables and automates the actions mentioned above--such as sending notifications, running compliance checks, and sending contract status updates. 

Its products already integrate tightly with Docusign eSignature, and we’re exploring deeper connections to contract lifecycle management (CLM) too. In addition, Clause’s experience developing specific solutions for financial services, insurance, and healthcare companies complements the way the Agreement Cloud helps many of our customers.

It’s for all these reasons that bringing Clause into the Docusign fold makes sense. The majority of the team will move over to our platform engineering team, thereby adding some unique technical expertise and a breadth of capabilities that align well with the future of the Agreement Cloud platform.

We look forward to welcoming the Clause team into Docusign. For now, if you’d like to read more about their vision for smart agreements and the overall space, visit Clause’s blog.