This article was created in partnership with TermLynx
Jason Arbuck’s first introduction to TermLynx was in early 2020 and that two-sentence elevator pitch — You’ll be able to see and link to all cross-referenced sections and definitions while staying in one place in your document — was enough to pique his interest.
Well on his way to completely paperless, Arbuck, a partner in the financial services group at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, still printed out the lengthy documents associated with the lending and M&A transactions he worked on. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, remaining paper-based in any way became more challenging. Arbuck also realized that during Teams calls with large groups negotiating complex agreements, when people asked questions or proposed options it was difficult to respond efficiently. It called for addressing complex issues involving multiple aspects of a document, including intricate relationships between sections and definitions. To boil it down, it required “a lot of scrolling around.”
“I got a demo of TermLynx and realized all that friction would go away: we could answer questions and deal with things in real time like never before,” Arbuck says. “It cuts down on time, which cuts down on cost, and it allows me to be better. No assumptions, no relying on memory, I can see cross references and defined terms immediately and with accuracy. Those are huge drivers for our clients.”
Recognizing the clear value in a solution that provides lawyers with the ability to more easily locate relevant information, Cassels and TermLynx recently announced a multi-year strategic partnership. This marks a major milestone for the young Canadian tech company, signaling not only the software’s effectiveness but also its potential to reshape contract review practices across the industry.
Cassels partnership a catalyst for growth
A cutting-edge contract drafting solution embedded in Microsoft Word, TermLynx empowers users to edit with precision and manage the complexity of lengthy agreements while also effortlessly identifying drafting errors. A former M&A lawyer himself, Adam Sternthal, founder and CEO of TermLynx, knows first-hand the difficulties that come with reviewing extensive documents that often reached north of 100 pages.
“As a junior struggling to unpack complicated and sophisticated contracts, I wished for a tool that could help me make sense of them quickly in order to deliver high-quality work product to my superiors,” Sternthal explains. “That’s what TermLynx does. It builds a map of all the parts of the contract and how they fit together.”
As one of Canada’s leading national law firms, Cassels is the perfect representation of the user that TermLynx strives to help.
“Partnering with TermLynx represents a significant step forward in our drive to adopt the best legal technologies available,” confirms Venky Srinivasan, Chief Information Officer at Cassels, calling it “a tool that complements the expertise of our lawyers.”
“We’re excited to integrate it into our practice and leverage its benefits for our clients.”
TermLynx continues to work closely with Cassels to make its integration into existing workflows simple and seamless, and Arbuck calls the response so far “overwhelmingly positive.”
“Any lawyer who works in medium or large documents will be excited by this solution and that’s the reaction our lawyers had,” Arbuck says. “When you find something that solves a problem for you, you want everybody to enjoy the benefit. It makes us as a firm more efficient and frankly, if you don’t get on this platform, you’ll look like a fool. There’s no going back — I couldn’t live without it now.”
Practical, lawyer friendly, and continuously improving
For legal professionals looking to streamline contract review and negotiation, TermLynx offers a practical, lawyer-friendly solution that emerged from firsthand experience and continues to evolve with real-world feedback.
“From the start, our goal was simple: tackle the everyday drafting frustrations that lawyers face — the kind that most of the legal tech industry is overlooking,” Sternthal explains, adding that despite all the advances in legal technology, professionals still struggle with basic document challenges.
“Understanding how different parts of an agreement connect, finding important terms, and spotting inconsistencies shouldn't be so difficult,” he continues. “We've built a tool that makes these everyday tasks easier without changing how lawyers already work — leading to better adoption and stronger returns for the firm.”
Overall, Sternthal sees Cassels’ enthusiastic buy-in to his vision as invaluable to the expansion of his technology across more of Canada’s top-tier firms because it “signals to other firms that we’re a proven solution worth considering,” he says.
And for Sternthal, his front-row seat to his technology’s uptake within Cassels has been something of a full-circle moment.
“To see young lawyers using it and having that ability that I didn’t have, that’s where a lot of the joy of it comes in — that was the original vision,” he says. “Whenever firms try the product, they see the value. Our goal now is to make sure more firms give it a shot.”
For more information about TermLynx, visit www.termlynx.com.