Many of the questions your legal team gets, it has already answered.
When you keep an answer, the next employee with a question like it gets an answer based on it. Your legal team spends its time on the questions that need a lawyer.
What day one looks like.
You bring one policy your legal team keeps re-explaining, such as travel gifts or giving customer data to vendors. Setup starts by finding what the policy decides and what it leaves open.
Employees get one place to ask. Your lawyers approve the policy and the interpretations answers depend on. No answer goes out under a policy counsel has not put in effect.
A policy is written for a category and leaves words open, such as “reasonably necessary” or “material change.” When a question turns on one of those, counsel decides what it means. A model may find the open term; it never decides what it means.
Questions only counsel can settle
An employee
“A supplier wants to take my team to dinner, about $150 a head. Is that ‘modest’?”
Sent to Legal
An employee
“A vendor sent me a $50 gift card for a coffee chain. Does that count as money?”
Sent to Legal
An employee
“I’m visiting a client abroad and they’ll present a gift at a ceremony. Would refusing it be ‘inappropriate’?”
Sent to Legal
Counsel’s decision is then the basis for answers to the next questions like it, within the reach counsel sets.
Where the policy doesn’t settle a question, it is sent to your lawyers, and the employee is told so plainly.
What your legal team gets.
- More reach, the same legal team. Questions your approved policy settles get answered, and your lawyers keep their time for the ones that need them.
- Answers you stand behind. Within the reach you set, employees get answers based on your decision.
- Every question in view. See what employees are asking and how each question was answered, in one place.
- A head start on replies. A reply to an employee can start from a draft, and you edit it before you send.
- Built with privilege in mind. Employees ask through a channel designed for confidential communication with company counsel.
What the pilot asks of you.
The pilot is founder-assisted: the setup work is done for you. Your side is one policy and counsel’s time for its open questions. Employees reach Newcomb by a link. If the pilot shows nothing worth keeping, the record of what your employees asked is still yours.