Legal Manager and Ask Q combine expertise to give legal teams the best possible support

Although the two companies look alike, Legal Manager and Ask Q are far more than competitors. Behind the scenes, these experts from the Netherlands and Belgium complement one another to make their legal services stronger and smarter. Rémy Bonnaffé, CEO of Ask Q, explains how that works in practice.

Belgium-based Ask Q supports the legal teams of a wide range of companies and helps them modernize. “On one hand, we do that through legal services,” Bonnaffé says. “In concrete terms, we take contract work off their hands and provide support on data protection. On the other hand, we offer legal operations consulting. Alongside implementing change, a lot of strategy comes into it as well, such as mapping out a vision and implementing legal tech. Because our legal services are strong, we also have a good sense of what is going on, which means our legal operations advice is current and relevant.”

The same DNA

In that respect, Ask Q has a great deal in common with Legal Manager. “Our DNA really is the same,” the CEO says. “I think we both see very clearly that legal teams can be supported in a new and better way. But we do not offer corporate housekeeping as a service, for example, and Legal Manager does. They can take on a great deal of administrative work, while we lean more toward complex legal work and legal operations consulting. So that immediately creates good opportunities to complement each other.”

A partnership like that cannot be rolled out across every area at once. Legal Manager and Ask Q are still very much in a testing phase, working out how best to strengthen one another. But the first joint project is now up and running. “We use AI tools for a first-line review of contracts,” Bonnaffé explains. “That comes with our own checklist of the things we want to see in a contract as a minimum. It makes it easy to spot what is missing, or whether something needs to be worded differently. For those checks and adjustments, support from Legal Manager is very useful. Their team can take on part of our workload, straight from the Netherlands.”

New possibilities

In other areas, it is Legal Manager that could draw on Ask Q’s expertise. Bonnaffé points to his company’s Legal Ops Health Scan. “That is an audit to see how mature a team is when it comes to legal operations. Using a questionnaire and, if needed, an interview, we make a sharp assessment of where you stand. That gives you a clear mapping of where the priorities lie right away. Based on that, we make recommendations. We find that this is often a good starting point for companies. And since Legal Manager wants to serve its clients as well as it possibly can, a Health Scan like that could be a valuable addition to its offering.”

Like Legal Manager, Ask Q continues to work toward its mission of easing the workload of legal teams. “There is enormous pressure on teams like that,” Bonnaffé says. “More and more legislation keeps arriving, and the day-to-day legal work piles up. The classic response is to bring in law firms or interim legal managers, but we want to help lawyers look at this differently. To reinvent themselves. Technology plays a crucial role in that.”