Katya Fisher – Aracor – Artificial Lawyer

Our Founder’s Story this time is about Katya Fisher, who created Aracor, which enables deal teams to go through transaction data to get a clear narrative and key insights, thus saving time, money, and reducing risk. She will be a speaker at the Legal Innovators California conference, June 11 + 12, in San Francisco.

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– First, you once worked in the music business – which has changed hugely since then. What did you do there and what lessons can we learn from this?

When I was a student at NYU I had a Saturday morning radio show on WNYU AM and interned at Universal Music Group. I went to law school planning to be an entertainment lawyer and worked for several music business attorneys who represented some major rock stars. I thought I was going to be the next Clive Davis or Rick Rubin. But this was during a very tumultuous time in the industry. It started with Napster and ended with Spotify, ITunes, and the end of MTV.

Departments at record labels were shutting down, the entire business changed so fast. And there was so much resistance in the industry. The industry didn’t die – it just changed, for better or worse. The creator economy exploded and gave opportunities to so many artists who never would have stood a chance before. I’ve learned the lesson never to expect that things will always just ‘be as they are’, or to accept the status quo, and to learn to embrace change, and technology, and opportunities.

– How did you find your way into legal tech?

I got tired of the transparency gap – the space between thousands of deal documents and the quick, to-the-point answers my CFO, principal, fund managers, and other executives expect on demand.

Most of my career has been focused on the tech industry. I’m Chief Legal Officer of www.constructor.org which is an ecosystem that includes a venture fund, software company, and university and represent its founder, Serg Bell (www.arici.com) , who is a serial tech entrepreneur – he founded Parallels, Acronis, Webpros, Constructor Group – among many others. I have built and scaled a legal team that reports to me and I oversee all external law firm relationships and projects globally. Working alongside Serg and all the talent in this ecosystem I’ve also had an incredible bird’s eye view of the startup industry.

I’ve also encountered the same challenges over and over:

a) Mountains of legal docs – data rooms spill over with SPAs, side letters, board minutes, amendments, addendums, and so forth;

b) Urgent, high-stakes questions. Partners, CFOs, and deal teams want to know: What’s the real waterfall? Are we triggering any consents? How do I call an emergency board meeting? What is the scope of restrictive covenants among these employees?;

c) Manual triage. Even after outside counsel sends a memo (and a massive invoice), someone inside – usually me – has to double check, reconcile versions, and explain it all in plain English;

d) Time and money lost. Hours pile up, fees climb, and everyone still worries we missed something. And then some time passes and we are like goldfish, we forget everything, all the details of a transaction, and we need to look at these docs and figure this stuff out all over again.

I saw a massive problem, I wanted to solve it for myself, my legal team, and my colleagues, and ended up a legal tech founder. It makes sense – I’m uniquely positioned to build what I am building now, and I’m excited to do it, it feels like it’s what I am meant to be doing and an opportunity to bring all my experience to the table.

– Why create Aracor and how did you decide to focus on deal insights?

As mentioned, I wanted to solve a problem for my companies and realized an opportunity to change an entire industry for the better.

In dealmaking the noise is huge, the signal tiny, the institutional memory short, and the demand for instant, bullet-proof answers nonstop – so we end up spending lots of time and money and still worrying we missed something.

Aracor Deal Intelligence lets a deal team go through data room docs, corporate governance materials, investment deals and get clear narratives and insights with just one click of a button. Our prompt library covers M&A and deal work, venture capital transactions, fund formation and waterfall modelling, and more. Every report comes with clickable citations so a user can verify responses efficiently.

We have another cool product, Aracor Deal Verifier. With one click you can compare a term sheet against hundreds of pages of final deal docs to ensure that the deal you think is happening is really happening and understand where and how the terms are reflected in the closing materials. Our goal is to empower users with Deal Foresight ™️

It’s not just about due diligence. I always tell people a deal doesn’t end at closing. It ends at exit. After the deal closes, most of the negotiated provisions keep running the business, but they vanish into a folder no one opens again. Aracor keeps them searchable, so when six months later someone asks ‘Do we need Investor X’s consent for this secondary?’ the answer is a couple of clicks away.

Last but not least – it makes my life as a GC easier, but it’s just as useful to a PE associate, a CFO, a managing partner, a VP of corp dev. In short, anyone who has to make decisions with real money on the line. Dealmakers.  At Aracor, we are focused on creating an entirely new model and standard for how deals get done through AI-native dealmaking.

– Looking more broadly, how much time is wasted (and paid for) that really doesn’t need to be, because lawyers cannot find the information they need?

I can’t even quantify how much time is wasted and paid for. I think companies lose not just money spent on review but also so much opportunity because they haven’t mastered their own data. Aracor is a dealmaking brain – it’s not just about saving time and money, it’s also about making better decisions and creating opportunities.

– Finally we talked before about how tech always changes human behaviour, where would you like Aracor to get to in terms of changing lawyers?

Lawyers who want to move in-house or work in-house frequently ask me for advice or mentorship. I hear the same thing over and over and over again ‘I want to work in-house so I can make a real impact on the business, not just be a lawyer’.

It’s a cliché, right? But how can you make an impact on the business if you’re spending all your time reading and summarizing pieces of paper? If you want to go from good to great as a lawyer, you have to figure how to add real value to the company you represent, and that means spending less time excavating documents and more time shaping decisions.

Thanks Katya!

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You can find more about Aracor here.

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Katya and many other great speakers will be at the Legal Innovators California conference, San Francisco, June 11 + 12

If you’re interested in the cutting edge of legal AI and innovation – and where we are all heading – then come along to Legal Innovators California, in San Francisco, June 11 and 12, where speakers from the leading law firms, inhouse teams, and tech companies will be sharing their insights and experiences as to what is really happening.

We already have an incredible roster of companies to hear from. This includes: &AI, Legora, Harvey, StructureFlow, Ivo, Flatiron Law Group, PointOne, Centari, LexisNexis, eBrevia, Legatics, Knowable, Draftwise, newcode.AI, Riskaway, Aracor, SimpleClosure and more.

Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, Baker McKenzie, Gunderson, Ropes & Grey, A&O Shearman and many other leading law firms will also be taking part. 

See you all there!

More information and tickets here.