Senior BDK partners team up to found document automation startup

Venture by Tijana Kojovic and Dragoljub Cibulic builds on Serbian firm's own tech offering

Two senior partners at top Serbian firm BDK have launched a legal technology document automation startup to help in-house teams streamline the creation of standardised legal documents. 

The startup, Draftomat, was conceptualised and financed by managing partner and co-founder Tijana Kojovic and co-senior partner Dragoljub Cibulic. It’s launch comes a year after the firm unveiled its first document automation offering, Blinkdraft. Unlike Blinkdraft, Draftomat exists as an independent venture spearheaded by Kojovic and Cibulic. 

Draftomat builds on the existing foundation laid by Blinkdraft and updates it for a more wide-ranging target client-base that includes law firms, HR departments, banks, notaries and insurance companies.

Vojislav Bajic, business development manager at BDK, said: “The uniqueness of Draftomat is in its multifunctionality and integrability with various databases, and in that it is a front-end tool for secure digital service offerings to the licensee’s clients.” 

The software began as a two-pronged product in the form of an internal document automation service that could be used for drafting processes and a client space to offer a template-as-service solution, dubbed Draftomat Drafts and Draftomat Galaxy respectively. 

Working alongside a team of software developers, Kojovic and Cibulic built out the platform’s capabilities to include Draftomat Knows, which provides access to institutional memory through a “tag and store” feature allowing users to more easily retrieve legal knowledge. 

Draftomat also includes a suite of additional features, including mass document production and the ability to connect user data repositories and external business registries to document templates.

“As partners in a law firm, we have always been focused on finding ways to do things more efficiently without it compromising on quality standards,” Kojovic and Cibulic wrote on Draftomat’s website. “It seems that us lawyers have a unique perspective on how the software should actually serve us and our clients, based on our everyday experience.” 

The product will initially be available to the South Eastern European market with plans to expand its reach to the wider European and global markets, according to the firm.

Launched in 2004, BDK has offices in Belgrade, Podgorica in Montenegro and Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Last month, Linklaters unveiled a new contract automation platform, CreateiQ, developed in conjunction with its flagship tech group Nakhoda to improve upon existing laborious contracting mechanisms with data-driven solutions. 

Independent law firms developing their own legal tech or consultancy services include Spain’s ECIJA, which this month acquired Valencia-based consultancy Revamp Law to expand its legaltech, cybersecurity and technology services, and Italy’s BonelliErede, which spun out its legal services provider business beLab as a standalone company last October. 

Email your news and story ideas to: [email protected]

Top