E14 – Memme Onwudiwe EVP at Evisort AI for Contracts
Data Diva Memme Onwudiwe
38:56
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
privacy, companies, people, contracts, data, California, State, Frankenstein, standard, folks, agree, law, remediation, privacy regulations, Facebook, private, interesting, thoughts, technology, point
SPEAKERS
Debbie Reynolds, Memme Onwudiwe
Debbie Reynolds 00:00
The personal views and opinions expressed by our podcast guests are their own and are not legal advice or official statements by their organizations. Hello, this is Debbie Reynolds, they call me "The Data Diva." Today, our special guest on the program is Memme Onwudiwe, who is the Executive Vice President of Evisort, which is called AI for contracts. The day that we recorded this session was January 5th, 2021. This was the day that we were waiting to find out who would have control over Congress as a result of the Georgia runoff elections in the US. The next day was the Capitol attacks on January 6th, 2021. So this conversation is very interesting, in that we were sort of talking about or touching upon issues about things that may or may not happen as a result of the control of Big Tech, and things like content moderation, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and Anti-trusts and things like that. So I think in light of what we know now, this conversation gets a lot more interesting. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you. So currently, your position you are with Evisort, and Evisort is a company that provides contract management and different things with contracts, helping people kind of manage and change different types of contracts. And I'm probably not saying it right. Tell me a little bit about yourself. And I would love for you to kind of chat about how we met initially.
Memme Onwudiwe 01:53
Yeah, most definitely. And thanks so much for having me on the show today. Um, so yeah, I, I actually went to Harvard Law School. And it was there during my one on my first year, actually met with Jerry Ting, Jake Sussman, the CEO, and CEO of FSO, who at the time with two L's second-year law students, and you know, at that point in time, got to meet with them with her, they have this idea to, you know, work with data scientists from MIT, and basically build out technology that uses AI to read and analyze contracts automatically for lawyers. And you know it's surprising that such technology didn't exist. And so, you know, from my first year of law school, I was working out of the Harvard Innovation Lab, you know, building out this company back then just kind of five folks on the team. And actually, we met, I think, a ladder intimate and probably a couple of years ago now to my last school, when I think it was actually early in the days when, you know, there's news about this upcoming, you know, call the California Consumer Privacy Act and CCPA. And we were actually doing a White Paper at the time, and at the time, I was doing a lot of leading a lot of marketing activities on our team. And so I actually reached out to you, seeing that you're an expert in the privacy space, and you're getting a lot of key information and help that helped us to draft a really good White Paper for that. And since then, I've definitely relied on you, you know, as far as kind of conversations, and there's just a thought leader in that privacy space. So it was a great introduction to you have a great way for us to meet, and excited to, you know, continue their relationship moving forward.
Debbie Reynolds 03:28
Well, it's funny, because I get contacted by tons of people. And I, you know, obviously, I can't get to chat with everyone, but I knew there's something special about you, and I should actually take your call or return your message. So I was really happy about, I was really happy about questions that you were asking. So you're very curious about what the law was and what I mean. And, you know, again, White Paper was, you know, really well done, I think, and, and you guys have had a lot of success, you know, with the company since then. So I'm really happy about that.
Memme Onwudiwe 04:08
Yeah, thank you. I was gonna say a lot of what we do is around, you know, helping companies manage their contracts and things like that. It's very helpful to kind of help you frame not just why is this kind of CCPA, this kind of act is important, but what's the ramifications? We're going to handle the actual day to day contracting for companies? So?
Debbie Reynolds 04:30
Yeah, so I think that that's definitely played out and, you know, in some expected ways, and some unexpected waves. So definitely, the CCPA changed a lot, not just people in California or businesses in California, because it's so broad in terms of its scope and scale. You know, what we started seeing as other companies that are don't have consumers in California or don't necessarily have to comply with that privacy law, they're starting to kind of embrace or align with it in that way. So I, you know, I'm seeing, you're seeing this to where companies that maybe didn't even have customers in California are starting to really embrace that contract language because they kind of feel that that's the way things are going to go. What are your thoughts about that?
Memme Onwudiwe 05:25
Now, definitely seen that too. I mean, whenever you have kind of these different standards that exist, I think, a normal reaction of a lot of legal teams just almost create a Frankenstein DPA. Right, uh, you know, compliant in all jurisdictions. And so I think I think, you know, people will, just erring on the side of safety makes sense, especially when you're dealing with lawyers.
Debbie Reynolds 05:49
Right, exactly. And then now, you know, things have gotten a lot more interesting with people started using standard contract clauses. And because of the invalidation of a Privacy Shield, and the Swiss, the EU-US Privacy Shield, and the invalidation of the US-Swiss Privacy Shield, maybe more companies now in the US are probably using or relying on standard contract clauses. And also, even companies that were using standard contract clauses before they're probably trying to beef up and update their contracts. Are you seeing that as well?
Memme Onwudiwe 06:31
Yeah, we've seen that a lot. And it's interesting, we're seeing it with kind of smaller companies who might just have, you know, maybe a folder with all their contracts with DPA's. And, you know, beginning to perform analysis on them, to see kind of where there are deviations willing to be remediation, what we're seeing this with some of the global large scale companies we're working with, and, you know, in that case, it's a lot more than they'll typically, now, if they're really global, a lot of times will be the team in Ireland doing it. But you know, a lot of times, the way it looks is, you know, they would go region by region, you know, maybe go into, you know, the rebar, or wherever, all the kind of those kinds of contracts, I pull out all those contracts from that region, and then have to kind of go one by one, and kind of look for where there needs to be remediation, obviously, kind of help them, you know, perform these processes, you know, using AI to help classify hey these are the ones on AI standard language. And then for the ones that might not be on your standard language, you have the task of determining, hey, what's non-standard, what's still acceptable from our kind of remediation perspective? And what's non-standard? Yes, it's not on paper, but it's also going to represent a risk, we're going to need to introduce an amendment to Canada, you know, I change this and bring this language up to where it should be on par. And so watching those kinds of processes, even though folks are leveraging AI technology, just seeing how differently they approach it based on their size and kind of global nature, the company has also been interesting,
Debbie Reynolds 08:02
Right? Yeah, that's interesting, when you're talking about the Frankenstein contract behalf, like everything, and the kids are thinking it. And also, I think, is really interesting, the way that your technology works, where it helps you sort of look for those, those anomalies or those, you know, things are the same, or things that are different in contracts, not in the same way that someone does, like a compare, right, in the word or, or the way that, you know, a lot of contract things that I've used in the past, you know, it just helps to digitize information, it doesn't really go into doing kind of those types of, you know, detail, you know, clause by clause comparisons or, you know, give you that type of insight. That's just my opinion. What are your thoughts? Yeah, no,
Memme Onwudiwe 08:55
I mean, I completely agree. I think that you know, the ability to, it's all about flexibility, right? Because especially, I mean, yes, we're talking privacy, but broadly, this is all about compliance. When it comes to Lions, you don't know what new regulations are going to be kind of promulgated in the future, right? And so you need to be ready. Not that, hey, you're tracking these 15 things really well, so that in the future, when they change these 15 things, you know, we know exactly what to do and exactly how to approach it. You've got to go in knowing you've just been tracking 15 things they might ask for 16 out of nowhere, you might have 50,000 contracts, we have not been tracking that 16 need to have a tool and at least capabilities and processes that allow you to react quickly to gather that information from large groups of documents, understanding that it might be something that's outside of your focus area now.
Debbie Reynolds 09:53
It's gonna be even crazier because all 50 states, for example, have their own data breach notification laws. And now they're doing crazy things, in my opinion, where instead of passing new laws, they're updating old laws and just adding other privacy stuff to it. So it's getting very complicated. In the US, I think it's going to continue that way for a while, especially because we don't have any Federal Data P: privacy legislation. And all these states can pass these laws much faster than they can, at the Federal level, I think this is going to be just tons and tons of changes. I know some companies are pulling their hair out, I work with a lot of companies that are pivoting or they're trying to enter new markets. So whether you're like, for example, maybe they're in the EU trying to come to the US or different countries going to the US, or vice versa. You know, it's very complex, I think, because of the state-level regulations and changes that people have to sort of know about, and I know, that's probably something you're seeing as well.
Memme Onwudiwe 11:01
Yeah, I mean, the State level changes, and that is why it's being a little bit of a kind of Frankenstein thing because you don't want to hang with, you know, multiple versions of your Data Privacy agreement, you know, that works for multiple types of jurisdictions, you know, just for the ease of use, would love to have kind of just one, or, you know, I think, you know, kind of a standard people are doing now is almost just that one URL link, that, you know, the link takes you to a place where you can update that kind of as it goes kind of moving forward. And I mean, the URL links, of course, being a whole another level of complexity, tracking, you know, what you've agreed to, from a, you know, from a data processing perspective, but I think I'm seeing what you're seeing, which is that, as opposed to folks being like, ok, this is all for California, this is New York, it's almost, you know, being able to say, hey, how can we draft our data processing agreement in a way that allows us to be compliant across all jurisdictions?
Debbie Reynolds 12:00
Yeah, and I feel like, on the technology side, I feel like companies are trying to create or automate their applications or when they roll out the technology, assuming that things like in the CCPA will be sort of the de facto standard, so then, I feel like they're going to, on a technology side I think that will end up getting a push just from a design level. Because you want to make it easy for your customer to be able to comply with these regulations, whether it be make it easy for them to get data out of your application, or making more readily available for you to understand, like your customer base, and get that information if you should ever have a data breach. So I feel like, you know, that technology push will become sort of a standard, just by the fact that, you know, Silicon Valley's in California, you know, they're really heavy into this. And I know, from a design level, I think that's going to get a push. So I don't know, on the legal side, I don't know how much. You know, the California stuff will flow to other states, even though California has been very influential for decades. In terms of Data Privacy regulations, I don't know, you know, but many a long, long time ago, it has to be probably maybe ten years or more. California was the first state to say that websites should have a privacy policy. So like, now, everybody says that, but they were like the first. And they were the first in the US to have a data breach notification law. Now all 50 states have them even though they're different. So what are your thoughts? I mean, just as a human living in the US, and having data and wanting privacy and stuff like that, so what is your feeling about what's going on here? In the US with privacy, you know, the State, Federal, you know, Republicans, Democrats not being able to agree on stuff. What are your thoughts?
Memme Onwudiwe 14:04
Yeah, I mean, it is a really interesting time when it comes to a lot of these technologies and like what the idea of privacy even is and what privacy even means in the 21st century. I mean, honestly, I do think that we're gonna need to kind of evolve and how we think about kind of privacy and private acts, especially, you know, when done online, and, you know, whether online is a public Commons, whether or not it's a private space, it's still something I think that is up for debate. But the way that's construed now is that it's you're primarily interacting with the web via private companies. And then your relationship with that private company is going to be governed by, you know, likely biased terms of service that you know forfeits your privacy. And so I think that the way to change that, and approach that would almost be to me, this is kind of your thinking kind of more broadly is going to help you approach privacy approach these things. But you're not going to have the ability for an individual person to negotiate their quick wrap or their kind of, you know, in terms of service with Facebook every single time. But there could be people that value that privacy to the point that they'd be willing to pay monetarily, to kind of keep that as private. And so I think right now we're living in a freemium model, in which we're, you know, we are taking all these services without having to pay a cost, because you know, the cost is, you know, being paid by our privacy itself. And so we're going to need to create systems to kind of make that transaction a little bit more concrete and more of an option. But there are options to either pay to keep your things private, or potentially, and maybe I'm being a little, being a little too optimistic, but potentially get paid for your data and privacy kind of being put out there like that. But yeah, the way things are construed, I can't see things changing naturally now.
Debbie Reynolds 16:11
Yeah, that's interesting. You say that, so you said a couple of things there that are really interesting. So one of the almost like, I know, you're probably too young to remember this, but when people have phone books, right, there your number is in the phone book unless you paid a fee for not being there. Oh, maybe part of what you're talking about is, you know, maybe you have a special fee where you know, Facebook or whatever, if you pay them a certain amount, they'll, you know, obscure some information about you. So I can use it in a lighter fashion, or the flip side, which you're talking about, what's the data monetization for individual, you know, once because people are demanding transparency about their data and their billions of dollars being made by companies that no one knows their name. At some point, if we reach a level of transparency, the next question is monetization. So I don't think we can avoid that discussion. And I know some people feel like, oh, you know, my data is sacred. And I don't want to monetize, but it's monetized already. So I think in some ways, you know, for me, I would like to see what my data is worth to anyone. So just to be able to see that again, that's like the natural thing. It's like, well, why can't I, you know, earn some money for my data? So I think that you know, I think we shouldn't be naive about the monetization question because it's definitely going to come up. But I think it'll be a lot more complicated than that.
Memme Onwudiwe 17:44
And I think it also, I mean, right now, we're seeing a lot of government action towards, you know, the Googles and the Facebook's of the world. And, you know, there's been conversations around, you know, is Facebook, or social media or these things, utilities, right, maybe public goods, maybe they shouldn't be private and things. And, of course, that gets very complicated because it's global in nature. But you know, that being said, I do think that we're going to be changing somewhat because you already said this is one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats do agree on. And in the United States, I think they will be changing this relationship somehow. But it's really unclear for me to see kind of how that's going to look as if it's even going to be substantial. Maybe they are just gonna keep on keeping on.
Debbie Reynolds 18:27
Yeah, I think for sure. The Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, therefore, for sure, we're gonna have some change. So some sort, because, again, that's one of the very few things that Democrats and the Republicans agree on, even though they don't agree on how to approach it or why. But there is a chance that we'll have some change. And I guess the problem with the change is that not being able to really explain how that would impact consumers is troublesome to me, because, I mean, let's say, you know, if, if having more transparency means that companies are going to be asked to provide less data protection and hardware encryption, that's going to impact consumers. And then if there's a situation where companies are media, these companies are considered media companies in some way, and then they have to moderate, more heavily from people. You know, I think they're gonna shift that risk to the individual. So let's say you say something that they don't like, and then they close your account because they don't want to take the legal risk, you know what I mean, so I think it's definitely a slippery slope.
Memme Onwudiwe 19:53
Yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, I kind of, I do like the way things are, and I do think It's unfortunate that this, I think, a little bit of a reactionary kind of big kick against, you know, Big Tech and, and all this because, I mean, the way it works now is that you basically have these different entities as private companies, you know, determining based off of kind of their bottom line and their community that they've cultivated, what kind of content they want to be there, it's almost kind of self-governing in that, you know, they're reacting to their users, as opposed to, you know, a kind of, you know, a big stick from the government or above but.
Debbie Reynolds 20:32
You know, one thing that concerns me about, about Big Tech, you know, I use the Google example. So, you know, Google first came out with just, you know, a search engine, and now so much more. So they still have services. And it's very sticky, obviously, where so many people, you know, use it for different things. But let's say, for instance, there's something on Google that you don't like, you want to take it down, you know, they don't necessarily have to do that, if you, you know, you can ask them, they don't have any obligation to do that. And so, now, I'm sort of becoming like, you know, they're like, the arbiter of truth, in some ways, which I don't think, you know, when I started using Google many years ago, I never thought that they would have that position, you know, where, you know, in the US is worse than kind of a Europe where they have more rights for stuff like that. But you know, especially someone like write something that defames someone or something that stops someone from getting a job or something, you know, that's always concerning.
Memme Onwudiwe 21:43
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is, it is interesting, in that it really has become the kind of how we interact, you know, with the world. And then, but that's what makes them so powerful, right? They say with Facebook, right? Because at that level of control, you know, they're able to kind of make it and target those ads, and really kind of get eyes on, you know, whatever the highest bidder, you know, wants them to wants to get as I know, it is, I think it is interesting, I do think that we should be thinking of it, almost a little bit more, kind of as a utility kind of more as something that, you know, is table stakes for living in the 21st century, as opposed to some luxury item. I think you're not probably been intimate more broadly, you should be getting, you want to take that lens or focus on it. But I am really wary of the reaction of that being breaking up Google and breaking up Facebook or breaking up any of these companies, because I don't think the output of that is a robot kind of environment of kind of smaller, competing American companies. I think it's probably this kind of dissolution of America's grip over the Chinese answer, nothing from outside of it, I think you'll find a lot of the strong apps in China and in the developing world are these kinds of super apps, where you can do multiple types of processes, even more than Google even more than Amazon, you can do way more. And so it could be the best system effective model for having an online Big Tech company, and we shouldn't stifle that.
Debbie Reynolds 23:18
Yeah, I don't understand. To me, I think antitrust, this antitrust push with the big tech companies, will work. Because it's not the same as like, say, let's say, let's say oil company like so let's say there were like ten sites in the US where this oil company has a monopoly, and you just bust them up. So you like to divide 100 oil fields amongst different companies. And this is totally different, where you have companies that are creating these innovations. So they have, you know, endless funds to do that and endless ways to create these innovations. So are you saying that you have to give their you want them to give their innovation to someone else? But why? You know, so I don't know, you know, I tell someone I think I said in one of the other podcasts? I'm not sure if having five Facebook's is the same as having one, you know, it was better? Like I don't know, I don't know if splitting them up is the answer to the issue.
Memme Onwudiwe 24:28
And I think it's for consumers, it's worse, right? Because I mean, the beauty of Facebook is everyone you know, is there, you know, it loses its utility. There are five competing more. So, yeah, and I think, the empty trust, which is interesting, I mean, when you look at some of the stuff with, you know, like the, like the Apple Store, the Google Store, kind of, you know, kind of making everyone pay to be on it. But then, if you want to have an iPhone, there's no kind of alternative stores. I do think there's kind of elements and some of it business practices. We could have a kind of trust, you know, concerning activity within them. But to your point, I don't see this kind of a broad scale. Look, you know, you own all the railroads.
Debbie Reynolds 25:12
Right? I mean, we still have people that think that Google is the Internet. like Google is not the Internet, it's a way to get to the Internet. It's not the Internet. But yeah, people probably think that or, you know, I know people, they only get their news from Facebook. So like, I tell them some breaking news story happen, and I read it in the Wall Street Journal or something like they wouldn't react? Well, I haven't seen it on Facebook, so it didn't happen. Sorry, yeah, that's always definitely a different thing to definitely think about. In terms of just privacy, just for business, in terms of how a business has to have to really change and really think about privacy. You know, I was talking to one of my friends who's a venture capital guy, and he was talking about, like, assessing companies for investment and stuff like that, and how, you know, privacy, obviously, for many years, it hadn't been a thing. And now it is. So in addition to, you know, the financial stuff, the tax of, you know, looking at the makeup of the management team, and Cybersecurity, obviously, privacy is kind of up there, as well, in terms of how people are looking at companies, what has been you guys experience with that, about privacy as your as you were forming your company?
Memme Onwudiwe 26:42
Yeah, I mean, I do think it's something that, you know, Cybersecurity, you know, privacy, it's something that is kind of more and more important, we are lucky, a bit in that we are a business to business kind of company. So we're not in the real kind of field of collecting consumer data. And so a lot of those kinds of concerns and issues, I think that we need to care that we don't need to kind of address as head-on. But of course, our customers doing, we're helping them with their contractual issues of things that, you know, we think about all the time and cell phones, tablets, you know, how can we help them pull out information from their contracts, that helps them both can manage these issues and processes. And I mean, that is something that comes up when we're making our website. And you know, when we need to kind of, you know, collect information for folks who want to do a demo, you know, we have to come up with the actual language like, hey, you know, we can take your email, we're going to do these things, we're taking this well, numbers, what are we gonna do with them. And you know, it could be that as kind of these regulations change and have to go in and kind of do those small changes, I don't think you can to your point, you can't really escape and even if you want to be.
Debbie Reynolds 27:53
Well, that's true. And then know, all the cookie banners are driving me crazy. At least when I'm in Europe, they have a limit to how many times they ask you certain things. So we don't have that here in the US. So I can work in the US. Because we just don't have any limits there, like oh my god, like, especially if I'm using like, if you're using like, more anonymous browser or using something that clears out your browsing history or whatever, like you're asked, every time you log in, like, oh, do you accept this? Or do you set all these different cookies? Or that? Oh, I don't know, I have a cookie for tea. I don't know how other people feel about this, just being able to press on all those different buttons. So if you were to well, before, as asked that question, do you think that the US will get a Federal deal? I want your thoughts on it, and not pay what I
Memme Onwudiwe 28:58
I mean, I don't see one. Well, I guess today is the day where we'll figure out whether or not the government's gonna be functioning. And within the next couple of quarters, you just can be at a standstill. And so you know, if at the end of today, there is a ruling party that has kind of Senate, Congress and White House, I could see that just being tacked on to an NDA or something like that. You know, it's just something that's agreed upon. If we kind of go into the next two years with the government. I don't see this, although we have been talking about houses potential area for consensus. I don't think there's that level of consensus that they could get something like that pass. So I'll have a better answer for you tomorrow.
Debbie Reynolds 29:42
Tomorrow. I don't know there. I agree. I guess there are a couple of big issues that people are grappling with. One is preemption. Like, you know, with this long preamble of things we're having at the State level and then to the private right of action, it was a big deal. So when Republicans don't want that, and the Democrats do want it, I mean, can't be any farther apart than that. I think so I think it's really hard to do it at a Federal level, and into his heart, in general, is hard to get consensus is like, you probably couldn't get these people to order pizza together, it's hard to get people to agree on different things. Well, I think it couldn't be done. And if it were done, it will have to be a very thin, like, wafer-thin law super thin. So to get people to kind of agree on a blanket level, that's why the sort of, like see, a Federal law related to data breach modification, because it's so different from State to State, hopefully, maybe, as the aftereffect of like, the Solarwinds cyber attack, so many companies are going to have report breach stuff to different States and stuff. Maybe, maybe people say, This is crazy. And maybe we should just harmonize that across in all States? Perhaps? I don't know. What do you think?
Memme Onwudiwe 31:18
That's a really good point, especially with the solutions being a trigger for that kind of action after, you know, so many companies do have to go through the internal processes are doing all that I just do hope. I feel like a lot of times, even though those companies are going to have to kind of define each jurisdiction to find each data, you know, kind of privacy, a lot of times that work is just kind of just several weeks and nights of paralegals and the pain that actually took to do that doesn't always trickle up to the decision-makers. So they may not be crying foul. But we'll see.
Debbie Reynolds 31:58
That's true. Maybe some people think this is more of a revenue generator to do that. I don't know.
Memme Onwudiwe 32:03
I don't know. I think it could definitely be very painful in that way. Do you think, being in California, seeing how, you know, the privacy regulations are being rolled out? And then also having experiences in different States? Is it? Does California feel different? That you guys have more comprehensive Data Privacy regulations, where you go to different States or no?
Debbie Reynolds 32:32
I mean, as a citizen? Yeah. Like, my data is more protected when I'm in California. Yeah, like, are they asking you more things that you don't get asked in different states? Or what's your thought about that? Is it invisible to you?
Memme Onwudiwe 32:52
I think it's invisible to me. I'm not gonna lie. When I lived in California, I actually got more tickets from cameras on a traffic light. So if anything, I felt like my privacy was, was being, you know, impeded on boys. You know, from that perspective, just kind of being tracked like that. So I say it was noticeable as a consumer to me that I was gonna have your privacy protected while living in Silicon Valley.
Debbie Reynolds 33:25
The DMV, or the Department of Motor Vehicles they carved themselves out. So that's probably why you get so many tickets, like, wait a minute, we don't want to do privacy for that. That's pretty different. Yeah, well, I will definitely love to know, just kind of your thoughts about the future of kind of contract management as it relates to privacy, I just feel like there are gonna still be like a ton of changes, whether it's like international, about how these contracts are being handled, or kind of new things that creep upon the State level. What are your thoughts about the future?
Memme Onwudiwe 34:08
I mean, yeah, I think there's definitely gonna be more stuff at the State level. I think you're also right, that there's going to be from an international perspective, lots of countries, or even, you know, the kind of third world countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, which each have their own Data Privacy, and probably even data retention laws as well, you know, this one, kind of from that perspective. Also, I think it's just going to become a more complex web of things that folks need to be able to keep track of in these processes. I think the ways of addressing that we've kind of Frankenstein DPAs might be, you know, the best way of doing them. But, you know, as I was saying before, I think you know, building out data architecture allows you to quickly track new information and quickly kind of, you know, we understand what you've agreed to in the past that kind of different clause levels are going to be really important. Because I think we all know how it's going to change, we do know there's going to change. And so, like there are going to be, you're going to have to go back and look at these and do remediations over and over again. And, you know, as folks who may be on kind of the third or fourth, you know, kind of DPA remediation at a regional level each year, you know, hopefully, they begin to think about, like, hey, we are using so much, you know, manual work, you know, there's got to be a better way to do this. And so I do think and maybe goes to your Solarwinds point about the kind of, you know, these constant challenges, being able to lead natural change businesses or feeling pains from it, you know, hopefully, you know, there's enough of a change that folks can, you know, band together and kind of find better ways of approaching all this.
Debbie Reynolds 35:54
Yeah. I actually have an interesting question. I want to ask you about COVID? Are you seeing a lot of contract changes related to COVID?
Memme Onwudiwe 36:04
Yeah, we've had a lot of folks reach out to us. Because I mean, you know, the way our system works is we track, you know, several data points out of the box force measures a lot of rights. So if you have like 10,000 scanned PDF leases, and to know, hey, which one of these are validated due to global pandemic, you can just throw them all in and run a report to show me the first measures that have any of this language, Acrobat, and then I can get that resolved. And so we had a lot of folks reaching out to us, you know, for, for doing those kinds of projects this year, and so I think around for this measure, and then I also think other things that folks were interested in particularly was, you know, pricing escalations and things like that, you can just tell kind of, you know, folks kind of be a little bit tighter around the waist belt, and also like rebate tables, you know, basically trying to take advantage of, you know, money that they might have been letting kind of, you know, living kind of, we just kind of left money on the table because that cup was kind of their cup runneth over beforehand. But now that things are a little tight, they're looking to grab as much as they can.
Debbie Reynolds 37:11
Oh, wow, that's really interesting. I had a GC friend of mine say that someone she knew said that they would mark in their contracts during this time as COVID. So then they will, they will understand why they did certain things. Because a lot of times you go back and look, you know, how companies have contracts historically, and different people work on it, and then you look, and a lot of times people want to repurpose some of those contracts. And so she's marking things during this time of COVID so that she knows why they're doing things that are so unusual or so different than maybe they would have done before.
Memme Onwudiwe 37:52
I think that's a good way of keeping track of that. And that kind of knowledge is we can almost call them kind of key personal risk because you don't like you said, you know, you've got people doing all this. Let's say she leaves one day, and someone else comes later, then we got these contracts going on. So yeah, that's spot on there.
Debbie Reynolds 38:15
Well, thank you so much. This has been such a great session. It took me a while to get you on the podcast, but I'm definitely looking forward to, you know, people's feedback. I think the work you're doing is really important, and I'm really happy and proud of you.
Memme Onwudiwe 38:31
Awesome. Thanks so much. I'm glad you know to be on here. It's been great. You've made some points over the years, and it excites me to continue to see you flourish as well.
Debbie Reynolds 38:41
Excellent, excellent. Talk to you soon.
Memme Onwudiwe 38:44
Thanks. Have a great one. Happy New Year.
