Contracts shouldn’t slow good business down.

How did Docue UK start?

Docue UK was launched in October 2022. Our talented founding team includes Heather Stark, Ashleigh Evans, Hannah Capon and Neil Edwards. The versatile team combines years of legal and business expertise, which creates a genuine understanding of businesses' needs. This is where Docue differs from typical legal tech providers: it's a tool for entrepreneurs and business managers – not other lawyers.

Behind Docue UK is an international group whose story began in Finland in 2015, when Marko Teppo got the idea of a new way to create contracts and other legal documents. As a lawyer who served hundreds of entrepreneurs, he knew how difficult entrepreneurs can find the contracting process and understanding their legal obligations.

Docue was founded to make it easy for entrepreneurs and business managers to prepare legal documents themselves - to avoid expensive mistakes and without external lawyers. Docue offers high-quality solutions for hundreds of different business situations. With our smart document templates, the contents are created with just the click of a button.

Docue is transforming the way businesses can access legal documents. The service takes away the need for businesses to invest in expensive (and time-consuming) legal services, and instead is an efficient and intuitive way of creating and storing legal documents. It’s a great way to free up a company’s time and money for other business matters.

- Heather Stark, Legal Team

Docue lawyers in a weekly meeting. Docue automates lawyers' manual work, and all entrepreneurs can enjoy the results.

Legal templates have been around for ages. What's wrong with traditional templates?

Traditional document templates can work very well at their best, but they also come with several problems:

• within a business, there may be numerous different versions of the same document template in use at the same time, making template management chaotic;

• old information or outdated legislation can accidentally remain in the template (for example, an incorrect contract clause or wrong date).

So how is Docue changing the game with its "automated legal templates"?

Docue's automated legal templates have been coded with the same reasoning logic that a lawyer would use when meeting their client and drafting a document for them: every answer affects the content of the final document and the end result is a tailored document that is ready for signatures. Within Docue's service, this happens automatically, without an expensive and prolonged legal process.

Docue's automated templates have been coded with the same reasoning logic that a lawyer would use when meeting their client and drafting a document for them.

With Docue, there is no compromise on quality: all of our document content is designed by our own expert legal team and always complies with up-to-date legislation. As well as Docue utilising international technology, Docue is 100% localised to UK needs by the local legal team, which is made up of solicitors qualified in England and Wales.

Docue is unique from other contract management platforms because our service includes a large amount of high-quality legal content, that is constantly kept accurate and up to date.

The legal documents we provide are based on the laws of England and Wales and the laws of Scotland. Over 150 automated templates are ready to use, which contain more than 3,000 legal clauses with numerous different combinations. Our service covers practically all business situations that entrepreneurs and other businesses may face.

Docue is unique from other contract management platforms because our service includes a large amount of high-quality legal content, that is constantly kept accurate and up to date.

How does Docue differ from ChatGPT and other AI tools when generating legal documents?

Every Docue document template is designed and regularly reviewed by expert local lawyers. Docue also takes responsibility for the quality and up-to-date nature of its product. Generic language models can be useful for generating simple documents if the user understands the relevant law and contractual practices. However, language models are not yet advanced enough for users without deep legal knowledge to rely on their suitability for their own situation, and no one takes responsibility for AI-generated content.

So, with Docue I get lawyer-grade legal documents that are automated. What about routine documents that don't involve high legal risks?

When dealing with routine documents, legal issues are not usually given much focus. Docue still ensures that there are no careless mistakes in the drafting with its automated content.

If you have brought your company's own documents to the Docue service, you can easily manage the consistency of the documents, regardless of the author so that you have a uniform approach to contracts across your business.

Along with our automated templates, the service includes electronic signature and smart document storage where everything is saved automatically. So it's not just about templates, there's a top-class system around them that enables unprecedented efficiency in contract and document management.

How has Docue's business developed and where is it going?

We have grown rapidly in the UK, and we already have customers from more than 30 different industries. In particular, software companies, accounting firms, start-ups and companies providing B2B expert services have quickly recognised the benefits of our service. However, no matter what industry or the size of the company, all companies need legal documents.

Docue has also grown strongly across Europe. Today, more than 2,000 active business customers rely on the platform to keep contracts moving and legal work under control.

Docue was the 35th fastest growing technology company in its home country Finland in 2018–2021. Since then, growth has been fastest in the UK.

Docue's journey year by year:

2015: The company is founded and the development of the Docue platform technology is started.

2016: The first legal templates are created on the platform. Initially, templates were also developed for private individuals, but the focus was quickly shifted to companies.

2017: The service is launched to the public in Finland, the country of its establishment. From the very beginning, it is possible to subscribe to the service on the website so that the user experience is as smooth and digital as possible.

2018: Commercial breakthrough – the 10,000 user limit is broken and several hundred companies start actively using the service.

2019: Tailored document templates gain popularity (Docue templates personalised for single companies). Please keep this possibility in mind if you want to bring your company's own document templates to the service and increase their efficiency.

2020: The arrival of Covid-19 gives momentum to Docue's business, when a large number of companies suddenly start digitising their contracts and documents. Docue supports distressed sole traders by granting them access to free templates related to crisis management.

2021: Docue expands to Sweden and establishes an office in Stockholm.

2022: Docue expands to the UK and opens an office in London.

2023: Docue expands further to Germany and opens an office in Berlin. At the end of the year, the entire Docue has more than 170,000 registered users.

2024: Docue launches Docue Drive, a contract management solution that enables smarter document archiving and search. Operations in Poland begin.

2025: Docue is awarded ISO 27001 certification, verifying that our information security management meets strict international requirements.