Tom Dunlop, CEO & Founder at Summize is an accomplished commercial and technology lawyer, Tom’s experience with reviewing contracts was the catalyst that led to Summize. Prior to this, he worked as a Global Legal Director for several fast-growth technology companies.
Summize is transforming Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) by enabling entire businesses—not just legal teams—to work faster and smarter with contracts. The platform integrates directly into widely used tools like Microsoft Word, Teams, Slack, Outlook, and Gmail, meeting users where they already work. With an intuitive user experience, expert implementation, and powerful AI, Summize simplifies and accelerates the contract process from end to end. Focused on driving business-wide CLM adoption, Summize is redefining how contracts are managed, reviewed, and executed across organizations.
What inspired you to create Summize? Were there specific challenges you faced as a General Counsel that led you to develop an AI-powered legal solution?
There’s a few things that inspired me. Previously, as a Global Legal Director, I’d be there with my highlighter marker and printouts, reviewing contracts and trying to create summaries of each one. There were also teams of very demanding salespeople who needed attention and understandably wanted to get deals done. There was clearly a need for automating tasks. I was working in a very high growth tech environment, so when it came to innovation, I had an entrepreneurial mindset. Everyone around me was also constantly on the lookout for better ways of doing things, too. These things all coming together were the catalyst for me developing and starting Summize.
How has Summize evolved since its founding in 2018? What were some key milestones along the way?
We were a generic summarization tool at first, so it was a big step forward when we decided to focus on the legal industry, and specifically, in-house counsel. Next was when we reached our goal of creating a holistic solution that would serve as a touchpoint for every contraction interaction – which also led to the widening of our functionality. The third milestone was when we began embedding our intelligence in other tools causing adoption to really take off. Then there was our expansion into the U.S. and the rapid growth that followed.
Along the way we achieved a lot. We were first-to-market with Word Add-In and AI functionality. We were first-to-market with Teams and Slack chatbots that could interact with legal and create contracts. And, we’ll be first-to-market with additional capabilities in the very near future. We are constantly evolving.
What sets Summize apart from other Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions on the market?
Our unique selling point is our embedded approach as opposed to an all-in-one CLM platform. Fundamentally, those are the options, and we feel an embedded experience through existing and familiar tools is more powerful and facilitates adoption. Our use of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) is also a differentiator. Its ability to streamline processes and reduce manual effort is driving new levels of cost efficiency for legal teams.
What industries or legal functions are currently leading in AI adoption, and which ones are lagging behind?
In-house counsel at technology and software companies are more likely to adopt AI due to the high volume of deals and focus on efficiency. When you’re in more commercially focused environments, removing blockers to speed deal processes is key. We are seeing adoption across all legal functions. However, as the voice of a business, general in-house teams can actually be a barrier to AI. They need to approve solutions and that can slow adoption amongst users and across wider business functions. But larger commercial teams that are very deal focused know there’s immediate productivity gains and savings, so they’re adopting AI faster.
How do you see AI transforming legal work beyond contract analysis? What other legal tasks could AI streamline?
Contracts are the system of record for any business transaction, delivering all the relevant relationship data, ranging from who you’re contracting with to specific obligations to termination details. Accessing that information and making it usable is what we’re doing with things like contract analysis and summarization. Put AI on the back of that and you can drive data pushes between systems and workflow orchestration across various parts of the business. That opens the door to a world of applications. It might sound far-fetched, but AI could even transform the legal service model itself one day, enabling firms to charge based on the knowledge they deliver and not time.
According to Summize’s recent survey, 89% of in-house legal professionals use AI tools, yet concerns remain around privacy and security (45%), limited understanding or training (37%), and a lack of clear use cases (31%). How can legal teams move beyond initial AI adoption to ensure they are using it securely and effectively as a trusted partner in their workflows?
They need to understand how AI works, what to look out for from a security standpoint, and how data interacts with an AI model. You have to ensure they’re using it securely and effectively as a trusted partner in workflows. This requires training and clear AI policies. Team members should also understand how AI will impact the role of general counsel over the next five years. Once they have this knowledge, they’ll be able to apply what they’ve learned to develop even greater use cases and spur further adoption,
How do you think AI-powered tools like Summize will change the role of General Counsels and in-house legal teams over the next five years?
I think it’ll free them from lower value, high volume tasks, allowing them to focus on the right type of work. It will also enable General Counsels to scale their knowledge, as well as their experiences, across legal teams and the business itself. And in addition to being relieved of time-consuming, manual tasks, leaders will know that such jobs are being done to their standards.
Do you think regulatory frameworks need to evolve to better govern the use of AI in legal tech?
Regulatory frameworks will need to specify the data used by language models (LLMs). What’s more, models could be required to use verified content, which would shift the focus from data volume to quality and relevance. Overall, I do think we’ll see regulatory frameworks evolve, and models do better at understanding the data it uses before rendering an answer.
What role do integrations (e.g., with Microsoft Word, Teams, Slack) play in making AI-driven legal tools more accessible and user-friendly?
Moving forward, it’ll be critical to have AI embedded in user workflows and experiences. The question is, how do you do it and make it easy for users? Integrations with Word, Teams and Slack are fundamentally important because people are already using and adopting those tools daily, making it the easiest access point to start a query.
Integrations with everyday tools will ensure AI-driven legal tools are more accessible and user-friendly.
What’s next for Summize? Are there any upcoming features or expansions we should be looking forward to?
We just launched our next-gen AI-Powered CLM with intelligent agents to accelerate reviews and unlock contract insights that uses agenetic AI to handle tasks from redlining to review. We also broadened our chatbot’s functionality to interact with varied data sets. These are just a couple things we have planned and we’re looking forward to introducing other powerful CLM developments.
Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Summize.
