Clerky serves startups by making the process of creating legal documents safe, accurate, and easier to understand. Often recommended by Y Combinator, Clerky helps startups looking to incorporate, fundraise, hire, or have other legal needs, like NDAs—and is often chosen over other online services because of its focus on legal quality. Founded by two startup attorneys, Clerky is uniquely positioned to understand the reality of being a startup. Clarity, conciseness, and accuracy are core parts of Clerky's product and core values—because of the nature of its services and the industry it operates in.

Andrew Fung is the Business Operations Lead at Clerky, where he collaborates cross-functionally, helping the company meet its business needs. He helps set up new processes, research software vendors, manage operational teams, oversee partnerships, and support recruiting.

With product and core values of clear, concise, and accurate communication, Clerky uses Slab to ensure they are living their values internally as they deliver them to customers.

“A startup has little redundancy, so facilitating onboarding is even more important. Providing documentation and easy access to it is the best way to help everyone be productive quickly, and Slab provides our new hires with that access.”

Using Slab for documentation, onboarding, and collaboration

All of Clerky's company-related information is stored in Slab, including policies and procedures, general information, and research. "Rather than information just sitting in individuals' brains or files on our computers, we put it where anyone who might need to see it in the future can access it—in Slab," says Andrew.

With accuracy at the core of what they do, documenting detailed procedures for employees to follow is critical. Clerky records its Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in Slab, which allows people to reference processes if they want to learn them or get a refresher. Such thorough documentation helps everyone check that processes are followed and mistakes are avoided.

Clerky uses Slab for a multi-step onboarding process to bring new hires up to speed on what Clerky is, what the company does, and other information like role responsibilities. They link to different posts from within onboarding-specific posts, letting new employees dig deeper into other documentation if they want to. "I love that linking to other posts in Slab automatically adds the post's title, making it easy to preview a link and understand how information is connected," says Andrew.

They also use Slab to share legal research, boiling laws and regulations into digestible posts so everyone can understand relevant information.

Andrew likes using Slab to collaborate on drafts before publishing. "We can work on content without worrying about everyone seeing it before it's ready," he says. He also relies on sections and headers to help people jump to the most relevant parts of a post. Linking out prevents the need for information to be repeated—since writers can add links to specific sections in a Slab post, it's easy for the writer and the reader to reference the original content, thus reducing the need for duplicate info.

Saving time by making information easy to write, access, and share

With Slab's integrated search, the Clerky team saves time searching for documentation because it can all be found within one search bar. And because they can find information easily, the team doesn't spend as much time answering questions in meetings or Slack. "We can simply send someone a Slab link instead of meeting or answering a bunch of questions," explains Andrew. This also encourages people to self-serve information when they run into an issue or question.

The team has also saved time onboarding new hires and contractors by providing the necessary context in Slab, which is even more important as a growing company. "The nature of being a startup and smaller team is that as people join—whether they're a new teammate or contractor—it's critical that they get up and running quickly," says Andrew. "A startup has little redundancy, so facilitating onboarding is even more important. Providing documentation and easy access to it is the best way to help everyone be productive quickly, and Slab provides our new hires with that access."

“When something has been documented in Slab, it shows that a company cares about it and gives the reader a deep understanding of it.”

Moreover, onboarding with Slab shows new hires what really matters to Clerky because writing is a much more deliberate act than speaking. "When something has been documented in Slab, it shows that a company cares about it and gives the reader a deep understanding of it," says Andrew. And, using groups, hiring managers can ensure that new hires get access to what they need without the clutter of other irrelevant or sensitive information.

Improving collaboration, precision, and visibility to help put Clerky's values into practice

Using Slab helps the Clerky team collaborate with ease. Notifications that a post has changed help leaders, like Clerky's co-founders, collaborate with folks directly in Slab. This also makes it easy for people to contribute updates, suggestions, or comments and ensures content is always of the best quality and current.

Because Clerky is in the legal space, their work must be precise. They rely on Slab to document the most exact version of information to help team members understand complex terms, concepts, or processes. Rather than sharing information verbally—which can be less precise and lead to watered-down messages—written knowledge contains much less variance.

"It's critical that everyone has access to the right information they need," says Andrew. "Slab helps us avoid mistakes by making it simple to keep information updated in one place."

Finally, Slab provides the Clerky team with the necessary context and visibility to deliver on their values of clarity and accuracy. In Slab and Slack, the team defaults to public view, which empowers every team member to make more thorough decisions. "Having more people involved and providing everyone with access to knowledge helps us reach better solutions and answers with precision and confidence," Andrew says.

Living Clerky's product promise through a culture of documentation

A huge part of Clerky's product promise is to make legal information as clear, concise, and accurate as possible, which they reflect internally in their culture of communication and documentation. Through its product, Clerky gives its customers as much information and context as possible. It does the same internally with Slab, providing employees with the necessary documentation to best prepare them to do their job.

"We live our commitment to clear and accurate information in both our product and our internal culture through the ways we document and share information across the company using Slab," says Andrew.