Innovation

We inspire and cultivate innovation.

Chapman is on the leading edge of legal services innovation. Encouraging and supporting intellectual curiosity and new ideas directly impact our ability to serve our clients more efficiently, support the productivity of our people, and enhance connections to our communities. 

Our Chapman Practice Innovations (CPI) team designs and develops platforms for contract automation and review and analysis, builds custom applications, and connects systems as needed to deliver solutions such as dashboards, transaction management, and online collaboration systems for financial institution legal departments and business segment groups. We also deploy our skills for the benefit of legal aid organizations to enhance the ability of staff and volunteer attorneys to provide essential legal services for the most vulnerable members of our communities.

Highlights

• Financial Product Development. Chapman attorneys are active in the development of financing products that have resulted in a number of “first-of-its-kind” transactions across a range of debt and equity markets. For example, we helped investment management companies develop the unit investment trust (UIT) and new exchange-traded fund (ETF) products, financial institutions develop direct purchase of municipal securities programs, investment banks develop derivative products, and governmental entities, health care systems, and educational and cultural institutions develop new tax-exempt structures to expand access to capital markets.
• Market-Ready Software. Our CPI team has built market-ready software for use in financial transactions, most notably a closing room deal management application that Chapman designed, deployed for thousands of closing sets, and subsequently sold to the software company NetDocuments. Our NDA+ platform is now deployed for large financial institutions for the review of thousands of confidentiality agreements on an annual basis.
• App Development. Chapman is uniquely positioned to support legal aid organizations not only with legal skills, but also by sharing our legal technology acumen. Our CPI team creates document automation apps that streamline processes for legal aid organizations, helping them serve more clients and easily train volunteers. In collaboration with the Center for Disability and Elder Law (CDEL), CPI developed an app that automates estate planning document preparation and court guardianship documents for low-income, disabled, and elderly clients. In another project, CPI developed an app for Legal Aid Chicago (LAC) that automates the document preparation process for criminal records expungement cases and was expanded to include juvenile cases, allowing the organization to serve even more clients.

Recognition

Financial Transaction Innovation. Chapman served as counsel to the underwriter in connection with a first-of-its-kind $236 million tax-exempt “gap” financing of the Lincoln South Beltway public-private partnership (P3) project, which was named The Bond Buyer’s 2020 P3 Deal of the Year. The transaction involved an innovative contractor-led build finance structure and is the largest single-contract project in the history of the project grantor, the Nebraska Department of Transportation.

Pro Bono Legal Services Innovation. The Center for Disability & Elder Law (CDEL) named Chapman as its 2020 Corporate Partner of the Year. The firm was recognized for an estate planning app developed by the CPI team that helps CDEL expand access to estate planning services for persons marginalized by poverty, age, and disability in Illinois.