General FAQ

Who is LeasePilot for?

Our customers are commercial real estate owners. And as a general rule of thumb, LeasePilot is best suited for companies that do at least 50 transactions per year (new leases + amendments) and/or have a commercial portfolio of at least 3 million square feet.

How is LeasePilot different from other document automation software?

LeasePilot is the first and only software platform built specifically for commercial lease drafting and negotiation, and as such is able to manage the complex, interdependent terms in a commercial lease. With LeasePilot, the job of keeping track of those complex relationships between terms no longer falls on the user, and is instead handled by our smart database framework that continuously tracks over 1,200 data points in every lease and makes on-the-fly adjustments as a lease is drafted and revised. We call this “context-aware automation.” 

How can I trust a software company to know the highly-specialized legal intricacies of commercial leasing?

Commercial leasing is in our DNA. LeasePilot was founded by commercial real estate attorneys, our CEO is a former leasing attorney, our Customer Success team is led by a former CRE general counsel, and our Implementations team is comprised exclusively of real estate lawyers and senior paralegals. Legal expertise is the core of who we are.

Does LeasePilot only draft leases? Or can I use it to draft other documents as well?

At this time LeasePilot is used to draft and revise leases, amendments, and LOIs. Other documents may be considered in the near future.

Can I use my own forms and option language with LeasePilot?

We wouldn’t have it any other way. Seriously. There is no “stock” LeasePilot form. We only use the forms and option language that you provide.

What’s the catch? Does automation mean I lose the ability to change specific language in my leases?

There is no catch! LeasePilot users have total granular control over everything in the lease. Default provisions can be customized, new sections can be inserted, and custom language can be added without leaving the app. In short, LeasePilot offers all of the same text-editing capabilities that MS Word does (well, almost all of them—if you want to make nostalgic Word Art, you’ll have to use MS Word for that).

Does LeasePilot support any languages other than English?

At this time we do not, but the software itself is language-agnostic. Our Customer Success team is growing fast, and we are actively recruiting bi-lingual lawyers and paralegals with legal experience in languages other than English.

Can a third-party brokerage buy LeasePilot?

LeasePilot is exclusively focused on providing tools for lawyers, paralegals, and leasing admins. As such, we are not currently selling the software to third-party brokerages. 

Can landlords with outside counsel buy LeasePilot?

Yes! Landlords that use outside counsel for some or all of their leasing have leveraged LeasePilot to drastically reduce not only their outside counsel spend, but also their overall reliance on outside counsel. With the efficiency gains provided by LeasePilot, some customers have been able to bring all of their leasing work in house, completely eliminating their reliance on outside counsel.

Can third-party law firms buy LeasePilot?

While we may make LeasePilot available to third-party law firms in the future, at this time we are only offering LeasePilot to landlords (landlords can provide LeasePilot to their outside counsel, however). The reason for this is baked into how LeasePilot works: every instance is built around the assumption that the form/language library and asset mix is predictable.

And since most third-party law firms are working with many different landlords, language libraries, and assets, it simply isn’t feasible to go through this process for a base form that might be used a handful of times. 

How long does it take to do a first draft?

In most cases, a lawyer, leasing admin, or paralegal can create an error-free first draft using your base form, option language, and formatting standards in 15-30 minutes.

Drafting time can be further reduced by leveraging LeasePilot’s direct data integrations with industry-standard CRM platforms like Salesforce, VTS, and others. With a CRM integration, tenant information, deal economics and other relevant information tracked by leasing teams during the sales process is automatically imported upon lease creation, resulting in drafting times as low as 5 minutes.

How many lease templates does LeasePilot support?

As many as you’d like! During the implementation process, our team of experienced real estate lawyers and paralegals look for redundancies and inconsistencies across a new customer’s form and language library. We’ll report these findings to you and propose a consolidation plan that follows industry best practices. Most customers see both a reduction in the number of base forms along with a drastic improvement to language consistency across their asset portfolio.

How can I make changes to my base forms and option language?

If you ever need to update or change the language in your forms, LeasePilot has a built-in form manager which allows you to make global changes to your base language. For more complex changes like adding/removing/editing assets or making style changes, just reach out to our Customer Success team and we’ll handle the rest!

We use outside counsel for all/some of our leasing. Can they use LeasePilot?

Absolutely. Customers who utilize outside counsel for all or some of their leasing are free to provide outside counsel with login credentials without worrying about paying extra.

How can I manage user rights and access in LeasePilot?

LeasePilot can work with you to ensure that users are set up with the appropriate permissions. User permissions will allow or prevent specific users’ viewing rights.

How does LeasePilot handle asset- and/or state-specific language?

When you create a new lease in LeasePilot, you have to select the specific asset the lease is for. When you do this, all of the asset- and region-specific information and language is automatically brought into your lease draft.

Can I use LeasePilot to make revisions to a lease while it’s in negotiation?

Yes! That’s one of the major advantages of LeasePilot’s context-aware automation. We designed LeasePilot to be an end-to-end automation solution that completely replaces the need for a conventional word processor, so every LeasePilot lease is built on a dynamic database framework that provides users with the same powerful automation tools on every draft and revision.

How do I send tenant counsel a lease drafted in LeasePilot?

Sharing a lease with tenant counsel is easy. Once a user completes a draft s/he can email the lease to the tenant’s counsel without leaving the app. The lease is delivered as a perfectly-formatted MS Word document. 

How does lease abstraction work? Can I really generate an error-free abstract instantly?

You sure can. Think of a LeasePilot abstract like a snapshot: because we’ve built LeasePilot on a context-aware database framework, the software dynamically tracks and understands every change you make in real time, making an abstract export as simple as a few clicks. With this database-first approach, there’s no need for backward-looking AI, Machine Learning, or OCR-based abstracting.

Can I choose the information that I want to show in my lease abstracts?

We can build an abstract template to include exactly the information you need to see. Better yet, if you integrate LeasePilot with your ERP platform, all of the key lease data that your business needs can be sent directly into your accounting database, making a document-based abstract unnecessary.

Can I use LeasePilot to abstract older leases or leases I have inherited from an acquisition?

No. LeasePilot is a future-forward solution that fixes a latent data problem in leasing. This means that new leases you create in LeasePilot can be abstracted, but old leases or leases not drafted in LeasePilot need to be abstracted in the old-fashioned way.  

What other software platforms does LeasePilot integrate with?

Right now LeasePilot has established official partnerships with VTS and MRI, which means that our development teams are actively working together to ensure complete cross-platform compatibility. If you’re not using software from one of our official partners, you’re not out of luck. LeasePilot has a robust API and can send and/or receive data from any other platform that also has an open API. Examples of other platforms that support varying levels of integration with LeasePilot include Salesforce, Oracle/JDE, and Microsoft Dynamics. This is by no means a complete list, so if you’re looking for support for a specific platform not listed here, don’t hesitate to ask us!

For companies using custom-built or proprietary in-house software, our engineers can build an integration with LeasePilot that meets your exact specifications.

What advantages does an integration provide?

The old adage, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” works well here. In short, integrating LeasePilot with another CRE software platform will result in greater efficiency gains than each platform is able to provide on its own.

As an example, let’s say you’re already using VTS to manage your deal pipeline and MRI to manage your accounting and ERP needs. Integrating LeasePilot with both platforms would give your company complete data continuity for the entire lifecycle of a lease. Tenant information and deal economics can be sent directly from VTS into LeasePilot to pre-populate a lease, and upon lease execution, LeasePilot will send all of the necessary information directly into MRI, completely eliminating the need to manually re-key data.

At the individual deal level, an integration can drastically reduce the time spent drafting and abstracting a lease. At the macro level, seamless data continuity throughout the entire leasing lifecycle can be leveraged to perform highly-accurate meta-analyses and unlock valuable insights you can use to further optimize and refine your business processes.

Where is my leasing data stored? Is it secure?

Data privacy and security is our top priority. All customer data is encrypted and stored on LeasePilot’s Microsoft Azure cloud environment. To minimize the risk of data loss in the case of a total system failure, full-system backups are made every 30 minutes.

What happens to our leases if we stop using LeasePilot?

LeasePilot customers have the ability to download leases into MS Word at any time. In the event that you want to leave, our Customer Success team will export all customer leases and data and send it securely to the customer. After confirmation that all the data is received, LeasePilot will purge the data from our database.