When your product is used by designers, every interaction matters.
Zeplin has built its reputation on creating software that feels intuitive, reducing friction between design and engineering so teams can focus on building great products. That expectation extends well beyond the product they sell. Internally, too, every tool has to earn its place by making work simpler, not more complicated.
For General Counsel Jose Lopez and Legal Counsel Ipek Basaran, however, ease of use was only part of the equation.
Having spent time working in enterprise legal environments, they brought a different lens to evaluating contract management platforms. It wasn't enough for a platform to automate workflows or promise faster reviews. It had to demonstrate that it could become a trusted system for some of Zeplin's most sensitive information.
That became increasingly important as AI began reshaping legal technology. New capabilities were appearing almost weekly, but they all raised the same question: what happens to our data?
"We were confident it was not using our data in an unsafe or risky way... I appreciate not having to go and explore and test tools that may have been riskier for the business side." - Ipek Basaran, Legal Counsel, Zeplin
For Zeplin, that confidence became the foundation for something much bigger than automation. It meant legal could adopt an AI-native contract lifecycle platform that continuously built context from every agreement, approval and negotiation; not simply to move contracts faster, but to help the business make better decisions over time.
From Manual and Risky to Automated and Trusted
Sidebar: Legal Research Grounded in Zeplin's Own Contracts
Ipek uses Sidebar, SpotDraft's AI research tool, for two recurring needs:
- Checking that data regulation references in Zeplin's contracts and terms are current
- Flagging legal risk when the product team is exploring a new feature
The impact comes down to one thing: Sidebar draws on Zeplin's own repository, not a generic knowledge base.
"Since we have been using SpotDraft as a repository, I know it has access to our data and documentation. So the analysis I get from Sidebar is specific and unique to us."
That's the difference from a standalone AI research tool. Ipek is explicit that she wouldn't upload sensitive contract data to a third-party tool she couldn't vouch for — Sidebar removes that tradeoff entirely, since the analysis is generated from data already inside SpotDraft.
Result: faster, lower-risk legal research — without the compromise of sending contract data outside a system Zeplin already trusts.
Trust that extended beyond AI
Zeplin didn't set out to buy an AI tool. It set out to build a legal operation that could scale without adding friction. By grounding every contract, workflow and decision in a shared body of organizational context, SpotDraft became more than a contract management system. It became the connective layer between legal and the business, helping teams move beyond managing contracts to accelerating decisions. That's the promise of an AI-native CLM: not simply replacing manual work, but turning every interaction into context that helps the organization move with greater speed, consistency and confidence.
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