A fast-growing restaurant chain head quartered in the Northeast was in full expansion mode—competing aggressively for tight retail vacancies in markets across the country. The real estate team was built to move fast, striking deals quickly to lock down prime locations before competitors could.
But the legal team couldn't keep up.
Three in-house attorneys were responsible for every lease negotiation, supported by a rotating network of 30+ outside law firms engaged to ensure local laws and ordinances were covered in each market. The volume was relentless. The real estate team would send its standard form to the landlord, and most came back heavily marked up. Compromises stalled. Negotiations dragged. Fingers started pointing.
The team didn't have a playbook—they had a massive, chaotic Excel spreadsheet with precedent clauses copied and pasted from what they believed were the most favorable leases signed in the past. But were they really favorable? Leadership had turned over several times, and the new executive team was frustrated with old deals—questioning why certain terms had been accepted and what protections had been missed.
When anyone needed to pull a specific clause to insert into a new lease, they had to go through the lease administration team managing lease accounting software to dig it out. That team was overwhelmed too, and a week could be lost just waiting for a single data point.
The dysfunction was systemic. Real estate wanted legal to close faster. Legal wanted to protect the company from compliance risks. The CEO wanted a basis for decisions—and corrections to old leases to address the deficiencies. Everyone had legitimate priorities, but no shared platform, no shared visibility, and no shared language to work from.
The chain adopted Bryckel to transform how its legal, real estate, and executive teams collaborated on lease negotiations—and to build the institutional knowledge the company had never been able to retain.
Playbooks that actually work. Bryckel helped the team build structured negotiation playbooks tailored to different market contexts—mature markets versus new markets—different negotiating positions, and different asset types: inline shopping centers, main street retail, and malls. Instead of hunting through a chaotic spreadsheet for precedent language, the team now had purpose-built frameworks that reflected actual strategy.
AI-flagged markups, counsel stays in control. Each time a counterparty returned a marked-up lease, the new version ran through Bryckel's AI, which flagged deviations from the playbook and prior positions. But counsel remained fully in control—reviewing, accepting, or rejecting each flag. With every version, the decision-making process and rationale behind compromises was captured automatically. It became, as the team described it, like having a CRE lawyer who will never retire and never forget.
Everyone sees what they need. Leases were summarized for the CEO with all deviations from standard terms clearly called out—giving leadership the basis for decisions they had been demanding. The real estate and construction teams received their own tailored summaries with timelines and state-specific requirements like labor harmony provisions or odor restrictions. Outside counsel no longer needed hours of background calls on the why, what, and how behind each draft—context traveled with the document.
Negotiation timelines cut dramatically—what was taking one to two months to negotiate is now getting closed in two weeks, with no risk missed or left unevaluated.
Legal team moving faster with less strain—three attorneys now handle the same volume with greater confidence, supported by playbooks and AI-flagged markups instead of chaotic spreadsheets.
Outside counsel hours reduced significantly—firms no longer need lengthy onboarding calls for each deal; context, history, and rationale are embedded in the platform.
CEO and leadership finally have visibility—deviation summaries give executives a clear basis for decisions and a mechanism to course-correct terms from legacy deals.
Permanent deal intelligence captured—every compromise, every negotiation rationale, every playbook evolution is retained regardless of team turnover.
Less infighting, more alignment—real estate, legal, and the C-suite now operate from the same platform with shared visibility, eliminating the finger-pointing that had become the norm.
