How the legal tech is aiming to disrupt the industry
From legal robots to artificial intelligence in law, legal tech is seeing a boom and the industry as a whole is beginning to embrace technology. The newest disruption to the evolving legal landscape is aimed at high-level problem solving that boasts the ability to read and review legal contracts at an average of 60 times faster and 30% cheaper than paralegals. According to a study done by travelers.com, 56% of the top 100 UK law firms report already using artificial intelligence (AI) in their law firm. The use-case for legal tech internationally is climbing, and the practicality of AI in law is real.
Several companies have already invested in many different AI technologies for their law firms. The newest AI addition allows law firms to assess legal contracts without having to actually read them. Called Review, the legal tech was created by UK and Singapore start-up software company, ThoughtRiver.
Review’s capabilities are based on the company’s Contextual Interpretation Engine known as ‘Fathom.’ Fathom is what joins the legal tech’s machine learning capabilities to extensive legal expertise, helping the engine to sift through massive amounts of legal text through a series of strategically assembled questions and machine learning algorithms. Afterword, the legal tech interprets the information it has processed to provide legal firms with a risk rating to help users prioritize which portions of a contract will require further review.
Founder of ThoughtRiver, Tim Pullan, explains the real-life need for a legal tech like Review:
“A typical large organization can have more than 100,000 live contracts across its suppliers, contractors and partner networks. It is impossible for any legal team or chief executive to have a complete bird’s eye view of the current state of play when it comes to contracts. The harsh reality is that an organization only realizes that there’s a problem with a contract when something goes wrong. Our system allows a rapid and accurate assessment of contracts a company is processing and it quickly identifies which ones may need further review.”
True to form, Pullan elaborates that Review enables law firms, in-house counsel, procurement departments, and C-level executives to oversee large volumes of contracts with more accuracy, precision, and time management. Pullan also says CEOs will be able to reduce the burden of compliance and regulatory issues with the new legal tech, as well. Review’s Contextual Interpretation Engine has been trained to provide fast, automatic document anonymity. In other words, all confidential information such as full names and company names are eradicated by default.
ThoughtRiver went through extensive early adoption testing at international legal brands such as Eversheds Sutherland, including continuing trials with multiple multinational in-house legal departments such as BT. And its big debut onto the market came after raising one million dollars back in May with an over-subscription in just eleven days.
Instead of fearing legal tech, Pullan encourages law firms the world over to embrace it. The goal of Review and of all legal tech is to improve inefficiencies and ultimately make more money, and by automating the contract review process, Pullman says law firms will be in a much stronger position to provide strategic advice to clients. In-house legal teams will be better placed to assess every contract that passes through their organization without having to read each and every one of them, allowing law firms to prioritize their workloads to issues that require their legal expertise.
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