Innovative legal strategies in the CEE Region

Luminance recently hosted a virtual discussion on the adoption of innovative legal technology in central and eastern European countries, with keynote speakers Pál Jalsovszky, Managing Partner at Jalsovszky, and Aljaž Jadek, Senior Associate at Jadek & Pensa.

Pál Jalsovszky and Aljaž Jadek shed light on the changes which will affect the legal industry post-Covid, requiring new ways of conducting reviews, more innovative pricing and diversifying the projects which lawyers take on.

Re-thinking the industry

Law firms have sometimes been reluctant to adopt new technologies in the past, with the mindset that this would require too great a shift internally. The ‘old way’ of manually reviewing documents has remained stubbornly prominent in the legal profession. Pál Jalsovszky, Managing Partner at Hungarian law firm, Jalsovszky, notes that: “If you look at any other profession, the technology is much more advanced.” But Pál believes that this conservatism is no way to grow your firm or succeed in the future: Pál adds, “Most law firms are run by lawyers and not by business people. You need to be a visionary. ” During the current health crisis, Pál notes that the flexibility provided by Luminance “will be vital to navigating this period and maintaining efficiency during these challenging times.” Luminance’s unique blend of both supervised and unsupervised machine learning is able to rapidly read and form an understanding of legal datasets, instantly surfacing crucial information such as clauses, standards, deviations and anomalies, without the need for pre-programming or configuration. Using Luminance, law firms are able to generate time-savings of at least 50% on day one of the review.

Generating profit through AI

Despite early lockdown measures, the CEE region will face considerable economic uncertainty over the coming months with exports severely impacted by the closing of national borders. Law firms in the region will need to increase efficiency and re-think their pricing models in order to respond to client demands. Pál Jalsovszky says, “there will be a huge competitive advantage on pricing for those who do use technology.” AI technology like Luminance will not only speed up the review, allowing regional firms in the CEE area to compete with global firms, but it will also enable lawyers to diversify their work with new types of reviews. By accelerating the review and providing insight into huge legal datasets, Luminance is allowing firms to compete beyond their usual structures and take on cases traditionally reserved for larger firms.

With global supply chains still disrupted, in the short-term, law firms in the CEE region will continue to take on work related to the pandemic, such as identifying obligations in the event of Force Majeure, reviewing employment contracts and assessing Material Adverse Changes clauses in M&A deals in the event of significant economic changes. But Pál highlights the fact that over the last few months, lawyers at Jalsovszky have realised that Luminance can be used for a wide range of cases, including banking and finance-related reviews. Law firms are seeing the benefits of employing Luminance for debt restructuring and divestitures due to the flexible nature of the technology, and thus over the longer-term can Luminance can assist legal teams across a wide variety of practice areas, or allow the firm to diversify into services it had previously not provided.

Investing in efficiency

As law firms of all sizes will be affected by the current crisis, Luminance offers a way of gaining insight into documents as never before. Lawyers in the CEE region will benefit from these advanced capabilities by providing advice to their clients efficiently and cost effectively. Investing in AI tools will become crucial for business survival and it is vital that law firms embrace technological innovation or risk being left behind.