In the past six months alone, many businesses around the world have undergone five years’ worth of technological and digital transformation. For lawyers more specifically, many organisations have faced downturns in customer demand and, with a tough structural economic environment, it has become harder for businesses to operate profitably. Lawyers who employ advanced technologies to drive efficiencies and promote further client work will be best adapted to weather the storm and thrive in a post-pandemic world. But where should businesses begin when selecting the right technology? In this blog we will hear from Clementine Fox, Luminance’s Head of Account Management, on what to look out for when adopting new AI technologies.

Identifying the problem

Rather than simply trying to tick the innovation box, technology adoption should be driven by the desire to address specific aims and directly impact the business’s development; identify the ‘pain points’ – the bottlenecks, the areas of repetitive work and the most time-consuming exercises. For example, within the legal industry, resource-intensive areas such as repetitive document review processes, project management and some administrative tasks can now be significantly alleviated by legal AI solutions. For example, M&A due diligence often requires lawyers to review tens of thousands of documents on tight timelines, presenting them with tough decisions: should they review just a sample of the documents despite the potential financial and reputational risk, or instead, should they conduct a full manual review at vast expense and to the disappointment of clients hoping for a faster turn-around?

Indeed, in the face of exponentially increasing corporate data, lawyers simply can’t keep pace with client demands by using manual review processes. Over the last few years, there has been great excitement around AI’s potential to transform workflows and drastically increase efficiency within the legal industry, and with increased adoption of AI this impact is finally being felt.

Trialling the technology

Not all trials are created equal. Luminance allows trials to be conducted in a real-life situation, with as many users as you like and most importantly, using your own data. Further, Luminance can be deployed within hours by organisations of any size, from four-man firms to the Big Four, ensuring no time is wasted on lengthy set-up or integrations.

Luminance offers a two-week free pilot, which not only means that the users can provide important feedback on their experience, but they can immediately benefit from the technology too. Indeed, many firms see time-savings of up to 80% from day one of the trial.

Future-proofing

With the pace of technological development what it is today, no organisation has time to adopt a technology which will soon be obsolete. With true machine learning technologies, they are innately flexible in that they continuously learn from a user’s interactions, and do not require extensive pre-training. This means the technology can keep up with the rate of change and respond to new situations as our world develops, giving the user control to adapt the technology based on their requirements.

The human element

Luminance’s AI does not make any judgment calls or decisions on behalf of the user. Instead, it enables lawyers to understand the content of large sets of documents in a way that isn’t possible manually, allowing them to spend less time searching for the information and more time analysing what the machine has found. Working with organisations all over the world, I have seen a variety of ways that technology supports lawyers in their work. On a recent case with international law firm, Bird & Bird, a Senior Associate working on the project commented that it was the “combination of technology and insight” which allowed them to “achieve their review in record time, whilst remaining confident in the results.”

The best legal tech puts the user front and centre, providing a platform that is intuitive and easy to integrate into existing workflows. This in turn provides lawyers with more time to spend on insight and utilise the analytical they have gained through years of training. The right technologies can augment your team’s capabilities and ensure your organisation keeps pace with the latest innovations to remain competitive in a transformed world.