-[14 July 2020]- The University of Glasgow recently teamed up with top-tier Scottish law firm, Burness Paull, and leading artificial intelligence platform, Luminance, to provide an e-learning module as part of the University’s Postgraduate Law Diploma in Professional Legal Practice.

The Diploma, which is the Scottish equivalent to the Legal Practice Course (LPC) in England and Wales, is a mandatory phase of training to qualify as a solicitor. Burness Paull, who have been involved with the University of Glasgow’s course since 2018, wanted to introduce a practical element to the course which would give the students a chance to apply their knowledge to a simulated legal enquiry and see how technology is revolutionising the field of law. Luminance was a natural choice for Burness Paull as the firm believe the market-leading AI technology to be “important for the future of the legal industry” as well as “highly insightful” for their own practice, overhauling the way the team approach compliance with data protection regulations and generating time savings of up to 85% for reviews using Luminance.

The students were given access to a version of the Luminance platform containing nearly 2,000 training documents. The students were tasked with completing a number of exercises using the dataset, including finding valid ‘Change of Control’ clauses, identifying their fictional clients’ obligations should they want to terminate an agreement, making notes on potential anomalies and utilising Luminance’s project management tools to allocate tasks to ‘colleagues’. The Luminance team then worked with Burness Paull to show the students how they would have completed the exercise, giving the students an opportunity to compare their answers and ask further questions. The course was extremely well received by the students, who were delighted by the chance to see the “cool stuff” in action.

Sam Moore, Innovation Manager at Burness Paull, comments: “It is very common for students to arrive at their traineeships with no knowledge of industry-specific tools like automated contract review software and e-discovery. By connecting students with legal technology via the law school, we hope to ‘upskill’ future trainees, not just for ourselves but for the broader profession.” Sam notes that this technology will be particularly important in combatting associate burnout and maintaining high employee retention rates, “The days of junior associates being buried in admin has come to an end. Technology like Luminance allows young lawyers to use their time, energy and legal knowledge to create more value for clients – all whilst enjoying their job more!”

Luminance’s CEO, Jason Brennan, comments, “We are extremely pleased that the e-learning module was a resounding success for the University of Glasgow students. By giving young lawyers access to Luminance’s technology, they are able to learn faster and better, putting to use the skills and knowledge they have honed during law school and equipping them for their future legal career.”

Luminance is used by over 250 law firms and organisations globally, including top-tier law firm, Burness Paull. Most recently, US firm, Ulmer & Berne, and insurance firm, Ascent, adopted Luminance to drive innovation in their legal services.

About Burness Paull

Burness Paull LLP is a leading Scottish commercial firm of solicitors, with offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, acting for private and public sector clients. Burness Paull is well-known for its strengths in corporate law and energy law, supporting clients across 80 different jurisdictions.

About Luminance

Luminance is the leading artificial intelligence platform for the legal profession. Founded by mathematicians from the University of Cambridge, Luminance has developed the Legal Inference Transformation Engine (LITE), the first true application of machine learning to the legal industry, combining pattern-recognition technology with supervised and unsupervised machine learning to read and understand human language. Luminance is used by law firms and in-house teams in over 50 countries around the world to improve processes such as due diligence, contract negotiation, regulatory compliance reviews, property portfolio analysis and eDiscovery. The company has offices in London, Cambridge, New York and Singapore.