Leading New Zealand law firm Russell McVeagh has adopted Luminance’s artificial intelligence platform to assist with its contract review processes.

The firm, which forms part of the ‘Big Three’ in New Zealand, has selected Luminance after completing a successful pilot of the technology, which allowed its legal team to review a large number of contracts from historic transactions. From day one of the trial, Luminance reordered the data room, prioritising documents and pinpointing key areas of potential interest. Luminance allowed Russell McVeagh’s lawyers to significantly reduce the amount of time spent compared to a manual review alone.

“At Russell McVeagh, we’re very focused on the role technology will play in the legal industry moving forward and have explored a number of different technology solutions,” said Mei Fern Johnson, Technology and M&A Partner at Russell McVeagh.

'Our focus is on providing clients with cutting-edge solutions and excellent technological and business understanding, as opposed to being just lawyers. Using technologies, we can determine best fit for our clients – increasing the quality of our advice, our responsiveness, our flexibility, and saving clients time and costs. When trialling Luminance, we particularly appreciate how the human lawyer’s input remains paramount, augmenting and enhancing the work of our legal team rather than replacing it,” says Mei Fern Johnson.

“We’re delighted to continue growing demand in the APAC region and secure a client of the calibre of Russell McVeagh,” added Luminance’s CEO, Emily Foges. “The firm recognises the importance of innovation in the legal sector and Luminance’s ability to transform their due diligence processes. We’re excited to deploy our language agnostic technology within the firm and see the efficiency gains it can deliver on a host of corporate transactions.”

Luminance applies the latest advances in machine learning technology, developed by mathematicians from Cambridge University, to read and understand legal documents in a similar way to humans, coping with volumes and working at speeds that no human can match. The technology instantly sorts and classifies documents while highlighting possible anomalies for lawyers’ review.

Luminance has over 75 customers in 23 countries across five continents since launching in September 2016. The platform is also used by other APAC firms including Allens, Wong Partnership and Gilbert + Tobin.

About Russell McVeagh

Widely regarded as New Zealand’s premier law firm, Russell McVeagh is committed to operating on the cutting edge of legal practice. Employing approximately 350 staff and partners across both Auckland and Wellington offices, the firm's lawyers are the best in their fields and recognised internationally for their expertise. The firm acts for 11 of the NZX 15 companies, and New Zealand’s major corporates, including numerous energy and utilities companies, all of New Zealand’s retail banks, and New Zealand’s largest company and largest listed company. Russell McVeagh's practice groups are respected as leaders in the market and are known for assisting clients with their most complex, challenging and high-profile transactions.