• Privacy policy
  • T&C’s
  • About Us
    • FAQ
    • Meet the Team
  • Contact us
TLE ONLINE SHOP!
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Opinion
  • Elevenses
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • Film
    • Lifestyle
      • Horoscopes
    • Lottery Results
      • Lotto
      • Thunderball
      • Set For Life
      • EuroMillions
  • Food
    • All Food
    • Recipes
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
SUPPORT THE LONDON ECONOMIC
NEWSLETTER
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Opinion
  • Elevenses
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • Film
    • Lifestyle
      • Horoscopes
    • Lottery Results
      • Lotto
      • Thunderball
      • Set For Life
      • EuroMillions
  • Food
    • All Food
    • Recipes
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
No Result
View All Result
Home Tech and Auto Technology

AI making impressive inroads in legal sector

Last year, investment in legal tech topped $1 billion for the first time, and this year has already soared past 2018’s figures with more than $1.2 billion invested to date.

Jess Young by Jess Young
2019-11-19 09:03
in Technology
FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmailWhatsapp

Startup company Ping made waves in the legal industry this week by raising $13 million of venture capital in its Series A funding round. The fledgling outfit uses artificial intelligence to track lawyers’ work in order to automatically fill out their timesheets, relieving them of the mind-numbing and time-consuming task and potentially boosting law firms’ profit margins by as much as 10%.

The impressive funding round is not only a testament to how burdensome filling out timesheets is for many lawyers, but also an affirmation of how important technology and AI is becoming in the legal profession. Last year, investment in legal tech topped $1 billion for the first time, and this year has already soared past 2018’s figures with more than $1.2 billion invested to date. Large corporations are taking note and snatching up promising companies in the sector—Thomson Reuters, for example, bought collaboration platform HighQ, which counted more than half of the world’s top 100 law firms among its clients, earlier this year as part of CEO Jim Smith’s push for acquisitions. AI’s inroads into the legal industry are only projected to accelerate, meaning those who still harbour concerns over the technology’s efficacy and reliability risk being left behind.

Automate to optimise

The recent funding round saw Ping’s overall investment surpass $17 million in just two years. Indeed, those remarkable figures have been reflected in the performance of AI in all sectors, with experts predicting that total spending on the technology will balloon up from $8 billion in 2016 to $47 billion by 2020, an almost 600% increase in just four years. The legal industry is no different, with around a third of the $1 billion invested in tech last year being funnelled towards AI.

Of course, AI is not exactly a stranger to the industry, having been deployed in e-discovery for over a decade. However, advances in the tech means it can now optimise other facets of the profession, such as the timekeeping solutions offered by Ping. Elsewhere, it’s also being developed with a view to aiding legal research, drafting pleadings and predicting the outcome of judicial decisions, among other purposes. There are already plenty of tools in various stages of completion which can significantly expedite and optimise efficiency in those areas and more.

French company showing the way

One such example is the French startup Doctrine, which has adopted AI to build a much larger and more rapidly updated database of legal decisions than rivals like LexisNexis and Clio. In addition to the public access site Legifrance, Doctrine has also indexed verdicts from international databases and added 94,000 outcomes unavailable elsewhere, making its tool more comprehensive than others. Thanks to its use of smart data, it’s faster, too; according to co-founder Nicolas Bustamante, it’s at least 20 times speedier in delivering results than the competition – and may be up to 180 times quicker.

Those extraordinary figures may only be a sign of things to come. Having raised a whopping €2 million within two months of its inception, Doctrine has been growing at a breakneck pace of around 20% to 25% per month. The company currently employs 90 staff members but has set its sights on hiring a number of new data scientists and lawyers in the next 18 months. Within two-and-a-half years, Bustamante and his colleagues are aiming for a total turnover in excess of €10 million, which, given that they currently sell monthly subscription packages for between €129 and €159 to thousands of clients, looks entirely within the realms of possibility.

The leading light of Luminance

Meanwhile, British legal tech darling Luminance continues its rapid expansion. The company uses AI to process and analyse large quantities of legal documentation, which is particularly useful for helping with contract reviews (repapering) or for completing the due diligence related to mergers and acquisitions. Traditionally, this would have involved manually combing through thousands of documents and was considered a rite of passage for junior lawyers, often accounting for between 30% and 60% of all billable hours involved in those kinds of operations.

RelatedPosts

The Impact of COVID-19 on People and their Streaming Habits

Alexa tells girl, 10, to touch live plug with coin

What to do if WhatsApp has just dropped support for your current phone

SOLUTIONS AND INNOVATIONS IN POWER ENGINEERING – FOREIGN EXPERIENCE

Luminance’s labour-saving technology makes a mockery of such drudgery. For example, in one recent case study they were able to help two inhouse members of a global retail bank repaper a key GDPR contract within just seven days, as opposed to the projected nine weeks. That kind of efficiency has seen their valuation swell to $100 million and attract customers in 165 countries around the world, including 17 of the Global 100 and all of the Big Four accounting firms.

The way of the future

Despite the impressive figures posted by legal tech startups all over the globe, uptake of the technology has been slightly slower than expected. One survey found that 51% of respondents had doubts over the accuracy of the technology. 48% were concerned over its reliability, while 46% harboured misgivings over the cost of implementation, despite the huge benefits it offers.

However, such skittishness is likely to be a transient reaction to the new technology, just as disruptors are often mistrusted upon arrival in any industry. The reality is that investors have caught onto the vast potential of the legal tech market, both in terms of the innovative ways it can revolutionise the working lives of those who use it and the highly lucrative rewards it can return to those stumping up the cash. As with so many aspects of modern technology, it appears that resistance is futile; AI and machine learning as integral components of the legal profession are surely here to stay.

Subscribe to our Newsletter

View our  Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

Trending on TLE

  • All
  • trending
Abdollah

‘Rescue us’: Afghan teacher begs UK to help him escape Taliban

CHOMSKY: “If Corbyn had been elected, Britain would be pursuing a much more sane course”

What If We Got Rid Of Prisons?

More from TLE

Watch – Out of control Mondeo crash head on into van

Film Review : Ping Pong Summer

M Restaurants introduces new menu with focus on exceptional ingredients

Rumours – Leicester City, Liverpool, Celtic, Manchester United & more

Man who sexually abused teenager while she slept & filmed it on his phone is jailed

Hypocrisy alert! Tory MP who called for speeding crackdown loses licence for speeding

Oxford University denies turning down Stormzy’s scholarship for black students offer

More than 20 ancient SKULLS stolen from Kent church

Couple furious after cafe refuses to let them buy coffee for homeless man

Pine forests smell the way they do due to volatile gasses that help them get as much sunlight as possible

About Us

TheLondonEconomic.com – Open, accessible and accountable news, sport, culture and lifestyle.

Read more

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.




No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Travel
  • More…
    • Elevenses
    • Opinion
    • Property
    • Tech & Auto
  • About Us
    • Meet the Team
    • Privacy policy
  • Contact us

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.