“being digital is the currency” · the growth in legal ... aligning existing contracts with...
TRANSCRIPT
“Being digital is the currency”
October is a month I always look forward to. For many in India it’s the start of the festive season with Navaratri, Dussehra and finally ending with Diwali. For me, it is also the time for the annual Legal Geek conference that is held in London every year. The conference is a great platform to learn about new innovations that are shaping our industry and to meet and connect with like-minded individuals and firms who are determined to change the way legal service will be delivered. This year, the Algo Legal team attended the Legal Geek Conference 2019, that was held in Shoreditch, London. The conference saw over 2,000 delegates and over 100 speakers – my third conference and the biggest yet. What is clear is the real passion and energy that has gripped this industry. Having followed legal technology over the past 10 years, I can confidently say innovation has officially exploded - with an estimated $2.8bn invested in 2018 and 1,250 legal technology companies with a clear resolve in wanting to solve real-world legal problems. The growth in legal technology start-ups has accelerated after years of lagging behind other specialist technology in areas such as fintech and healthcare. Legal Geek’s own tracker shows 25 start-ups offering legal documents as a service, 11 that do document automation and 15 that provide a legal services marketplace. (See the Legal Geek Start up map in the Appendix) That said, I believe, this has now posed a new challenge the industry is facing. Law firms and in-house legal departments are faced with an overwhelming amount of choice and a lack of a clear starting point has prevented a wide-spread adoption of such tools. Further, adoption also requires a change in culture. Us lawyers are trained to be skeptical. Dr. Larry Richards who has been gathering data on the lawyer personality since the mid 80s calls out skepticism as the number one extreme outlier trait of lawyers and skepticism makes you risk averse. Implementing technology requires a nimble and an open mindset. But let that not dampen any enthusiasm. Change is happening. Over the past conferences I have attended, I can see a clear change in the discourse. Three years ago, people were curious, last year people believed and this year people accepted and were looking for answers on how to adopt. Any change has its hurdles. At this juncture, I am reminded a quote by Frederick Nietzsche “He who has a why can endure any how.’ At Algo we believe in the why. Regards, Sandeep Kapoor Founder and Managing Partner
Overall Trends This year The Legal Geek event has evolved from the yester years to a full blown, vibrant law-tech community of legal tech companies, law-firms, corporates and in-house lawyers innovating, collaborating and refining legal-tech solutions. Companies primarily represented Contract (maximum), Compliance, Deal and workflow Management, etc. The themes and major take-aways of this year’s conference are as follows: a) Rising interest of VC’s and PE’s in Legal Tech with more funding opportunities for legal tech start-ups
b) No innovation without collaboration - Collaboration and Digital Transformation in Legal Industry needs-.
Law firms and clients to collaborate on common themes to reduce cost
c) Client Focused Legal Services Delivery – use of Legal Design concepts to ensure better client experience and
legal advice/support delivery. Major law firms such as Freshfields and Eversheds are implementing legal
design principles to provide solutions/advice to their clients. Start-ups such as Juro, DWF Ventures are using
legal design thinking to assess client needs, engage, ideate and prototype to build technically viable
solutions while keeping the cost low.
d) Easy integration – Open API, tech-agnostic solutions that can integrate various features and that can speak
to each other, receive or share data, etc. is a standard requirement
e) Law is a data driven business – With more focus on data, digitization and digital legal transformation, data
security and cyber threat aspects are real. Lawyers need to be more data driven in their approach too,
starting from simple training on use of excel
f) Platfirms is the future and data fluency will be a legal skill requirement. An example was seen with Eagle
Labs, part of the Barclays incubation centre, that talked about ‘empathetic legal solutions’ that blended
highly skilled lawyering with tech platforms
g) A lot of innovation in contract management – Tools are moving from simple contract creation and
management to more NLP and AI support driven contracts. The focus is to bring in efficiency, minimize
review time, automated contract abstraction, and automate mundane process steps to expedite the
contract process.
Legal Geek conference 2019 was attended by over 2000 delegates
Key players covered
Several key players that continue to be part of Legal Geek included:
Thompson Reuters (TR) (recently acquired HighQ) focused on integration and providing end-to-end solutions
from legal project management to due diligence, contract management, timesheet and billing, etc. With TR
acquiring HighQ, the focus is more on integrating its current TR offerings with HighQ’s platform. TR also shared
the Legal Tech Startup Report of 2019 that documented the rise and maturity of the new companies that are
contributing so much to the digital transformation of the legal industry. Categorization of the startups across
various areas per their products/solutions.
LawGeex – Automated contract review based on organizations’ approved business policies, contract approval workflow and guided contract editing (company’s approved contract language, fall-back positions
Luminance that uses AI and machine learning techniques to conduct document reviews, clause approval, compliance tracking, diligence/integration with systems, aligning existing contracts with boilerplate clauses and flag non-standard clauses, escalate issues for immediate review etc. Use cases for Luminance include GDPR, Bribery, Brexit and other Regulatory Compliance, Due Diligence, Insurance, Contracts, etc. Per Emily Foge, CEO of Luminance, the system uses “ML-lite” to read and understand documents and presented case studies on implementation and value created through Luminance in Torsten (Bech Bruun) a Norwegian law firm and Rajah and Tann, Singapore law firm.
Kira systems – that automates key contract clause abstraction, review and analysis, due diligence, etc. for the lawyers. The UI/UX used by Kira/Luminance are very attractive and user friendly. Per Noah Waisberg of Kira systems said, “sophisticated businesses only understand 10% of their contracts because of which big opportunities are being missed. “Contract Capital” must be understood to create value and therefore, systems like Kira automate the contract abstraction/review and analysis of data to overcome the limited human review capability - both in terms of time and perceived Return on Investment.” ThoughtRiver – This is a remarkable platform that offers contract pre-screening, AI enabled automation to interpret key risk issues, exceptions and outliers, uses Natural Language Processing (NLP), machine learning and other techniques to extract the relevant meaning from the contracts enabling lawyers to focus on critical contractual risks instead of wasting time on mundane document review. Additionally, ThoughtRiver launched its contract review Microsoft plug-in, Lexible during LegalGeek that is very useful and provides review support with intelligent risk profiling, default and specific positions based on your own contract playbooks, clause replacement, edit, etc. As Tim Pullman- CEO of Thought River stated, “if you want clients to use your workflow – you must embrace existing and well used technologies. (“Don’t replace the familiar”).” Genie.AI – helps drafting contracts. With Genie, clauses are recommended using machine learning, and can be searched by sector, client and other smart filters, automatically redact sensitive information from contracts from GDPR respective, providing an automatic knowledge base for law firms. SuperDrafter can be installed in private cloud or on premise, and automatically anonymises client data before using it. Integrating legal communication via emails to actionable events, workflow, comment trails, notifications, email
security platform - Tessian
Certain start-ups that have evolved on innovative concepts include: Juro – the AI-enabled contract workflow platform offers contract creation, negotiation, e-signing and analytics tools with a stack of integrations, including Slack, Google Drive and Salesforce for document management, comment trail of negotiations etc.
EigenTech.com - automates the extraction of data from documents/contracts using natural language processing technology and classifies documents based on their content. This data can then be used for analysis, risk-assessment, etc. per the organization requirement. On-site/online deployment and integration to various systems. Other open source platforms that connect contracts to your existing tools so that you can automate business processes and contract management (Clause.io) Visual Contracts – Uses Legal Design Thinking principles to help review the contracts (Legal design thinking is the cross-discipline of Legal Thinking, Design Thinking, Visual Thinking and User Experience (UX) design) New Entrants that are filling the gaps in the legal tech environment and aroused interest were:
Autto – This is a legal flow automation platform. It uses analysis based on a Runner -Repeater-Stranger-Alien methodology. This model segments inputs of demand from customers and uses the different characteristics of those segments to develop optimal operational responses. This not only captures the workflow, but helps document generation, linkage to emails and track the flow per Max Cole, Founder of Autto.
iManage RAVN – a cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence platform that powers several applications to automatically organize, discover and summarize your documents. The iManage RAVN platform sets the pace of the market allowing all types of organizations to increase efficiency, increase productivity and mitigate risk. The system analyzes and extracts key data points from documents such as leases, loan portfolios, or M&A documents, allowing you to perform due diligence, financial statement reviews, and other necessary tasks with ease. Dealsign – is contracting and negotiation services platform that helps complete deal execution along with digital signature workflow. Libryo – is a compliance management system that includes custom legal registers, updates and notifications, compliance research repository, summaries of legalese into simple language, built-in translations, document storage, activity trackers, auto alerts and notifications, specialist support and integration with GRC, risk assessments and audit reports. Libryo claims to provide compliance support for 64 jurisdictions globally with dedicated support from regional lawyers. Other Companies showcasing their legal-tech products included:
Net Documents Claritis Orbital Witness Lexoo Clara Tessian
Summize Evident Proof Libryo DealSign Legatics Define
Eagle Labs Lexical Labs Crafty CounselVisual
Contracts
Extracts from some talks worth mentioning
Collaboration
1. Simon Davis - President of the Law Society
• If you behave like a robot, you will be replaced by one • Figure out how to get into the soul of your client and you will win the business • Digitise what is not core to a lawyer • ‘’An uncritical reliance on technology could lead to wrong decisions that threaten human rights and
undermine public trust in the justice system.” See: Algorithms in Criminal Justice System June 2019 – a nice report that highlights the threats that tech brings and what we need to do to mitigate them (https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/research-trends/algorithm-use-in-the-criminal-justice-system-report/)
2. Isabel Parker- Chief Legal Innovation Officer at Freshfields - Insights on Collaboration • No innovation is possible without collaboration. Law firms’ clients are expecting collaboration on
common themes to reduce cost. Don’t hide information if it’s not strategic. • To collaborate you must share a vision • Respect and nurture the ecosystem and it will pay you back
3. Thompson Reuters & High Q - Richard Punt – Chief Strategy Officer; Stuart Barr- Head of Product
Strategy- High Q. • TR wants to create opportunities for others • Need a seamless experience across the industry • Platforms must be open and interoperable and create an open network • The future is the Platform
Sources of innovation
1. Ben Chiriboga of NEXL, a firm that helps early stage legal technology companies grow by bringing them the best marketing and growth strategies. Another supporter of the “Collaboration” theme, he believes it takes an army to change the current legal landscape and we must all succeed, en masse. He claimed to have cracked the secret of how to orchestrate change in organizations. His “Secrets”: • Telling Great Stories as it triggers a chemical reaction in the body • Every story needs a Hero - and you have to depict the lawyer as the hero
2. Rob Wilmott Founder & CEO of Crowdicity, makes the software that ignites potential of innovation and
crowdsourcing of ideas (“open innovation”) can be harnessed through tools or simply by changing the mindset in an organization to listen and encourage new ideas. He believed that great ideas can be found anywhere in an organization and they need to be uncovered- and people need to be empowered to contribute.
Adaptability of Law Firms to Legal Tech
1. Peter Buck of Net Documents brought in the concept of Software Defined Law Firm. According to Peter, legal services is very fragmented and law firms can be successful only when they share their data. This is cloud-services era so don’t ignore it and try something different. In the future, data will need to be leveraged through APIs and law firms will see results based on data + intelligence. The software defined law firm will beat the hardware-centric alternative.
2. Founder & Managing Partner of Fisher Broyles, LLP discussed the first distributed law firm model that he has created. Their platform is based on compensation, people, location, and technology. They use smart contracts on a distributed network where all partners can see how everyone is billing, it’s automated and in the clear. Partners get 80 percent of all billable work for their clients. If you work with another partner, you receive 48 percent of the earnings. The cost savings comes from having no physical office space as every partner is geographically distributed as well. Their people join this internal compensation engine/program from some of the biggest firms in the world with the attraction of no commutes, no overhead, increased professional growth potential, and an extremely diverse partnership. Lastly, their technology is a mix of both cutting edge and traditional tools to help their clients. They call themselves as the ‘Law Firm of Future’.
Challenges to digital transformation
1. LegalTech is still expensive and doesn’t connect (Stephen Allen- Innovation and Digital). Per the Technology Products Margin Reports by Proband, a technology service provider in UK, the legal sector’s pay margin for IT is the highest compared to other industries due to lack of accountability by IT vendors, cost effectiveness of solutions, transparency of tech pricing and lack of tech expertise in-house. With legal ops positions moving into law firms and legal departments, new roles such as CIO tasked exclusively with managing and improving the firm’s technology, law firms can demand more cost efficiency in spend and technology and keep IT vendors and managed service providers (MSP) accountable for the services they provide and the rates they bill.
2. “Mind the Gap” between innovation, product and sale. Probe the commercial case before spending time and money (Slaughter & May – Program “Collaborate”). The firm highlighted that it is difficult to find the right tools for law firms. Often they don’t work or have to be adapted so there is real need to work with early stage tech to get the right tools. Tech providers need to be mindful that the legal buyer has to write the use case – so it must be obvious.
About Algo Legal Algo Legal is a technology driven full service law firm for investors and start-ups. Our team is comprised of practitioners with decades of extensive experience in handling sophisticated, high value transactions and providing practical commercial advice. Our team is dedicated to providing VC/PE investors and startups with top-notch legal services.
The team is comprised of new age lawyers, company secretaries, chartered accountants, management and human resource professionals. By ‘new age’ we mean professionals with an open mind to embrace, experiment, evolve with the new work environments. We tend to bring the best practices and strategies that will make our work space highly competitive, responsive, and challenging.
Interesting reads Legal Tech Startup Report of 2019 - Thompson Reuters report on Legal Tech startups. Algorithms in Criminal Justice System June 2019 – a nice report that highlights the threats that tech brings and what we need to do to mitigate them (https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/research-trends/algorithm-use-in-the-criminal-justice-system-report/) “Legal AI Efficacy Report” (need to pay for it) assesses what’s adding real value in the AI space.
What is next in the industry - Amazon’s foray into legal services – will this shake up the industry.
Technology Products Margin Reports by Proband, a technology service provider in UK on the legal sector’s pay margin for IT is the highest compared to other industries.
Interesting social media handles to follow
The Law Society (@TheLawSociety) | Twitter
Legal Design Lab (@LegalDesignLab) | Twitter
LIFTED by SAL (@LIFTED_SAL) | Twitter
Contact Us
Website: www.algolegal.in
Twitter: @algolegal_law
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/algolegal
The Algo Legal team at Legal Geek 2019
22
Peop
le &
Res
ourc
esFi
nanc
e &
Ope
ratio
nsCl
ient
skn
owld
ege
Mat
ters
Ris
kR
ight
s M
anag
emen
tD
ocum
ents
& C
ontr
acts
Litig
atio
nTr
ansa
ctio
sCo
nsum
er S
ervi
ces
MA
NA
GIN
G T
HE
BU
SIN
ESS
MA
NA
GIN
G A
ND
PER
FOR
MIN
G W
OR
K
PER
FOR
MIN
G W
OR
K
CON
SUM
ER S
ERV
ICES
Legal Geek Start-up map The Scale Ups
Abo
gade
aLe
gale
XeA
cces
s So
licito
rCa
ll A
Law
yer
Crow
d Ju
stic
eD
omai
ne L
egal
elA
boga
do
findm
yNot
ary
Laki
välit
ysJu
st B
eagl
eLe
xSna
pLi
sten
d.to
Mon
-avo
cat
myB
arris
etr
MyL
egal
Adv
iser
Nem
o Ju
sO
ratt
oPi
ngaL
awye
rR
evie
wSo
licito
rstu
App
boga
doU
NA
ESVo
tre
Rob
inG
Ole
gal
Teal
Lega
l
Qua
rand
e
App
ject
ion
Case
Hub
Dem
ande
r Jus
tice
Inde
mni
fligh
tIn
dem
niza
Me
JuriP
hone
Kier
osle
galb
ono
Lega
line
Rec
lam
ador
DIG
UR
AP
ymeL
egal
Biz
Bot
Law
Bite
La F
abriq
ue Ju
ridqu
e
Tenn
ant C
ompe
nsat
ion
Third
fort
Din
Arv
Fare
will
Liga
bis
Clai
m it
DoN
otPa
yw
eleg
al.e
sW
inu
EMPLOYMENT LEGAL SERVICES
DISPUTE RESOLUTIONWILLS
LEGAL DOCS AS A SERVICE
REAL ESTATE
lega
lydo
csSo
pim
ustie
toTe
staV
iva
Age
ns O
yFo
rmal
Doc
sFo
xNot
Law
box
Faril
lioJu
riDox
Capt
ain
cont
ract
Clic
k2Co
ntra
ctCo
ntra
ctFa
ctor
yD
octu
alLe
gal D
esk
Lega
liboo
Lega
lsta
rtLe
gallo
ydLi
gook
idoc
Seed
Lega
lsSo
pim
usm
allit
Tryg
ga A
vtal
Swift
cour
tW
onde
r.Leg
alYo
ung
Law
CONSUMER MARKET PLACES
Orb
ital W
itnes
s
Alti
sLe
gatic
sR
uby
Dat
umth
edoc
yard
MyN
otar
y
TRANSACTION PLATFORMSDUE DILIGENCE
Case
Cru
nch
Case
Law
Ana
lytic
sLe
xIQ
Pr
edic
tice
Law
ers
Aju
veeJ
ust
Hap
py R
esol
utio
n
LITIGATION ANALYTICS
LITIGATION FUNDING
ONLINE DISPUTE RESOLUTION
Arc
hii
Cont
ract
pedi
aCo
gniti
v+H
yper
lex
Logi
cal C
onst
ruct
Pyt
hAgo
riaSo
ftLa
wTa
gDox
Confi
rmSi
gnLe
gals
ign
Oat
hello
Scriv
eSi
gnat
urit
Sign
Req
uest
Valid
ated
ID
Big
leLe
gal
Avok
aado
Avvo
kaCo
ntra
ct M
illD
ocxp
ress
oG
reen
Mea
dow
JuriB
lox
Sket
.ioLe
xolv
esy
nerg
ist.i
oPr
ecis
ely
Trak
tiA
ivan
Cont
ract
PodA
ICo
ntra
ctZe
nD
ataJ
uris
tes
Dea
lsig
nO
neflo
wCo
ntra
ctbo
okLe
galT
hing
s
Don
naeC
ontr
actH
ubG
enie
AI
Legi
toM
ade
in la
wM
aitr
edat
aM
aNew
CoM
ilcon
trat
osVQ
Leg
al
Thou
ghtR
iver
Ann
otat
eB
igLe
gal
eXpe
rYen
zJu
roM
onax
MyD
ocSa
feXB
undl
eCl
ause
Doc
uem
do
CONTRACT COMPLETION
DOCUMENT AUTOMATION
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
DRAFTING SUPPORT
CONTRACT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT
CONTRACT/DOCUMENT ANALYSIS
DOCUMENT REVIEW
Pate
ntPr
ofs
Trad
emar
kNow
Teqm
ine
Snap
Dra
gon
Blo
ckch
ainy
ourIP
Law
Pane
l
IP FILING IP RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
Law
yer C
heck
erPo
st-Q
uant
um
Dat
a So
lver
Dat
abox
erKo
rmoo
nPe
rson
alD
ata.
IOSe
ers
Gro
up
CE C
heck
Lean
Ent
ries
Add
alia
Aly
neCe
rtify
doc
Clau
seM
atch
eEvi
denc
eeG
aran
teR
ight
sDD
VEN
NCO
MM
Polic
ySto
reIn
side
rLog
Way
mar
k Te
chTe
rmin
isA
rach
nys
Am
iqus
Enfo
rcd
Brie
fed
Capd
esk
Libr
yo
RISK MANAGEMENTDATA PRIVACY COMPLIANCE
GUIDANCE APPLICATIONS
REGULATORY COMPLIANCE
CYBER SECURITY
Agg
ileCa
seCa
sedo
Hoo
wla
InTo
uch
mat
ters
Clou
dPa
nach
e So
ftw
are
shar
deo
InCa
seJu
ralio
The
Link
App
CASE/RECORDS MANAGEMENT COLLABORATION
Inte
lliex
know
lex
Nal
ytic
sSp
ectr
Tira
nt A
naly
tics
Jurio
sity
Asp
irant
Ana
lytic
s Le
galc
ompl
exSi
byl
Vizl
egal
thin
gsTH
INKI
NG
Cour
tsD
ESK
Doc
trin
eFr
omCo
unse
lIn
ddub
iole
x.be
Onn
a Te
chno
logi
es
Craf
ty C
ouns
elVa
ble
KNOWLEDGE SEARCH LEGAL ANALYTICS
LEGAL RESEARCH NEWS AND CURRENT AWARENESS
Toni
c W
orks
Flip
let
Law
Tec
h Fa
ctor
yPe
rsui
tBUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
TIME/TASK RECORDING & ANALYSIS
easy
Quo
rum
Enor
onnu
bbiu
sA
utto
Hox
ro L
imite
d
App
erio
LEX
Clo
cktim
izer
Bus
yLam
p
P&K
Tim
e A
ppTI
Qtim
e
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGMENT
LEGAL SPEND MANAGMENT
RECRUITMENT
Clau
seba
seF-
LEX
Indi
oLe
xoo
ProF
inda
Third
Way
Leg
alVa
xes
E3CT
LE
X su
perio
r
Age
ras
Clou
dLeg
alCo
ntra
ctin
box
Flex
ebos
sTh
e La
w S
uper
stor
eLa
wxe
roLa
wye
rlIn
QLe
Dro
it Po
ur M
oiLe
galD
utch
Lega
lHer
oLe
xgo
App
Link
ilaw
Onl
ine
Law
yers
ProA
nnex
Us
Ros
etta
Adv
isor
Lega
l Mon
itor
LexS
tep
Rou
te1
Top
3 Le
gal
LEGAL SERVICES MARKETPLACES
EDUCATION & TRAINING
ALTERNATIVE RESOURCING
23