[1]Check your contracts for Brexit effect at the touch of a button
Innovative alternative business structure Radiant Law has created a Microsoft Word-based tool to help in-house counsel check the impact of Brexit on their commercial contracts – and is giving it away for free.
‘Remarkable Uno’ searches across contracts for multiple Brexit-related terms and should help in-house lawyers with the review process. It presents the results in such a way that lets the user jump to the relevant part of the document, check off points and generate a report.
The firm was clear that it is not artificial intelligence – it’s a “bulk search tool”.
“There are other tools available (that use natural language processing/machine learning) that will do a better job of finding, for example, a particular clause type… They are trying to solve a different, but related, problem. We recommend using multiple approaches,” an FAQ on the firm’s website said.
It comes out of a proprietary set of legal-specific add-on tools for Word called Remarkable that have been developed by Radiant Law.
With over 50 features, the firm said it has “automated many of the activities that normally take lawyers using the traditional Word environment, hours to perform, improving turnaround times and accuracy and allowing our lawyers to focus on what matters to our clients”.
These include the automated ability to check documents against many different rules for common errors and rebuilding documents that have been ‘broken’ through the negotiation process.
The firm said it was making Remarkable Uno available for free – it can be downloaded straight from its website [2] – “because whatever we think about the Brexit results, we are firmly in the let’s-roll-up-our-sleeves-and-get-on-with-making-the-best-of-it camp. This seems like an easy way to help in-house teams as they figure out which way is up”.
It said it had the idea for the tool “a few days before we released it and added some more features. We tend to develop quite fast”.
Radiant CEO Alex Hamilton said: “We thought it would be a positive way to help in-house teams figure out what’s in their contracts over this period of uncertainty. It’s an easy way for us to contribute.
“There are some great articles out there by other law firms on the impact of Brexit, but it’s all highly speculative at this stage. We thought it would be more helpful to put a simple and practical tool in the hands of the in-house team, as the issues to spot are going to be very context-specific.”
Meanwhile, magic circle firm Clifford Chance has struck a deal with artificial intelligence software provider Kira Systems.
Kira is software that, using artificial intelligence, searches and analyses text in contracts. It can be ‘trained’ to deliver more effectively against the specific requirements of particular clients.
Paul Greenwood, chief information officer at Clifford Chance, said: “The legal industry must adapt if it is to deliver what clients value most – whether that is about speed, accuracy or risk management. There are increasing numbers of intelligent tools on the market that can help law firms service clients and we want to be at the forefront of identifying and deploying those systems that will make a real difference to our clients.
“We are showing our commitment to emerging technology by integrating Kira into our processes and building its knowledge through teaching and training. Kira is great software, but it is the additional investment from our leading lawyers that will ensure this is a tool that is highly valuable to our clients.”