Luminance Bags Top Dutch Firm, Houthoff Buruma, as 2nd Client to Go Public

UK-based legal AI company, Luminance, has secured leading Dutch law firm Houthoff Buruma as a client for its due diligence system, making this its second publicly announced client win after launching with Slaughter and May last year.

The move is significant in several ways. First, it is an important client win for a legal AI company with huge financial backing, but which has not had as much time as some other AI document analysis rivals to sign up clients given its September 2016 launch.

Secondly, Luminance is being adopted by a European law firm where the day-to-day language will be Dutch, rather than English. The news follows the announcement earlier this week that German firm CMS Hasche Sigle was also signing up with a legal AI company, in that case Kira. This appears to be further proof that legal AI systems, even if first developed in the Anglophone regions of the US, Canada or UK, are readily useable by law firms using languages other than English even if the natural language processing algorithms were initially developed with that language as training material.

The growing AI company is understood to have several other law firms currently piloting its due diligence system.

‘Using Luminance, we work faster and look forward to taking on more mergers and acquisitions and due diligence work,’ said Jan-Paul van der Hoek, Head of Houthoff Buruma’s M&A practice in a press statement.

‘Luminance provides excellent value in reducing the time we spend on a transaction, so we can spend more time on valuable advisory work and less on time-consuming document review. It was also important to us that Luminance works seamlessly with Virtual Data Room providers such as Intralinks,’ he added.

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Emily Foges, CEO, Luminance

London-based, Emily Foges, CEO of Luminance, said: ‘We are excited to be working with another of Europe’s leading corporate law firms. Houthoff Buruma has seen the proven benefits Luminance brings.’

Houthoff Buruma is now rolling the system out across its corporate department. They anticipate expanding its use to include internal knowledge management and conducting compliance projects on behalf of clients.

Luminance recently announced a $20 million valuation after investment from venture fund Talis Capital. Its main investor, and in many ways its guiding shareholder, is former Autonomy boss, Mike Lynch and his Invoke Capital investment fund.

Houthoff Buruma has over 290 lawyers, civil-law notaries and tax advisors. It has offices in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, London and New York. It has remained fiercely independent in what is a highly competitive market and is a member of the international referral network Lex Mundi.