Chapman Tripp, New Zealand’s largest full-service commercial law firm, has selected Luminance’s legal AI doc review capability for due diligence work in domestic and international M&A transactions. It has also launched a new dedicated legal tech as a service platform for its clients.
The latest client win for the UK-based tech company highlights a growing share of the Asia-Pacific market for AI-driven doc review, with other clients including Australia’s Gilbert +Tobin and Corrs Chambers Westgarth, and the Wong Partnership in Singapore.
While Chapman Tripp may not be as well known as some of Luminance’s other clients, such as Slaughter and May, the firm is a leader in New Zealand and is ranked number one for M&A volume there.
Bruce McClintock, partner and the head of Chapman Tripp’s technology and innovation business, which is branded as Zeren (see more below), said of the deal: ‘Luminance is a great fit for Chapman Tripp and Zeren. It will not only allow us to improve our efficiency in the document review aspects of due diligence, but also provide huge advantages in the project management aspects of managing large scale multi-jurisdictional M&A transactions.’
‘We are very excited by the opportunities we can see to deploy Luminance in our business and pass benefits on to our clients,’ he added.
Emily Foges, CEO of Luminance, added: ‘[Chapman Tripp] sees the huge benefits of the technology and are really engaged with the efficiencies that Luminance brings, especially compared to alternative due diligence solutions they explored.’
Meanwhile, as part of its wider approach to legal tech, Chapman Tripp has also recently created a dedicated group called, Zeren, which offers a range of client-facing legal tech as a service capabilities.
With Zeren, clients can automatically generate legal documents by filling out dynamic, web-based forms created from their existing legal and business templates, or from Chapman Tripp’s.
This process includes workflows to trigger internal reviews and approvals or to connect with external stakeholders. Clients can store their documents, as well as capture the data they contain, to improve activities such as contract management, risk management and other business processes.
‘As an example, one of our banking clients has used Zeren to automate its customer facing lending variation letters. With a refreshed and newly automated template, they now generate thousands of letters a month, which are more customer-friendly and better set up for legal compliance than ever before,’ added Tim Sherman, projects lead for Zeren – and soon to be partner pending approval – at Chapman Tripp.