The battle for market share in the UK legal AI market is heating up as Scottish law firm Brodies has announced it has chosen Luminance following a successful trial of the technology for the automation of doc review work.
It follows a series of client engagements to be made public by Luminance in the UK, including: Anglo-Scottish private equity boutique Dickson Minto, London-based 1,200-lawyer firm Bird & Bird and its already well-known foundational client, Slaughter and May. Brodies will use the AI tech in M&A and real estate transactions.
Will McIntosh, a partner at Brodies, said of the deal: ‘Our decision to implement Luminance is driven by our client-first agenda. As a firm we are continually investing in ways where we can deliver greater value for our clients. Implementing technology that allows us to drive efficiencies and streamline work, particularly across our offices is just one way of achieving that.’
The news of Brodies and the other firms is a welcome development for Luminance, given that it is also a UK-based legal AI company with its roots in Cambridge and London. Luminance found that it grew most quickly outside of the UK, picking up clients from East Africa, to the Nordics in the period after its launch in late 2016. Now, it seems like their impact on the UK market is growing, as more firms sign up following pilots.
After the US, the UK has the second largest legal market in the world, and M&A deals and major real estate transactions with a UK element often top the deal tables. In which case building the client base at home is going to be important, given that it may generate a higher through-put of matters for the AI system to work on – and in turn generate more revenue for the company backed by former Autonomy owner, Mike Lynch.
That said, Luminance has plenty of competition in the UK, in the shape of Kira Systems, iManage/RAVN, eBrevia and Eigen Technologies, to name a few, with Germany’s Leverton also making an impact in the real estate and legal space.
At present there remains much to play for and the UK Top 100 firms by revenue is by no means ‘sewn up’ – not by a long way in fact. Moreover, there is no reason why a law firm, inhouse team, LPO or other entity, should not use multiple legal AI review systems, choosing the best one for the task in hand. In which case the overall value of the legal AI doc review market is no doubt likely to grow considerably in the years ahead in the UK, and globally.
Commenting on the Brodies deal, Emily Foges, CEO of Luminance, added: ‘We are pleased to welcome Brodies to the growing portfolio of UK law firms using Luminance to streamline the due diligence process. The language agnostic technology works seamlessly across any number of offices and jurisdictions, allowing the firm to continue delivering the highest-quality legal services to its client base.’