Kennedys Brings India Tech Team Inhouse, Launches ‘Kognitive Computing’

International law firm, Kennedys, has launched a new data science and tech development centre in India after bringing inhouse a team it had been working with there since 2017. The new base will be called Kennedys Kognitive Computing and have a team of nine people.

Last year Kennedys formed an association with Indian tech development company Cognitive Computing, in Kerala. The bulk of the group has now moved over to become part of Kennedys, with the former company’s boss, Tony Joseph, heading up the team. He will report to the firm’s Head of Research and Development, Karim Derrick in London.

Kennedys has been an early pioneer in tapping client data to improve insights, especially in the area of insurance litigation. It has also been working for some years now on improving workflows and automating parts of the litigation defence process.

The firm said that the new team is focused on ‘rapid prototyping, application development, text analytics, machine learning and blockchain‘.

‘The addition of the team will accelerate the development of our award-winning innovations and the strategic desire to reduce legal spend for clients,’ they added.

Richard West, Head of Innovation at Kennedys, said: ‘We are excited to be welcoming this excellent and proven team into the Kennedys family. They will join our wider development team and will be focused on prototyping new products to begin with. This also gives us the ability to augment our existing development function quickly and effectively. We have long viewed technology as an enabler of change that can transform legal services for the benefit of both the industry and our clients.’

Meanwhile, Derrick added: ‘The arrival of Tony and his team supports our strategy on global innovation. We have been focused on legal tech for a number of years and have, over that time, developed a suite of innovative online products that form our Innovations Toolkit. These products are aimed at successfully helping our clients better manage their business and reduce their reliance on lawyers. This new team will benefit the development of our Toolkit and be able to prototype the superb ideas submitted to our Ideas Lab.’

The move follows the appointment of two leading data scientists into their Data Science team earlier this year.

The firm has also been working on what they call the Ideas Lab, which is a firm-wide platform through which people can put forward their ideas about how to create future products.