There’s always way too much news to publish story by story, so here are some crunchy news nuggets of legal tech and AI popcorn for your enjoyment.
Legal AI Co. LEVERTON Bags Derwent London in Major Client Win
Leverton has announced that Derwent London plc, the largest central London-focused REIT, has adopted its AI-powered data extraction technology to streamline the process of managing its huge lease portfolio.
Derwent London is one of the largest property companies in Europe and owns and manages an investment portfolio of 5.5 million sq. ft. – so this is an important client win, especially for an AI company with a strong focus on property.
The multi-year agreement will see Derwent London utilising Leverton’s data extraction software and services to ‘accelerate the way in which the company accesses, interacts with and manages data across its entire portfolio’ said the company, which estimates it can save legal and corporate teams around 60%-70% in time for doc review, compared to manual work.
Jennifer Whybrow, Head of Financial Planning & Analysis at Derwent London, said of the deal: ‘We are always looking for ways to improve our business through innovation and leveraging the power of AI to achieve operational efficiencies fits with that ethos.’
Richard Belgrave, Chief Revenue Officer of Leverton, concluded: ‘We are thrilled to be working with Derwent London, a business that is continuing to pave the way in the industry by offering their customers the best services, while also working to find ways to improve their internal processes that add value to their team through the adoption of new technology that leads to better data management, and ultimately, smarter decisions.’
—
UK’s First Ever Legal Tech Trade Mission is On!
A few weeks ago Artificial Lawyer shared the news that the UK Government, via the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and pioneered by the Department for International Trade (DIT), along with Scottish Development International, was planning on a trade mission to Austria and Switzerland – the first of its kind.
But would anyone want to come…? Miles Fisher, Senior Trade Attache at British Embassy Vienna, has now informed Artificial Lawyer that the response has been very positive and things are all set for the groundbreaking mission.
‘We have now filled the Vienna event, all ten slots have now been taken and we have 14 companies for the Zurich event and two more still considering,’ he said.
Some of the companies going out on the UK’s first ever legal tech trade mission include legal AI startups Cognitiv+ and Ginie AI.
The mission will take place on 6th and 7th November 2018 and is open to all companies operating out of the UK in the legal tech sphere, including legal AI and automation-focused vendors.
The Swiss event is being organised in conjunction with the British Swiss Chamber of Commerce and will attract up to 100 leading law firms and legal counsel, while the Austrian event will form part of the Future Law’s Legaltech Conference 2018 and will attract 250 law firm and legal counsel delegates.
It is hoped that this legal tech trade mission is the first of many to come, with other markets to be targeted in the future. Good luck to everyone involved.
—
Mishcon De Reya Shares Its Real Estate Legal AI Models With Kira Customers
UK law firm Mishcon de Reya has announced that it is sharing the legal AI models related to real estate it has developed through Kira Systems with the AI company’s wider customer base.
A spokesperson said that Mishcon went above and beyond how firms usually act in terms of how they have shared their NLP models after doing their own supervised machine learning work to build up provisions related to real estate.
‘Usually law firms share some contracts with our ML training team to use, but Mishcon [has been] at the forefront in collaborating to build out the models with us for release to the greater Kira public, which usually isn’t the case,‘ said a Kira spokesperson. ‘These UK real estate models will be widely used.’
In other news, Mishcon has also recently appointed its first Head of Data Analytics and Machine Learning, Alastair Moore, from University College London, who has been supporting these real estate efforts, amongst other work across the firm.
Mishcon has been using Kira software since 2016. One example of Kira’s use at the firm has been in the acquisition of student housing portfolios where Mishcon’s real estate group acted on £1.5bn of student housing acquisitions for its clients during 2017/2018. The firm’s lawyers have been using the technology to deliver valuable insights into tenancy documents faster and more efficiently, the company said.
Nick Kirby, Managing Associate and Real Estate Technology Specialist at Mishcon de Reya, said: ‘We are dedicated to using technology to do our work faster and better to provide more value to clients, to deliver new technology driven services and to drive change in our firm.’
‘By collaborating with Kira to enhance their UK real estate offering we have already gained valuable insight into how artificial intelligence works and how we can best leverage AI to better support real estate clients, delivering our services innovatively and more efficiently and we look forward to continuing to working closely with them,’ he added.