AL Wrap-up, Feat: Diligen, Clio, Law Soc, TR, Mills Oakley, Neota

It’s been a busy week with a lot of news, so here is your weekly wrap-up. Enjoy.

Aussie Firm Mills Oakley and ConvX Join Forces to Automate Conveyancing

National law firm Mills Oakley is investing in ConvX, Australia’s first online automated conveyancing platform.

ConvX represents an ‘innovative, platform-based approach to conveyancing’, said the firm.

‘Traditional conveyancing is labour intensive, relying on human intervention to manage every step of the process. ConvX will use AI and automated platform technology to manage transactions, automatically interacting with external parties such as banks and the State Revenue Office, to process responses and progress transactions quickly to the next stage,’ they added.

ConvX will use conveyancers, but introduces a ‘revolutionary approach’ to break the process down step-by-step, to allow a network of on-call professionals to complete tasks as needed.

Mills Oakley CEO, John Nerurker, said: ‘Until recently, conveyancing has been a cottage industry ripe for disruption. The time for that disruption has now arrived.

Amen to that!

UK Government + Law Soc-Backed LawTech Delivery Panel Aims to Make UK ‘LawTech Capital’ 

LawTech Delivery Panel, established by Lords Spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, Lord Keen, and Law Society President, Christina Blacklaws, has been formed to help put in place whatever support or measures are needed to drive the growth and success of the UK’s legal tech sector. In turn it’s hoped that this will help the UK’s legal industry as a whole as well, such as staying competitive on the global stage.

The panel has established six taskforces to tackle challenges in the broad areas of: regulation; ethics; commercial dispute resolution; education and training; investment and funding; and establishing the UK as jurisdiction of choice for LawTech.

Speaking at the annual Legal Geek conference, Christina Blacklaws said the panel’s goal is to ensure the UK is the perfect place for LawTech companies to do business.

‘England and Wales is already a jurisdiction of choice for legal services and we hope to be the same for LawTech businesses,’ Christina Blacklaws said.

‘Some of the challenges we face include tackling regulatory roadblocks, promoting investment, and considering the skills required by a future generation of professionals,’ she added.

Lord Keen said: ‘I’ve seen first-hand the cutting edge initiatives already underway across the country to develop a legal services sector in which new technology can thrive. That is why I am delighted to be working closely with partners across the industry to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of the global LawTech revolution.’

Christina Blacklaws, Law Society, at Legal Geek
Lord Keen, also at Legal Geek.

The Panel members are: 

  • Christina Blacklaws – President of the Law Society of England and Wales & Chair
  • Rt. Hon. Lord Keen of Elie QC – Lords Spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice
  • Rt. Hon. Sir Geoffrey Vos – Chancellor of the High Court
  • Professor Richard Susskind – Technology Advisor to the Lord Chief Justice
  • Dr Anna Donovan – Vice Dean, Innovation, Faculty of Laws, University College London
  • Gary Campkin – TheCityUK
  • Sonya Branch – General Counsel, Bank of England
  • Rosemary Martin – General Counsel, Vodafone

Plus,

  • Richard Tromans – Technical Advisor to the Panel (Founder, Artificial Lawyer + Tromans Consulting)

P.S. there are a lot of opportunities for people in the legal tech community to get involved. Over the coming months the panel and its task forces will be asking for input from a wide range of industry experts.

Legal AI Co. Diligen Integrates with Clio

Legal AI company, Diligen, has announced an integration with Clio, the pioneer in cloud-based legal technology for medium and smaller size law firms. Clio’s more than 150,000 legal professionals around the globe can now ‘seamlessly leverage Diligen’s AI and machine learning capabilities to review contracts faster and more accurately’, said the company.

Konrad Pola, Co-Founder and CEO of Diligen, said: ‘Integrating with Clio enables us to help more legal professionals meet the growing pressure from clients to adopt new engagement models and leverage technology to deliver better legal services. Through the Clio platform, we can bring the tremendous power of AI to legal professionals, freeing them from the tedious review process, reducing errors and driving efficiencies, thereby enabling higher-quality work and more competitive pricing.’

Andrew Gay, Manager of Product Partnerships at Clio, added: ‘We are excited to welcome Diligen to the Clio Platform. We can’t wait to see how Clio customers take advantage of this incredibly powerful document review product and the integration with Clio’s practice management platform.’

And so, platformisation grows and grows……everyone wants to API and integrate with everyone else now – and that’s a good thing for all.

Thomson Reuters LegalTech Incubator Applications End 30 October – Get Yours In..! 

The Thomson Reuters LegalTech Incubator, which offers ‘industry-leading data and tools, mentorship and expertise, facilitated workshops and exposure opportunities’, closes its application window at the end of the month. So, get cracking if you want to join….

TR asks that you to ask yourself: is this Incubator for me?

  • Does your product or solution rely upon access to high quality legal content such as Legislation, Case Law or Know How materials?
  • Does your product or solution build upon technologies such as Document Automation or Federated Search?

How to apply:

Step 1– Read through and identify whether the LegalTech incubator programme is right for you

Step 2– Review our APIs to understand how you can develop and test ideas with real world products and high-quality data

Step 3– Submit your LegalTech Incubator application

Step 4– Block out the 27 November in your diary in case you are a finalist

Key dates to keep in mind.

03.09.2018– LegalTech Incubator programme application period opens

17.10.2018– Come to our stand at Legal Geek Start Up Conference

31.10.2018– LegalTech Incubator programme application period closes

10.11.2018– Finalists announced

27.11.2018– Our ‘Dragons Den’ finalists pitch

30.11.2018– Winner announced

Do we need another incubator……?……Yes! There are loads of legal tech startups out there and the more help they get to become market and law firm ready before going out to pitch to overwhelmed CIOs and CTOs the better.

If TR can help make the life of legal tech innovation professionals a bit easier by putting tech co.s through ‘finishing school’, then that’s a good thing for all.

Neota Logic Starts Legal Tech Education Partnerships with Three New Universities

Expert systems and automation pioneer, Neota Logic, has announced three new education partnerships, with London South Bank University, the University of Limerick and Ulster University. The universities will be launching their inaugural courses with Neota Logic in spring 2019.

Earlier this year, Neota Logic announced their first education partnership in Europe with the University of Manchester and global law firm, Freshfields. Neota Logic has been running similar education programmes in the US and Australia since 2014.

Over the course of a semester, students will learn how to design, build and test digital legal solutions that solve a specific access to justice problem, said Neota.

These solutions, or web applications, will be built to the specifications of a local organisation acting as a ‘client’ to the student groups. At the end of the semester the students will aim to have a set of apps ready to be deployed for their ‘client’ to use.

Andy Unger, Head of the Academic Division for Law at London South Bank University, said: ‘For Law Schools and the Legal Profession, Legal Tech is developing very fast. What seems certain is that when they qualify many of our students will practice law in radically different ways to today. We have to try and prepare them for that.’

‘Our response at LSBU has been to bring together law and computing students together in a new Law & Technology option. Students will work together using Neota Logic’s platform to create Access to Justice resources for the local community to be deployed as part of our Legal Advice Clinic services,’ he added.

Maeve Lavelle, Director of Education for Neota Logic in EMEA, who came across the company’s education programmes on Twitter when she was a law student in Dublin, said: ‘We are passionate about empowering law students.’

Sinead Eaton, former practitioner and in-house counsel at the University of Limerick, will be leading on the new Neota module, in partnership with McCann Fitzgerald, one of the top law firms in Ireland and a customer of Neota Logic.

Gráinne Bryan, CEO of Legal Technology Solutions at McCann Fitzgerald, said: ‘Law firms are very traditional spaces. There is a lot to be done in bringing change to that space with the use of technology and also in introducing new team structures and dynamics.’

‘However, education and awareness is fundamental to the future law firm and those future lawyers are currently sitting in our universities. We are delighted to be partnering with the University of Limerick and Neota Logic to kickstart this education around technology and how it can not only benefit your career but also your future colleagues and clients,’ she concluded.

That’s all folks!