Pioneering deal platform, Legatics, which recently was awarded funding by Innovate UK, is to work with global legal services businesses, DLA Piper and Herbert Smith Freehills, as well as academic experts, to develop ‘AI microservices’.
The work with the global firms is part of the funding allocation from the UK Government. Legatics told Artificial Lawyer that the aim of the project is ‘to develop a new architecture of highly specific and pre-trained models called ‘AI microservices‘. These are designed to be incorporated into Legatics’ existing deal management platform.
Legatics will develop these microservices in collaboration with machine-learning researcher, Peter Harrison of Queen Mary University of London. Legatics also seeks to overcome behavioural barriers to AI adoption through the design and implementation of new adoption and training strategies, incorporating tested behavioural change methodologies in collaboration with leading behavioural scientist, Professor Stephen Rollnick, they said. Or in other words: why do lawyers not want to train AI systems and how can we make the whole thing easier?
The company added that: ‘Current rates of adoption of AI solutions across the legal industry are low. This is primarily a result of the time required and associated cost of identifying suitable AI applications, configuring software, training the AI model, training users, and managing model output. This is further restricted by necessarily risk-averse working practices within firms that make the introduction of new technologies more challenging.’
And…..what does all of this mean? In short it means that getting lawyers to train things is a pain for some. So…..if you want to speed up adoption then make sure the bits of AI in any application are pre-trained. This however means that you have to keep the AI bits very narrow to be effective, hence ‘micro services’, or at least this is one way of doing things.
This also seems to be part of a wider movement at the moment to try and take the training out of as much AI work as possible, so that lawyers can just get to what they want to do. We have also seen this approach with Linklaters and its Nakhoda team – see article.
Daniel Porus, Head of Business Development at Legatics, commented: ‘We are delighted to have received this stamp of approval from Innovate UK for this collaboration with DLA Piper and Herbert Smith Freehills. Increasing productivity through effective adoption of cutting-edge technologies is at the heart of Legatics’ vision for the UK legal services sector and we are excited to be embarking on this journey with partners in academia and the legal industry to unlock the power of AI for everyday use in legal practice.’
Dominic Judge, Senior Technology Manager at DLA Piper, added: ‘We are constantly assessing new ways of delivering better solutions for our clients and welcome the opportunity to create and test technologies with suppliers, such as Legatics, that improve the efficiency of our legal work.’
And, Jason Ricketts, Global Head of Practice FREP at Herbert Smith Freehills, concluded: ‘We are always looking to innovate to meet clients’ changing needs and to find new and improved ways of working for our lawyers. Collaborating with suppliers and other law firms is a key part of that.’
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