Luminance Launches Work-in-Word For Contract Remediation

Luminance has launched a new feature that allows lawyers to directly update Word versions of documents within the platform that a lawyer may be reviewing, for example in a contract remediation exercise. This could be useful for projects such as IBOR repapering.

It’s the second notable announcement since Luminance boss, Emily Foges, left to join Deloitte in May. On June 1, the company also announced an integration with VDR company Ansarada – see story.

The two moves, both heavy on utility as opposed to fancy new tech, appear to be efforts to make the NLP platform more user-friendly and more adaptable to use cases such as contract remediation – one of the few areas of the legal world where we’re still seeing a surge in work, at least for some larger Legal Services Businesses (LSBs).

The ‘Work-in-Word’ feature is described by the company as: ‘Meaning lawyers no longer need to spend time manually translating edits to crucial information surfaced by Luminance into Word.

‘Now, when lawyers come across elements within a document that need correcting, with one simple click they can access the document in Word from within the Luminance platform.’

Steve Cooke, Senior Partner of Slaughter and May, the elite LSB which was Luminance’s first customer and is also an investor in it, commented: ‘By allowing lawyers to instantly edit and correct any discrepancies found by Luminance, this Work-in-Word tool will expedite the process of document review and risks will be minimised. I think this function will prove invaluable for legal teams in their everyday work.’

Jason Brennan, Luminance’s acting CEO, who is based in the US, concluded: ‘Understanding how our clients work is a core part of Luminance’s success and we are constantly looking for ways to enhance the platform.

‘This latest update will ensure that lawyers are never taken out of the context of their review or the documents they are working on, in turn accelerating the review process even further.’

Is this a big deal? On the surface it simply is a sensible move that will make the NLP doc analysis system easier to use, but perhaps it also shows something a bit deeper in terms of company strategy, especially in terms of trying to address customer feedback. When Artificial Lawyer conducted a market-led review of the product in December 2019 – see review – one of the points made was the system’s lack of integrations. Both of the two recent moves appear to address this.