News Wrap: GLTR Event, Travers Smith, CC Applied Solutions

Global Legal Tech Report Event – North America

On Monday, October 19, the Global Legal Tech Report for North America will have some of its key findings revealed during a live presentation and panel discussion (see more details below).

For example, Eric Chin, of Alpha Creates, and one of the report authors, found that:

– 52% of respondents are integrated solutions (incorporating more than one solution on their platform) with between two to 21 solutions.

– Salaries are about 45% of the total cost base for the average North American Legal Tech company.

– Team composition is skewed towards developers (46%), and then customer success (19%) and sales (18%).

Chin added: ‘Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic has become a double-edged sword for North American Legal Tech companies, both as a challenge, but also an opportunity as it has benefited providers where the solutions sold are assisting law firms, legal departments and courts with the transition to remote working.’

Stevie Ghiassi, of Legaler and who also helped to create the GLTR project, added: ‘The impact of the pandemic on law firms has been plain to see, but what is more interesting is whether it has had an equally adverse affect on the legal tech sector.

‘The North American market was surveyed between May and September yet 76% of companies have a positive revenue outlook, while 72% of companies also reported a positive client retention outlook. This was higher than most regions so far, highlighting the robustness of the market and potentially greater adoption of cloud-based software due to remote work.’

The GLTR North America event (Monday, 19 October. 4PM EST) will feature a panel that includes:

  • Christian Lang – Head of Strategy, Reynen Court
  • Jae Um – Director of Pricing Strategy, Baker McKenzie
  • Richard Tromans (Moderator) – Founder, Artificial Lawyer
  • Jules Miller – Partner, Mindset Ventures
  • Haley Altman – Global Director of Business Development and Strategy, Litera Microsystems
  • Eric Chin – Principal, Alpha Creates and Lead Researcher, Global Legal Tech Report
  • Stevie Ghiassi – Founder and CEO, Legaler and Project Director, Global Legal Tech Report

Click here to register.

Travers Smith Launches New Open Source Contract Labelling Software

Travers Smith has launched Etatonna, a contract labelling tool, which has been developed by the firm’s Legal Technology team.

Having successfully launched the tool the firm has now open-sourced the code allowing others to use Etatonna within their business to more efficiently label legal documents.

Etatonna makes it possible to label concepts in contracts for the purpose of automated document review. Labelling data in Etatonna is stored in a readable structured format to more easily train your NLP models. 

For a deeper insight into the product, check out the Travers Smith video below:

Video by Travers Smith.

The firm added that during the development of Etatonna it became clear that certain legal documents lend themselves to being labelled by non-experts. For example, clear headings and short paragraphs, in almost all cases, will provide enough context for non-experts to label correctly. This means that users do not need to rely on legally trained experts in order to use the software efficiently.

Head of Legal Technology, Shawn Curran, said: ‘There is no doubt that using artificial intelligence to unlock insights from historic contracts is of immense value to organisations all over the world. The main issue at the moment is the quality of the AI. Therefore, model training needs to be optimised and companies shouldn’t be overlapping by labelling the same or similar clauses.

‘Law firms need to combine expertise in the most efficient and cost-effective way for our clients. Our hope is that by open sourcing Etatonna we can inspire this collaboration.’

CCAS Launches on PartnerVine Marketplace

Clifford Chance Applied Solutions (CCAS) has launched on PartnerVine, the marketplace for template contracts and legal information.

CCAS is selling ‘Cross-Border Publisher: Data Protection’ on the marketplace, a product that delivers expert information on 78 data protection questions across 17 jurisdictions in Europe.

It replaces the need for a costly multi-jurisdictional review of data protection obligations, and makes it easy to compare rules and regulations across jurisdictions, the firm said.

Jeroen Plink, the CEO of Clifford Chance Applied Solutions, said: ‘We look for partners that reflect the quality and scope of what we do. On PartnerVine, customers can purchase our country modules a la carte with a dynamic user experience tailored to the user. We couldn’t be more pleased with PartnerVine.’

Jordan Urstadt, CEO of PartnerVine, added: ‘Clifford Chance Applied Solutions is building the next generation of legal tech. They thoughtfully solve problems for their clients and then scale them, with an excellent user experience and the full resources of a Magic Circle firm. Cross-Border Publisher: Data Protection is the best solution available for data protection issues, and we’re pleased to bring it to the PartnerVine community.’

That’s all folks….!