Imprima, which many will know from its work in the Virtual Data Room (VDR) field, is now aiming to be a one-stop-shop due diligence platform and has launched an NLP-driven ‘contract summarisation’ capability to support this strategy.
Imprima’s move from a company focused on helping to store and share contracts related to a deal, to one that enables the entire M&A process, is an interesting evolution that makes a lot of sense, i.e. they’re already the place where the contracts are kept, why not go the Full Monty and offer NLP analysis capabilities as well?
As to the summarisation capability, Imprima told this site: ‘While the idea of automatically summarising documents is not new to the market, what sets Imprima’s Smart Summaries apart is that it is trained as the users do their usual review work.
‘In other words, it does not rely on pre-set NLP algorithms. It is therefore also more fit for purpose, as the machine learning mimics the user’s particular review behaviour, rather than following general guidelines incorporated in pre-trained algorithms.’
Some other legal AI companies operating in this space would no doubt point out that they also offer a ‘train as you work’ capability. But, perhaps that’s not the key point here.
The real area of importance for Artificial Lawyer is that Imprima is not letting up on its efforts to establish itself in this market. Clearly, Imprima will keep going, steadily improving and widening its offering.
In its favour is the fact that it already has a broad corporate client base because of its VDR work and it is also well-known to many law firms. It is however joining a doc analysis market where there are already a lot of players.
That said, the addressable market is still very large and while for some law firms using NLP systems for deals is now standard procedure, for many others it remains on the edge of their tech stack expansion plans. There is also the potential to be used by firms in addition to the NLP system they may already have a licence for.
Commenting on the move, Lidia Nakonechnaya, Imprima’s head of marketing, added that their NLP capability could also be applied to real estate deals, such as helping to surface data related to expiration dates, termination rights and renewal clauses.
In conclusion, this site has to say it’s way too soon to declare the battle for contract analysis market share as already over. If anything we are now entering a new phase for this tech, as CLM companies and others also explore what it can do for their clients. There is still much to play for and Imprima is serious about becoming a key market player.