Morning all, here’s this week’s AL Wrap, and for a change let’s start with the upcoming Litera webinar on ‘The Memory Layer’, which is all about capturing, and then leveraging, transaction data within your law firm.
Litera and Artificial Lawyer Webinar – March 3rd – 11AM EST, 4PM GMT
‘Your firm’s deal expertise lives in scattered folders and individual heads. When that knowledge disappears, negotiations slow, mistakes repeat, and client trust erodes.
Join us March 3rd for The Memory Layer: How Firms Preserve and Scale Deal Expertise. Learn how leading teams capture and surface the insights that shape better outcomes
You’ll learn how to:
- Capture diligence insights that inform negotiations and client alignment
- Surface precedent language and firm patterns at the right time
- Use templates and structured workflows to accelerate future deals.’
It’s free to attend, but please RSVP. See you there!
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Pocketlaw Conference – Sweden
I’ll be on stage with Google, among others, at the awesome Pocketlaw In-House Legal Summit in Stockholm, Sweden, next Wednesday, 11 Feb. More info here.
Really looking forward to being back in Scandinavia again, although the weather forecast for next week is -4C with windchill taking it down to -9C. Hope to see you there if you’re in town.
P.S. Because AL will be travelling on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, there will be just a little bit of news, with normal publication resuming when I’m back in London.
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And now some news….
Meet LegalOS, which says it is ‘the Operating System for Legal Transformation’ with a focus on AI-driven automation. It’s the brainchild of Abdul Hakim Manattil in Dubai.
They’re looking for early adopters and note: ‘Most legal platforms manage tasks. LegalOS transforms them. Built as the digital foundation for law firms and legal departments, it unites practice areas, compliance, finance, HR, and knowledge into one seamless system.’
More here.
Also, as Jake Jones at Flank will tell you, LegalOS also used to be the name of his company before they changed it. Meanwhile, in the US, there is now another LegalOS, which is a NewMod AI-first law firm focused on immigration law. So, we are now onto our third LegalOS. Will we get to four by the end of the year?
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Lawhive, which is focused on consumer legal services and is also an AI-native law firm, has raised $60m in Series B funding to accelerate its expansion across the US.
Google Ventures among others joined in – suggesting a growing interest in how legal businesses are leveraging AI for the ‘Small Law’ segment of the market – which in the US is huge.
Annual revenue now exceeds $35m, having grown sevenfold in the past year, they added, which is impressive, and they have around 450 lawyers across the US and UK working with them.
They also noted that Lawhive ‘has developed its own AI operating system to reduce the time, cost and administrative burden associated with these everyday legal matters, enabling cases to be handled with greater speed, consistency and predictability’.
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A major survey by UK law firm Lewis Silkin about employment trends found that:
- 80% of HR professionals expect ‘some level of job roles eliminated over the next 12 months as a result of AI adoption’.
- However, 96% also expect ‘job transformation as a result of AI adoption’ – which reminds AL of the awful euphemism: ‘Congratulations, you’ve been promoted to customer!’
- But, professional and business services firms (excepting law firms) believe AI will create some new jobs as well, ‘with almost one fifth expecting more than 31% of jobs created next year to be driven by AI adoption’. So, that’s 20% of 31%…? Which is…er…..around 6%…? Hmmm. So, not that many.
Of course, sentiment is one thing, actual job cuts is something else, and given the way AI is presented in the wider media it’s no surprise many HR peeps think this. Of course, what may happen is companies will cut staff to reduce their costs, make the remaining staff work even harder, and then blame AI as the cause….!
P.S. AL really cannot see anyone who is a fee earner at a large commercial law firm losing their job to AI anytime soon. They may get the chop due to not billing enough hours, or pinching the nice chocolate biscuits from the partners’ dining room, but not because of AI.
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Anthropic Strikes Again….but, in an unexpected way…..
Contract management company Pramata has rolled out an extension to Anthropic’s Claude Cowork Legal plugin, ‘bringing unprecedented contract intelligence capabilities to enterprise users’, they said.
The combination of Pramata’s contract intelligence with the Claude Legal Plugin ‘enables users to make informed decisions based on the full scope of their business relationships’, they added.
With Pramata’s Claude Cowork Legal plugin extension, enterprise users can:
- ‘Research contractual relationships instantly: Query complete contract histories including MSAs, amendments, and order forms to understand the full scope of commercial relationships.
- Negotiate with precedent: Compare negotiation positions against historical agreements and company playbooks, then generate redlines using proven language that’s worked before.
- Draft with intelligence: Generate contract documents populated with relationship-specific terms—including governing terms and pre-negotiated pricing—drawing from templates and precedent that reflect actual business practice.
- Review with context: Analyze incoming contracts against your history with that specific counterparty, your company playbook standards, and how you’ve negotiated similar terms across counterparties—giving you the full picture to make risk-adjusted decisions.’
AL view: it’s an interesting one, as rather than shy away from the legal plugin provided by Anthropic, they’re embracing it.
In their case, it seems they’ve just accepted that it’s easier to work with what’s on offer, perhaps because they believe their enterprise customers will use Claude anyway, so why not get ahead of it?
As the company stated: ‘The software world has been melting down with the release of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork Legal plugin, but it shouldn’t be creating panic. It’s giving way for the right solutions to evolve and better serve the industry.’
So, there you go. Don’t panic !!!!!
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Unwildered, a UK legal tech startup, has launched an AI Contract Review platform, designed to be ‘affordable, and accessible for consumers, sole traders, small and medium sized businesses’ – see here.
‘How It Works -Three Simple Steps:
- On our website, upload your contract and select the type.
- Receive line-by-line redlining, suggested changes, and plain English comments. Accept or decline with a click.
- Export as Docx and generate a ready-to-send email for your counterparty – all in under five minutes.’
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EvenUp, an AI platform built for personal injury law firms, has launched ‘Communication Agents’, which are ‘AI-powered voice and text assistants built for personal injury case management’.
The startup said that ‘early deployments show Communication Agents reclaim more than nine hours per case, eliminating hundreds of hours of administrative work across active caseloads’.
Co-founder, Saam Mashhad, commented: ‘Everyone’s asking if AI will replace people. Wrong question. The right question is: why is your best case manager on minute 43 of a phone call, spelling names using the NATO alphabet, only to learn the account went to collections months ago? We’re not replacing people. We’re replacing friction.’
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And finally, another sports and legal AI story, but this time not about golf.
New startup ArenaDocs is launching a Microsoft Word-native legal AI platform for in-house legal teams in sports and entertainment.
The platform enables attorneys to draft, review, redline, and comment on agreements up to 10x faster than traditional methods, they said.
Founded by Kaelin Brittin, former Associate Counsel for the Washington Commanders, and legal technology entrepreneur Brad Neal (founder of Lexplug), ArenaDocs addresses a gap in the market.
‘Existing AI tools were too generic, expensive, and disruptive to our workflow,’ said Brittin. ‘We built ArenaDocs to be the simple, affordable, hyper-focused solution that I wish I had on my desk.’
More here.
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And now for an AL Product Walk Through with StructureFlow.
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Plus: A Legal Tech Conference For ALL of Europe
Legal Innovators Europe – Paris – June 24 and 25 – tickets now available.
If you would like to be a speaker, especially if you are at a law firm or inhouse legal team in Europe – from Alicante to Amsterdam and beyond…..then please contact Phoebe at Cosmonauts: phoebe@cosmonauts.biz
Note: if you are a legal tech company, please contact Robins: robins@cosmonauts.biz
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That’s all folks, have a nice weekend.
Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer
P.S. Went to CLOC London, will share some thoughts next week.
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