Login | April 19, 2024
Analyzing contract analytics software
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: May 25, 2018
Do any of you here not use the letter “K” to refer to a contract?
Anyway, the ABA Journal has published a nice analysis of contract analytics software, authored by Nicole Black.
Contract analytic software is a leading edge-type of AI that can automatically do in seconds what lawyers take hours to do.
Black writes about three leading products in this area: LawGeex (https://www.lawgeex.com); LegalSifter (https://www.legalsifter.com) and Bloomberg Law’s Draft Analyzer (https://www.bna.com/draft-analyzer). Each work on different principles and have different functionality.
Anyone who reads this column regularly knows the skepticism with which I treat AI, which should more accurately be called “machine learning.” But the AI legal field does keep advancing and is putting out products that seem to be worth checking out. As long as we keep the machines in their place.
LawGeex ran a study which put 20 US attorneys with experience in analyzing NDAs up against their software to analyze the contracts for risk. The software program took 26 seconds to complete the analysis, while the living, legally trained organisms took an average of 92 minutes to review the contracts. According to the company, the lawyers scored 85 percent accuracy, while the software scored 94 percent. Self-serving? Maybe. Inaccurate? Maybe not.
As far as the three programs themselves go, LawGeex analyzes contracts based on the firm’s preset language and policies and suggests edits (like Word does, I guess). The docs can then be edited inside the program. Pricing is not available, so it may not be inexpensive.
LegalSifter reviews and compares the working contract to those in its database and can export the edited document to Word. It seems to be pretty flexible. Pricing is by document.
Draft Analyzer (no Mel Kiper jokes here) is a part of Bloomberg’s Corporate Transactions suite designed for corporate transactions attorneys. Rather than using the company contract database, this tool can compare the working contract with other similar contracts from other firms. Pricing isn’t available, but it gets billed to the client anyway, right?
So—possibly useful to larger firms and not cheap, but cheaper than a law school education, right?
Read the whole article here: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/heres_the_lowdown_on_contract_analytics_software.