Jaeger Glucina states that lawyers are often weary and lose interest easily, and that in order to be able to focus on coming up with strategies, they need help with the tasks which require lesser skill.
The managing director and chief of staff at Luminance, a UK company that specializes in AI for legal professionals founded in 2015, is her. She qualified as a barrister and solicitor in New Zealand before joining Luminance in 2017.
She states that legal professionals are undoubtedly very well-educated, yet the fact remains that they are devoting a considerable amount of their day to analyzing contracts. Examining just a single non-disclosure contract can require an hour, and there can be many of these papers within a law firm on a day-to-day basis.
Luminance is gearing up for the launch of its fully automated contract negotiation tool, Luminance Autopilot. Selected customers will begin beta testing over the course of the next month, with an official release to come in the new year.
I have been asked to visit the company's premises in London to observe it in action. Before me is a desk with two laptops - the one on the left is owned by the Luminance general counsel, Harry Borovick, and the one on the right belongs to Connagh McCormick, the general counsel of Prosapient, an actual Luminance customer. Behind the laptops is a large screen portraying an audit trail of the modifications that each person makes to the contract.
The computers are set to exploit Autopilot in order to deliberate a non-disclosure agreement that is satisfactory to both parties. NDAs determine the regulations on which one company will publicly reveal its confidential data to another.
The demo commences: Mr Borovick's technology gets an email with the Non-Disclosure Agreement enclosed, and so it opens it up in Microsoft Word. Autopilot quickly examines the agreement and starts to adjust it. Since a six-year term is not satisfactory, it is switched to three years. The contract's applicable law is modified from Russia to England and Wales.
The next piece of text establishes an unlimited responsibility, so there is no upper limit on the potential payout if the contract of the NDA is broken. Ms Glucina commented, "This is a deal breaker for Harry's organization."
The software has suggested a £1m cap on liability with some adjustments to the clause. The counterparty had included 'hold harmless' language that would have discharged them from legal responsibility in certain cases. However, the AI, understanding this was not a satisfactory outcome, removed the clause to protect Harry from any potential exposure.
A contractual dance ensues, in which both AIs seek to maximize the benefit for their respective owners.
Mr Borovick's computer automatically emails the revised NDA, whereupon McCormick's machine opens it. Their AI picks up on the removal of the "hold harmless" clause and adds a liquidated damages provision, thereby converting the maximum liability of £1m into a pre-set compensation that must be paid in the event of a breach in the contract.
When the updated contract is received, Mr Borovick's AI deletes any language which would make his firm liable for indirect losses, and inserts new language which limits their liability to direct losses.
Version four of the contract is approved by both parties. Mr McCormick's AI endorses all the modifications and dispatches it to Docusign, a web-based service for signing agreements.
Ms Glucina notes, "At that juncture one has to decide if it is desired that an individual sign the document. This is the sole human intervention in the whole process, with the contract having been completely brokered by AI." purpose
Businesses are increasingly utilizing technology for their operations.
It has only been a matter of minutes to complete the whole thing. Ms Glucina said, "This concept is intended to diminish the delays that regularly come up when people do not manage to open their mailboxes or stay occupied with other duties."
Autopilot is a successor of Luminance's Copilot, a system that provides contract review assistance for legal personnel in the Microsoft Word format. It does this by giving a colour-coding according to the level of acceptability of the clauses: green symbols for clauses that are allowed, red for the ones that are not, and amber for those that are non-standard. Moreover, with its knowledge of earlier agreements it has made, the tool can also be used for the purpose of rewriting clauses through the use of Artificial Intelligence.
Whilst there are other companies such as Lexcheck, Genie AI and Thoughtriver providing contract review technologies, Luminance is the first to declare an autopilot system.
Luminance is founded upon an expansive language model (LLM), the same one which serves as the backbone of the widely-used text generation tool, ChatGPT. The distinction lies in the training, as Luminance's tools have been trained utilizing more than 150 million legal documents, rather than public internet content.
Users of Luminance create knowledge banks that hold their signed documents, in order for the software to gain an understanding of the contract terms that the company usually accepts.
I had a conversation with Connagh McCormick, the general counsel at Prosapient, following the demonstration. Prosapient provides investors, consultants, and other people who need to analyze a sector with experts. His team of three has between 20 and 30 customer negotiations taking place at all times; a few only take two days to finish while others can take up to a year. They utilize Luminance's solutions to fast-track their examination of contracts.
He is eager to try out the new Autopilot when it becomes available.
He commented, "When people ask me 'how do you feel about AI doing all the negotiation?' I tell them that while the AI may handle the initial negotiations, both lawyers must read and sign the contract. I still have the chance to spot any issues and nothing is binding until I agree to it."
He expresses his opinion on the issue of risk to jobs, stating “You will continually need that human input there. People go to lawyers for trust, which is more difficult to implement with AI than with an actual person. AI also allows lawyers to focus on more intriguing and beneficial tasks.”
Nick Emmerson, the president of the Law Society of England and Wales, maintains that lawyers will still be required. He states that, at the present time, and well into the foreseeable future, artificial intelligence cannot fully take the place of the legal proficiency of qualified professionals.
Due to the varying requirements and susceptibilities of clients, a machine will not be able to adequately comprehend them. Therefore, human reasoning is necessary to make certain that computerized determinations do not produce erroneous results. Moreover, there is an aesthetic and skill needed for negotiations and ultimately, bargaining that is unlikely to be mastered by artificial intelligence.
He goes on to say that as a result of any new technology, the duties and needs that come with being a lawyer are expected to change, as well as the kinds of jobs and qualifications needed.
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