Slaughter and May has announced that it is collaborating with Luminance, a machine learning-based document analytics software provider backed by Mike Lynch’s tech investment fund Invoke Capital.
Luminance has been working closely for several months with Slaughter and May in testing and piloting the software, with the elite City firm bringing to the table its extensive deal-making experience and deep understanding of the role of legal due diligence in a successful transaction process.
Luminance is founded by a combination of lawyers, experts in M&A and mathematicians. Its technology, which reads and analyses hundreds of pages of complex legal documentation a minute, is based on research and development at the University of Cambridge, and is anchored in Recursive Bayesian Estimation theory. Advisors include Robert Webb QC, chairman of Darktrace, who is a door tenant at Brick Court Chambers.
Slaughter and May’s collaboration with Luminance comes as law firms attempt to find ways to cut the cost and in many cases tedium of the M&A due diligence process and follows the announcement in July that DLA Piper has signed up with Kira Systems to implement a global artificial intelligence tool for document review. Clifford Chance signed up with Kira in July.
While Invoke Capital just today (14 September) formally announced its investment in Luminance, the investment was referred to at the start of 2016 by Business Weekly. Invoke Capital was founded by Lynch after he left Autonomy in 2012.
Luminance CEO, Emily Foges, said: “Luminance has been trained to think like a lawyer. With Slaughter and May’s help, we are designing the system to understand how lawyers think, and to draw out key findings without the need to be told what to look for. This will transform document analysis and enhance the entire transaction process for law firms and their clients. Highly-trained lawyers who would otherwise be scanning through thousands of pages of repetitive documents can spend more of their time analysing the findings and negotiating the terms of the deal.”
Steve Cooke, Senior Partner of Slaughter and May, said: “The legal due diligence process is ripe for the revolution that Artificial Intelligence offers. It is clear to us that the brains and technical capabilities of the Luminance team, backed by Mike Lynch and his Invoke Capital fund, are a winning combination in this area and one with which we are delighted to be collaborating. We are constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to optimise our offering for the benefit of our clients. Luminance is an exciting development in this key area of legal process innovation.”
Mike Lynch, Founder of Invoke Capital, said “It is not an understatement to say that this is an application of Artificial Intelligence that will completely transform the due diligence process, which is perhaps long overdue. Like our investments in Darktrace and Sophia Genetics, there is a technological advantage in this particular product that outstrips its rivals. AI has been famous for winning complex strategy games and this now puts it in the workplace, and in boardrooms, where its impact will be felt. Invoke is delighted to be backing Luminance and we are particularly pleased that it is collaborating with Slaughter and May – a law firm which leads the way when it comes to innovation and quality of service.”