In a launch that will be welcomed by the legal industry with as much caution as excitement, RAVN Systems yesterday (27 September) launched a tool to automate the review of potentially legally privileged material, powered by its AI tool RAVN ACE (Applied Cognitive Engine).
Robot for LPP (Legal Professional Privilege) allows clients to determine if material in litigation as well as other document types is subject to LPP.
According to RAVN, the accuracy levels achieved by the robot in making these determinations now surpass traditional manual efforts and it is up to 80% faster.
The solution exploits supervised iterative machine learning models in the RAVN ACE platform, meaning the robot will become more accurate over time – an advance on traditional predictive coding methods. Lawyers are able to adjust the levels of acceptable classification accuracy. Details on the precise nature of the documents identified and their genesis are so far light.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Consilio senior director and Litigation Support Technology Group steering member Jonathan Maas, said: “In litigation, the privilege call has long been the equivalent of football’s off-side rule: it is highly subjective and no two people would necessarily make the same call when presented with the same document in context. Many highly impressive tomes have been written in an effort to explain the different facets of legal privilege. In litigation it is also perhaps the only unassailed bastion of the qualified lawyer. If RAVN, who are carving a spot for themselves in AI in the legal space, have devised a system to automate this element of the disclosure process then I, for one, would very much like to see it in action.
He added: “This is exciting but dangerous stuff. I’m not sure I know anyone who will rely on this without stringent checks as a wrong call on privilege can seriously undermine a party’s position if their strategy becomes known, regardless of how many clawback agreements are in place. However, clients should drive take-up of this as, if it works, it will make a serious dent in the costs normally associated with the preparation phases of litigation. Once proven, it will quickly become the norm.”