iManage at ILTACON unveiled new AI capabilities, including implementing Model Context Protocol (MCP) support. MCP is an open standard designed to help large language models connect to external tools and services. Anthropic launched MCP last year and it was recently given support by in March by OpenAI. iManage says its customers will be able to connect MCP-compatible AI applications to the iManage Cloud without vendor-specific integrations. More specifically, AI applications can automatically discover available content and capabilities in iManage Cloud while respecting existing user permissions and access controls.
The announcement follows a LinkedIn post from Rio Tinto’s digital transformation manager Christopher de Waas, announcing that Rio Tinto had successfully tested an integration between iManage and ChatGPT Enterprise, using MCP.
“This means we’ll be able to run ChatGPT’s Deep Research capability across millions of documents in iManage—on any question or topic,” de Waas said.
MCP is the AI version of an API. Speaking to Legal IT Insider, iManage co-founder and CEO Neil Araujo said: “MCP is a language that you can use to communicate with an AI engine but the more interesting bit is what it allows you to do.” He said that there are three categories where AI is having an impact: drafting, research and workflow, observing of the latter category: “Here AI seems to be doing an amazing job of automating tasks across multiple systems. If you want to find a lender that is using this credit agreement and then create a change based on regulation, AI can orchestrate that workflow, going to iManage to extract who the lenders are and then a different system to get their email address. This is what MCP allows you to do and you don’t have to build a custom connector. We are pleasantly surprised by how effective it is.”
iManage have also unveiled enhanced search capability in Insight+ and enhancements to its AI assistant Ask iManage. You can hear more at ILTACON on Thursday, August 14 | 11:00 AM–12:00 PM or visit booth #809 to find out more.