Webinar: AI, a game-changer for Contract Management? 3 use cases to keep in mind

The excitement surrounding Artificial Intelligence has compelled all business units to contemplate the potential ways in which this technology can revolutionise their daily operations. Legal departments are no different, as highlighted in the webinar organised by Wolters Kluwer. In this webinar, Hugo Seymour, former COO of Della and Product Manager, and Maurits Annegarn, Segment Manager at Wolters Kluwer, explored the future of AI in the legal industry. This article presents the key takeaways from the discussion, revealing the thrilling prospects that lie ahead.

Increasing pressure on legal departments

The legal landscape is changing rapidly with geopolitical and economic changes, along with new regulations that increase the complexity of legal departments' work. The fight for talent is also getting harder, especially when the workload is growing. On the other hand, the demands within corporate organisations are increasing, while budget are decreasing, which results in a higher pressure on the corporate legal department itself. At the end, legal departments need to do more with less, reduce costs, while still meeting the expectations of the Board.

AI: a game-changer?

To address these challenges, AI is emerging as a game changer for legal departments, especially in the contract management field. Using NLP (Natural Language Processing), AI is capable of understanding, interpreting and generating human languages from existing written texts. By combining that to Machine learning (software’s ability to learn from data and adapt with experience to a given context), AI results into a real digital assistant capable of analysing and extracting actionable data from thousands of documents in record time. Contract management being the core business of legal departments, AI could be the key solution for legal services’ faced challenges, helping on time-consuming contract analysis and review.

Use cases where AI comes in handy

In this webinar, Hugo Seymour, expert in AI for Contract management, reveals 3 key uses cases where AI can save huge amounts of time for in-house lawyers, the first one being the case of an M&A Due Diligence. When acquiring a company, in-house lawyers have to analyse piles of documents to identify the risks associated with the purchase of the company. With AI, legal departments can quickly and accurately identify the said risks by extracting the required metadata from the company’s contracts, such as parties involved, effective dates, and limitations of liability. This automated actionable data’s extraction not only reduces administrative load but also increases the accuracy of the work being done.

The second scenario pertains to data extraction. For instance, for compliance purposes, you might need to identify the contracts that will expire soon. Manually analysing all the company’s contracts might take weeks for in-house lawyers. However, with the assistance of AI, meta data such as the parties involved, end date of the contract, and conditions for renewal can be extracted from the documents. This way, relevant contracts can be identified in a timely manner, giving margin time for legal teams to take required actions.

The last use case is the review of incoming contracts. AI is able to assist legal departments with the review of external contracts by comparing the document and clauses with the company’s playbook, reducing the amount of time spent on reviewing each document while increasing accuracy. This can especially helpful for non-disclosure agreements, where legal departments can flag contracts for review based on internal playbooks of policies and rules.

It's important to note that while AI can help with the analysis and extraction of data, the work of the lawyer is still crucial in validating the results. However, AI-powered solutions significantly reduce the time spent on administrative work, allowing lawyers to focus on the things they are trained for.

In conclusion, AI is transforming the way legal departments operate. With its ability to quickly and accurately analyse and extract data, legal departments can make more informed decisions and increase their reporting capabilities. Legal departments that embrace AI will be better positioned to keep up with the demands of the modern legal landscape, and attract and retain top talent.

The webinar "AI: a game changer for contract management?" provides valuable insights for anyone interested in learning more about the potential of AI in the legal industry.