Initial prototype developed for Germany by international co-creation team
April 11, 2022 – Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory and Microsoft's Modern Work Customer Co-Innovation Team (MWCCI) are collaborating to explore how AI-driven legal research workflows can deliver better results faster. An initial prototype was developed in Germany by an international co-creation team from both companies.
Legal professionals in particular know exactly how difficult and time-consuming research can be. According to Wolters Kluwer’s Future Ready Lawyer Study, one of the most significant challenges facing lawyers is coping with the increased volume and complexity of information. That's why Wolters Kluwer and Microsoft's MWCCI team have joined forces to design solutions that help lawyers increase their productivity.
As a first milestone of the collaboration, a prototype was developed for Germany that works in Microsoft Word. It can analyze procedural documents and retrieve related legal commentary and court decisions from Wolters Kluwer Online, Wolters Kluwer's legal research service in Germany, and also locate matching Word documents on internal SharePoint sites.
The focus of this development was to create a tool that provides lawyers with relevant, high-quality content from a variety of data sources directly within their usual workflows – which in law firms often take place in Microsoft Word. The tool fits perfectly with Wolters Kluwer's strategic approach of integrating expertise directly into customers’ workflow.
"Our vision for the concept was to have a kind of legal companion," said Peter Backx, Vice President of Product Management for Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory. "We were convinced from the beginning that working with Microsoft would produce something that would help lawyers achieve better work results."
“In our collaboration, we benefit from Wolters Kluwer's extensive experience in legal productivity and a great willingness and ability to innovate," said David Jones, Program Manager in the Microsoft MWCCI team responsible for the project. "Our idea was to leverage Wolters Kluwer's expertise in the legal field to determine the legal context of the document a lawyer is working on. This allows us to proactively contribute valuable information. This speeds up the workflow and helps lawyers improve work results.”
Next, the joint team of Wolters Kluwer and Microsoft, consisting of engineers, designers, researchers and other experts from six countries and three continents, will conduct a user study with lawyers in Germany. The goal will be to obtain valuable feedback and, based on this, to further develop the solution.
"We are excited to see how our customers will react and what new opportunities will arise from this exciting partnership with Microsoft," said Backx.
