Hey everyone.
I know I said I’d do this back in March but then the final few months of my LL.B kicked into gear and I hibernated from life, mostly in the library. All done now, so thought I’d get around to writing this brief guide up on some of the tech magic circle firms are working on in-house or in collaboration with other companies.
Allen & Overy
A&O recently kicked off the second cohort intake of Fuse; an incubator for lawtech firms (by the way don’t be worried about phrases such as incubator and accelerators etc. Firstly, they don’t seem all that specific and thus if you use one in an incorrect fashion, I doubt anyone would really mind care that much. Incubators seem to be more for tech firms in their infancy, giving them access to the kind of work that allows them to change or test their products in a relaxed, collaborative kind of environment. Accelerators seem to be more for companies in the next stage of their life-cycle, those who are moving from adolescent stage to adulthood and often seem to be a way of hosts to choose which company it may invest equity in. They seem to be for a fixed time period and seem to finish in a demo day for investors to watch. But again, there don’t seem to be strict definitions to what each is).
The first cohort of Fuse seemed a success and led to three of those companies being invited back again to continue working within it:
Nivaura – A fintech startup that is developing cloud based startup for the issue and administration of financial instruments. I believe they recently oversaw two automated bond issues. A&O have also made an equity investment in them and a partner from A&O has joined the board. They seem pretty invested in Nivaura as a company.
Avvoka – A digital platform that incorporates contract creation, workflow and analytics. Essentially a cloud based platform that enables businesses to create, sign and store contracts to streamline the process of generation contracts.
Legatics – automates a whole load of things in the region of banking practices; automated Conditions Precedent, deal bible creations, issues tracing processes etc which people think will save a ton of time and cost for the firms. After the first Fuse incubator, A&O’s banking practice adopted the Legatics platform.
The second cohort of Fuse has also added five companies to it:
Bloomsbury AI – Focuses on natural language understanding and machine learning to try to create virtual assistants that can read and communicate (They have one called Cape at the moment which can read text and answer questions on it) https://alpha.thecape.ai/#/
Kira Systems – Machine learning technology for document review and analysis (they think there is a lot of work to be done around saving time on due diligence and also saving time on contract review)
Neota Logic – Drag and drop AI platform that looks to automate legal processes, documents, expertise… whatever you can throw at it. The drag and drop aspect means you don’t need a tech background to build your own processes, merely a bit of training
Renosys – Fintech again – looking to change regulatory compliance approach of industry
Signal Media – AI business intelligence – BI is the software which helps companies make decisions. It covers a whole range of software such as analytics, reporting and generally plugs into a data warehouse and integrates with it to create reports or analytic tools that allow companies to make decisions. Sainsburys, for example, will use BI to try to stock in a smarter manner. i.e. they know how many oranges were bought in each time period last year via their data warehouse, their BI software allows them to make smarter decisions about how many oranges to send to each store so as to allow them not to run out but also to reduce waste. Signal Media, uses machine learning and AI to create a BI tool that can monitor news and events to create information updates for the company using it.
Fuse II has a focus on legaltech (tech supporting law firms), regtech (tech supporting reg compliance) and dealtech (tech transforming how companies negotiate and complete deals).
Outside of Fuse, A&O also have a big investment in MarginMatrix a digital derivatives compliance system – it has a focus on the OTC derivatives market and MM allows the process of drafting complex documents to satisfy regulatory requirements to be automated – Financial Times reported that this tech allows drafting time of documents to go from 3 hours to 3 minutes.
A&O and Addleshaw Goddard have also both announced new career paths - “training contracts” for those looking to work in a tech space.
__________________________________________________________________
Clifford Chance
Clifford Chance partnered with Kira Systems back in 2016, way before a lot of other law firms even considered Lawtech as a viable option. They’ve been somewhat ahead of the curve on that aspect (although of late the other big firms have caught back up).
Some of the tech companies they work with/use in their offices include:
Neota Logic – As mentioned above. They’ve created the MiFID toolkit which is to help financial institutions assess and address the impacts of the MiFID2 regulations which were implemented in Jan 2018.
Kira Systems – As mentioned above
Elevate – Produced Cael (Latin for Sky – because you can’t take the lawyer out of Lawtech) which is a cloud based series of software tools such as Cael Vision which creates reports based on any metrics required and Cael BillPrep which streamlines the area of billing to save time for Partners.
Litera Microsystems Contract Companion - A contract drafting tool that sits in Microsoft Word Toolbar which assists you in analysing contracts and drafting them too.
Tech for Integrity (t4i) – Not a tech company as such, t4i run, in conjunction with Citi, IMF and others, a tech accelerator with a focus on creating developments that put public trust back into tech. Clifford Chance award “Clifford Chance Legal Advice awards” to some of those companies that have a legal focus and thus help their tech come to light. Examples include AID:Tech – a platform that uses blockchain to ensure that beneficiaries receive social welfare and other aids directly to their digital ID.
___________________________________________________________________
Freshfields
Freshfields run a lot of things out of their legal services centre up in Manchester; the Manchester LCS has a mandate to optimise the firm’s processes around six key areas (AI, blockchain, smart contracts, smart documents, tech expertise and automation). I don’t know that much about what is going on in there but it seems a lot of their tech focus is there.
Outside of that in the company they use:
Kira Systems – As above – document review and due diligence
Neota Logic – As above. No idea what they’re developing, can’t find any information about it.
Leverton – AI data extraction for corporate documents such as real estate.
_____________________________________________________________
Linklaters
iManage (Previously RAVN) – A massive
Nakhoda – Pretty exciting as it is Linklater’s own home-grown tool (in conjunction with Eigen Tech). They’ve just announced a partnership with ISDA to create a platform to automate significant areas of the derivatives documentation and improve regulatory compliance for derivatives contracts.
LinkRFI – Rapidly classifies financial institutes that match the definitions of new legislation – i.e. It saves humans a lot of time by rapidly sifting through massive external databases to isolate client names for banks – it can process thousands in a few hours whereas the average time for a solicitor is around 12 minutes/name.
______________________________________________________________________
Slaughter & May
Luminance – S&M actually invested in this AI company and use it for transaction due diligence. They came to the decision by running a competition between the tech and a group of associates over who could best complete the same due diligence exercises.
S&M also run a Fintech incubator but have announced interest in fintech, insurtech, lawtech, regtech and blockchain (which I’m sure feels left out without a tech suffix).
_______________________________________________________________________
I'll continue adding to this to keep the list up-to-date and will also begin to add other law firms on (MDR for example have an absolute ton of Lawtech to mention). I'm pretty sure this may be useful to know whilst applying to any of these law firms
I know I said I’d do this back in March but then the final few months of my LL.B kicked into gear and I hibernated from life, mostly in the library. All done now, so thought I’d get around to writing this brief guide up on some of the tech magic circle firms are working on in-house or in collaboration with other companies.
Allen & Overy
A&O recently kicked off the second cohort intake of Fuse; an incubator for lawtech firms (by the way don’t be worried about phrases such as incubator and accelerators etc. Firstly, they don’t seem all that specific and thus if you use one in an incorrect fashion, I doubt anyone would really mind care that much. Incubators seem to be more for tech firms in their infancy, giving them access to the kind of work that allows them to change or test their products in a relaxed, collaborative kind of environment. Accelerators seem to be more for companies in the next stage of their life-cycle, those who are moving from adolescent stage to adulthood and often seem to be a way of hosts to choose which company it may invest equity in. They seem to be for a fixed time period and seem to finish in a demo day for investors to watch. But again, there don’t seem to be strict definitions to what each is).
The first cohort of Fuse seemed a success and led to three of those companies being invited back again to continue working within it:
Nivaura – A fintech startup that is developing cloud based startup for the issue and administration of financial instruments. I believe they recently oversaw two automated bond issues. A&O have also made an equity investment in them and a partner from A&O has joined the board. They seem pretty invested in Nivaura as a company.
Avvoka – A digital platform that incorporates contract creation, workflow and analytics. Essentially a cloud based platform that enables businesses to create, sign and store contracts to streamline the process of generation contracts.
Legatics – automates a whole load of things in the region of banking practices; automated Conditions Precedent, deal bible creations, issues tracing processes etc which people think will save a ton of time and cost for the firms. After the first Fuse incubator, A&O’s banking practice adopted the Legatics platform.
The second cohort of Fuse has also added five companies to it:
Bloomsbury AI – Focuses on natural language understanding and machine learning to try to create virtual assistants that can read and communicate (They have one called Cape at the moment which can read text and answer questions on it) https://alpha.thecape.ai/#/
Kira Systems – Machine learning technology for document review and analysis (they think there is a lot of work to be done around saving time on due diligence and also saving time on contract review)
Neota Logic – Drag and drop AI platform that looks to automate legal processes, documents, expertise… whatever you can throw at it. The drag and drop aspect means you don’t need a tech background to build your own processes, merely a bit of training
Renosys – Fintech again – looking to change regulatory compliance approach of industry
Signal Media – AI business intelligence – BI is the software which helps companies make decisions. It covers a whole range of software such as analytics, reporting and generally plugs into a data warehouse and integrates with it to create reports or analytic tools that allow companies to make decisions. Sainsburys, for example, will use BI to try to stock in a smarter manner. i.e. they know how many oranges were bought in each time period last year via their data warehouse, their BI software allows them to make smarter decisions about how many oranges to send to each store so as to allow them not to run out but also to reduce waste. Signal Media, uses machine learning and AI to create a BI tool that can monitor news and events to create information updates for the company using it.
Fuse II has a focus on legaltech (tech supporting law firms), regtech (tech supporting reg compliance) and dealtech (tech transforming how companies negotiate and complete deals).
Outside of Fuse, A&O also have a big investment in MarginMatrix a digital derivatives compliance system – it has a focus on the OTC derivatives market and MM allows the process of drafting complex documents to satisfy regulatory requirements to be automated – Financial Times reported that this tech allows drafting time of documents to go from 3 hours to 3 minutes.
A&O and Addleshaw Goddard have also both announced new career paths - “training contracts” for those looking to work in a tech space.
__________________________________________________________________
Clifford Chance
Clifford Chance partnered with Kira Systems back in 2016, way before a lot of other law firms even considered Lawtech as a viable option. They’ve been somewhat ahead of the curve on that aspect (although of late the other big firms have caught back up).
Some of the tech companies they work with/use in their offices include:
Neota Logic – As mentioned above. They’ve created the MiFID toolkit which is to help financial institutions assess and address the impacts of the MiFID2 regulations which were implemented in Jan 2018.
Kira Systems – As mentioned above
Elevate – Produced Cael (Latin for Sky – because you can’t take the lawyer out of Lawtech) which is a cloud based series of software tools such as Cael Vision which creates reports based on any metrics required and Cael BillPrep which streamlines the area of billing to save time for Partners.
Litera Microsystems Contract Companion - A contract drafting tool that sits in Microsoft Word Toolbar which assists you in analysing contracts and drafting them too.
Tech for Integrity (t4i) – Not a tech company as such, t4i run, in conjunction with Citi, IMF and others, a tech accelerator with a focus on creating developments that put public trust back into tech. Clifford Chance award “Clifford Chance Legal Advice awards” to some of those companies that have a legal focus and thus help their tech come to light. Examples include AID:Tech – a platform that uses blockchain to ensure that beneficiaries receive social welfare and other aids directly to their digital ID.
___________________________________________________________________
Freshfields
Freshfields run a lot of things out of their legal services centre up in Manchester; the Manchester LCS has a mandate to optimise the firm’s processes around six key areas (AI, blockchain, smart contracts, smart documents, tech expertise and automation). I don’t know that much about what is going on in there but it seems a lot of their tech focus is there.
Outside of that in the company they use:
Kira Systems – As above – document review and due diligence
Neota Logic – As above. No idea what they’re developing, can’t find any information about it.
Leverton – AI data extraction for corporate documents such as real estate.
_____________________________________________________________
Linklaters
iManage (Previously RAVN) – A massive
Nakhoda – Pretty exciting as it is Linklater’s own home-grown tool (in conjunction with Eigen Tech). They’ve just announced a partnership with ISDA to create a platform to automate significant areas of the derivatives documentation and improve regulatory compliance for derivatives contracts.
LinkRFI – Rapidly classifies financial institutes that match the definitions of new legislation – i.e. It saves humans a lot of time by rapidly sifting through massive external databases to isolate client names for banks – it can process thousands in a few hours whereas the average time for a solicitor is around 12 minutes/name.
______________________________________________________________________
Slaughter & May
Luminance – S&M actually invested in this AI company and use it for transaction due diligence. They came to the decision by running a competition between the tech and a group of associates over who could best complete the same due diligence exercises.
S&M also run a Fintech incubator but have announced interest in fintech, insurtech, lawtech, regtech and blockchain (which I’m sure feels left out without a tech suffix).
_______________________________________________________________________
I'll continue adding to this to keep the list up-to-date and will also begin to add other law firms on (MDR for example have an absolute ton of Lawtech to mention). I'm pretty sure this may be useful to know whilst applying to any of these law firms
