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Legal Tech

Legal technology is already making inroads into disclosure of documents for litigation (eDiscovery), knowledge management, due diligence, contract analysis and review, and practice management. Our lawyers are actively involved in the development of Legal Tech working together with Gene AI and leading academics on “project Terranova”. The key objective is to develop and exploit leading-edge machine learning tools for solicitors and is being funded by Innovate UK.

On the near horizon are exciting advances in tech-assisted drafting, legal analytics, contract and document automation and online dispute resolution. The business of providing legal advice is changing too, and many predict that the sector must remould itself under powerful disruptive forces stemming from technological advances. Tomorrow’s attorneys will work very differently.

What are the key technologies? Artificial intelligence, and in particular deep learning, have opened up new vistas for legal tech. Very rapid advances in natural language processing (NLP) mean that applications can uncover and exploit semantic similarities in legal documents, making possible augmented drafting tools such as Genie AI’s SuperDrafter. CS Disco uses machine learning to predict the relevance of documents in litigation, with the potential to make review more accurate and far quicker. iManage uses AI to classify and extract documents accurately and quickly from vast data repositories. As in many recent AI success stories, supervised learning contributes much to legal tech.

But unsupervised learning, adversarial methods, and reinforcement learning approaches are all being developed at pace in one of the hottest tech sectors globally. There are hundreds of legal tech startups around the world. Withers Tech is adept at serving their legal needs. Tech startups are groundbreakers and they often need bespoke regulatory advice from us.

Legal tech is disruptive. Workplace change is inevitable and can be difficult to manage. Helping companies in the throes of tech disruption leans also on our wider capabilities in employment and corporate services.

On the bigger picture we have strategic expertise too, be that technological risk, AI ethics, reputation management and philanthropy.

Turning to developing the tech, our flagship collaboration is “project Terranova”. Innovate UK funding backs our consortium (Gene AI, Withers, and leading academics), with the goal of developing and exploiting leading-edge machine learning tools for lawyers.

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Working with Phil [Lindan] enables us not only to understand the lawyer’s needs in more detail from a UX perspective, but also given his background as a computational physicist with AI knowledge, we have collaborated on numerous technical ideas and approaches relating to machine learning and natural-language processing. It is a pleasure to continue to collaborate on solving the most challenging legaltech issues in transactional law.

Rafie Faruq, CEO of Genie AI Limited
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We at Lexicom Technology pride ourselves on our technical expertise and our transparent client relationships. Withers have been key advisors since our inception in 2006. Over the years they have provided invaluable advice to our growing business, representing us on both commercial and private client matters and over a wide range of subjects ranging from domestic property law to international commercial negotiation. They are eminently approachable and always extremely responsive to our enquires. In any arena they have provided a consistently substantial upper hand. I cannot recommend them enough.

David Sunney - Lexicom
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The Withers team have helped us for many years through investment completion, in-licensing multiple technologies and with our commercialisation activities. They are our trusted lawyers who provide the right pragmatic and practical advice and we very much value their support as we grow our business.

Medovate
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Withers tech have been with us through thick and thin. I trust them completely. They are so in-twined in our business. I see it as a personal relationship.

Mark Davis, CEO – Mologic Ltd
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I see Withers tech as more of a sparring partner than my lawyers. We spend time thinking through different scenarios and discussing how certain decisions could positively or negatively impact the future of Meatable, and this process crystallised our priorities. Sharmela finds the exact right balance between being the ‘formal lawyer’, and being pragmatic and thinking proactively.

Krijn De Nood, CEO – Metable DV

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Track record

iManage provides global document platform to Clifford Chance

iManage is the leading provider of work product management solutions for law firms. Clifford Chance selected iManage for its global document, email management and collaboration platform. Withers tech was proud to act for iManage in the negotiations with Clifford Chance after an 18 month evaluation process.

Insuretech, disruptor, deposit replacement insurance

Advising in relation to and negotiating pilot agreements for the trial and evaluation of an Insuretech company's deposit replacement insurance and Insuretech platform.

Innovate UK Consortium

Involved in a successful consortium bid – receiving the largest award in the AI Grand Challenge funding. Assisted in the development and commercialisation of cutting-edge machine learning powered smart drafting technology, where we were partners alongside Genie AI, Imperial College and Oxford University.

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