基于人工智能的合同分析使法律部门高效

How sophisticated innovation is delivering efficiencies Contracts: essential yet inefficient Verba volant, scripta manent!You don’t need Latin-101 to understand that contracts are essential to anorganization’s success (“spoken words fly away, written words remain”, in case you were wondering). Forlawyers and their organizations, contracts are critically important, as is the effort that goes into creating andreviewing them. However, contracting is rarely done efficiently or effectively. TheHarvard Business Review Legal departments handle huge numbers of contracts at any given time, all of which have obligations tomonitor and risks to mitigate. Some are as simple as a standard non-disclosure agreement; others areexcruciatingly complex and lengthy. Often times, organizations operate outdated, hard-copy contractmanagement systems consisting of little more than filing cabinets and ineffective labelling. Even fororganizations that operate modern filing systems—usually little more than a hierarchy of folders on a localor shared drive and a spreadsheet to record them—keeping track of these documents and the terms therein Inefficient contracting can result in companieslosing 5-40%of the value of a deal. Contract review is critical, but time-consuming, costly, and tedious work. It requires the unique combination oflegal expertise and the ability to interpret legal language that only lawyers possess. But reviewing many, oftensimilar, contracts as part of a large transaction can be mind-numbing. Paragraphs written differently may meanthe same thing. But similarly-written paragraphs with a single word change can flip the meaning. Keeping itall straight is a challenge. But the review isn’t the end goal. Your business leaders want you to interpret andexplain what these contracts mean to them. That means translating legal language into business language Shifting demands For many corporate law departments, having to do more with less is hardly a novel experience. The pressurefor GCs, legal operations and others in law departments to demonstrate their value to the business has beenalmost ever-present in recent years. The pandemic not only exacerbated these challenges but introduced The last 12-24 months have seen significant changes for many legal departments. Lockdown regulationsaround the world saw businesses rapidly pivot to home working, often with little or no preparation. Accordingto theThomson Reuters 2021 State of Corporate Law Departments (SCLD) report, eight times as many lawdepartments experienced a surge in workload (58%) as experienced a dip (7%). However, for many departments, The 2021 SCLD report paints a stark picture, pointing out that nearly five times as many law departments sufferedbudget cuts as saw budget increases. Doing more with less was no longer a business desire, but an imperative. The pandemic not only meant budget cuts and increased workloads, but also evolved workloads. Businessesand their legal departments are familiar with an ever-changing disputes environment. For example, recessionsoften lead to more litigation as aggrieved parties seek to assign blame and stem losses. The 2021 SCLD reportfound that 40% of law departments predicted that spend on disputes would be higher than pre-pandemic 40% of law departments predicted that spend on disputes Over 12 months on from the pandemic, as businesses begin to get to grips with the new normal, we are startingto see a shift in how law departments are operating, and technology is playing a huge role. Arran Braganza,CEO of Jalubro, a London-based legal and technology firm, told Thomson Reuters that one of the biggesteffects he’s seen from the pandemic “has been around the rapid technology advancement and digitalization of •The need to adopt technology to enable all parties to work remotely and collaboratively. •The need to increase cost savings, in part via reducing outside legal spend. •The need to increase legal department effectiveness, not only through new technology but also givinglawyers new skill sets. Data from theThomson Reuters Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index 2021backs this up, showing thatthe adoption of critical legal technology is expanding as departments looks to enhanced technological solutionsand digitalization to improve efficiency and law department costs. The report showed that more than half (52%) 52% of legal departments have increased their useof legal technology in the past year. Data, expertise, and technology Legal technology has exploded in the last five years; the LDO Index 2021 identified nine key legal technology toolsor solutions that are being used by more than half of legal departments surveyed. Impressively, particularlygiven the disruption of the pandemic, this was up from six identified technologies in the 2018 LDO Index. Further data from the LDO Index 2021 highlights that contracting tools are becoming increasingly important forlegal department leaders. Contract Management and Contract