Australian firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth is the latest to adopt artificial intelligence technology in the due diligence process for mergers and acquisitions transactions reports the American Lawyer
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Corrs will use technology developed by London-based legal tech firm Luminance to sort, cluster and filter large volumes of documents and find subtle but potentially significant differences between contracts. The program can help identify key issues at an early stage of a transaction, and offer Corrs’ clients a better negotiating position from the outset, the firm said.
One-year-old Luminance is 5 percent owned by Magic Circle firm Slaughter and May, which was also the company’s first customer. In Australia, Sydney-based Gilbert + Tobin has also adopted Luminance’s technology. Other law firm clients include New York-based Cravath, Swaine & Moore , Copenhagen-based Bech-Bruun , Italian firm Portolano Cavallo and Slaughter and May’s best friend Spanish firm Uría Menéndez .
Corrs adopted the technology following a successful pilot run, when the firm used Luminance’s product and compared it with a parallel due diligence process using more traditional manual methods. “The M&A team’s feedback was that Luminance could assist with both cost reduction and quality control in due diligence processes,” said Robert Regan, Corrs’ partner in charge of the Sydney office.
