Baker McKenzie Employs AI

This comes on the back of the firm announcing record global revenues of $2.67 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2017, ensuring its status as the most diverse global law firm.

Baker McKenzie’s tool of choice is eBrevia, an AI solution for extracting data from contracts. The law firm will use it primarily for M&A and other transactional work for its clients, such as due diligence and contract analysis. It will be able to bring this work to Asia-Pacific, North America, and Europe, by having offices in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Zurich, Toronto, and Chicago all trialling this machine learning, while there are plans underway to expand its coverage even further.

This is an example of AI being used to better employ the time and efforts of a firm’s human employees further, as oppose to direct replacement of jobs and tasks. Reducing the workload inherent in extracting the huge amounts of data from contracts by utilising machine learning is part of a trend that we are seeing at law firms all across the globe, as seen with Cravath, Swaine & Moore recently signing a deal with British software company Luminance, which is part-owned by Magic Circle firm Slaughter and May. Baker McKenzie is ensuring that it is well established in the vanguard of this new wave of innovation.

References: Baker McKenzie     The American Lawyer