AI: the artificial ingredient you shouldn’t avoid

Those of us who grew up in the 70’s or 80’s may recall the excitement of Marty McFly wandering around in the then distant future of October 2015. Yes, 2015. Just over 5 years ago. ‘Where are the flying cars?!?’, you might be forgiven for asking. ‘And why don’t our Hover Boards, you know, hover?’

It's a common theme. George Orwell’s 1984 never happened as predicted and there’s no Big Brother watching us from a screen on the wall. Quite the opposite if you count Davina and Emma Willis. We’ve yet to invent ‘Skynet’ and we’re long past 1997’s Judgement Day. 2001 also came and went and Mr Kubrick’s Space Odyssey never took off. We got no HAL 9000 monitoring our private conversations (although the debate continues as to what Alexa is listening to from our kitchen worktops).

We tend to overestimate the pace of progress in film and literature which is perhaps borne of being innately nervous of technology’s ability to ‘take over’. Indeed, too often people place developments such as artificial intelligence on the it-all-looks-a-bit-too-scary side of the tech continuum, filed away somewhere near the evil robots. This is especially true in the legal profession. As a group, lawyers are professionally conservative, risk-averse creatures who shy away from the early-adopter crowd when it comes to integrating technology into their practice.

But things are changing. For lawyers, AI is here to stay and while it’s not quite Max Headroom just yet, it offers countless tangible benefits. It’s time to park the cynicism and fear.

In January, Shoosmiths officially launched Cia® (Contract: Intelligence Analysis), our AI-powered contract-review tool. This industry-leading smart tool saves up to 5 hours of legal review time per contract, putting valuable time back in your diary. The result? You can move away from the day-to-day grind of ever-overflowing inboxes and rediscover the art of the possible. That contract you’ve been putting off for days? Done. Those NDAs you’ve not had the time to look at? Ready.

In the time it takes you to make a cup of coffee you can ask Cia® to whiz through a contract and tell you in jargon-free and plain English the key things you need to be worried about. Using our easy-to-use self-service option, you get the heads ups on what matters to your business, with no fuss. That’s why some of the UK’s leading businesses such as Scania, Deliveroo and Next are already adopters.

Cia® can offer you:

• Time back in your diary: save 3-5 hours of legal review time per contract
• Rapid turnaround: get instant results with our self-service option or let us take the strain with a guaranteed same-day turnaround with our managed service (if received before 2pm)
• User-friendly: all Cia® outputs are written in plain English, so can be provided directly to the business without the need to ‘translate’ the advice
• Coverage: Cia® reviews any commercial contract for purchase of services, goods or IT or NDAs. More contract types are being developed all the time
• Ready-to-go Cia® is a ‘plug and play’ solution: you can get all the benefits of Cia® instantly, without the need for a lengthy onboarding process
• Improved deal cycle: Cia’s® rapid response, with pragmatic advice, results in more deals getting agreed in less time than conventional methods.

What’s not to like? Admittedly it’s not flying cars and spaceships but it’s also not Armageddon. It’s progress. Here’s a thought to leave you with. Microsoft introduced spellcheck in 2003. That means in 2002 you still had your paper dictionary on the desk, manually proof reading. Consider the countless hours you’ve saved over the past 18 years letting spellcheck do some of the work for you. Well, imagine your spellcheck’s now grown up and has been to university. It’s got a law degree and wants to help do more than highlight your typos. The future is now. The future is Cia®.