LegalSifter has a good claim to being a ‘legal AI OG’. After starting in 2014, they were one of the first companies to apply NLP/ML to contract review for inhouse teams. Now, after changes at the top, they’re ‘relaunching’, along with some new genAI capabilities.
Longstanding, now former CEO, Kevin Miller, is still at the company as Chief Strategy Officer, but the new boss is Eric Hall, who previously was at Adobe for more than a decade.
The moves also follow the purchase of CLM business Contract Logix in October last year. In short, there have been a lot of changes at LegalSifter recently.
So, on the tech side, what is LegalSifter offering? The core product focuses on what they’re branding ‘ReviewPro’. It includes:
– ‘Complete First-Pass Reviews in Minutes, with risks flagged, guidance provided, and redlines automatically applied directly in Microsoft Word.
– Contract-Specific AI that has been developed and tested over 10 years, to read and analyze legal documents with precision.
– Intuitive Playbook Management that lets users start with attorney-crafted standard playbooks that can be easily customized to align with specific negotiation strategies, legal and business terms, and redlining aligned with contract language best practices.’
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Artificial Lawyer spoke to new CEO, Hall, to find out some more. He explained that this time around LegalSifter is tapping LLM technology, in this case OpenAI’s suite of genAI offerings, but the earlier NLP/ML backbone is still there – a scenario we have seen in several other ‘legal AI OG’ companies that have adapted to, and adopted, genAI after building a ‘legal AI V.1’ system.
The genAI is ‘layered on top’ to help with areas such as concept identification, but the NLP/ML is still there because it works and has been trained on the types of contracts inhouse teams often see since 2013. And that’s a lot of embedded AI training value they want to keep. I.e. you don’t throw away earlier forms of AI just because there’s a new one available – you combine them.
He added that from here, and with the added CLM capabilities after their M&A deal, the company will expand its features, looking at new capabilities around ‘contract intake, ticketing and collaboration’. They’re also providing a managed services offering, as ‘most companies don’t have the staff to administer a CLM’.
Overall, they’ve added in genAI, have a new boss, have added in CLM to create a broader platform, and are exploring new features as well. The company has been going for a dozen years, but it’s clearly on a growth trajectory and embracing the future.
You can find out more about LegalSifter here.
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Legal Innovators California Conference, San Francisco, June 11 + 12
If you’re interested in the cutting edge of legal AI and innovation – and where we are all heading – then come along to Legal Innovators California, in San Francisco, June 11 and 12, where speakers from the leading law firms, inhouse teams, and tech companies will be sharing their insights and experiences as to what is really happening and where we are all heading.
We already have an incredible roster of companies to hear from. This includes: Legora, Harvey, StructureFlow, Ivo, Flatiron Law Group, PointOne, Centari, eBrevia, Legatics, Knowable, Draftwise, newcode.AI, Riskaway, SimpleClosure and more.
See you all there!
More information and tickets here.
