Peer to Peer Magazine

30 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | WINTER 2017 CASE STUDIES Contract Analysis: Soware That Learns Leveraging the Lean Six Sigma methodology, DLA Piper assembled a team that included a project lead, the head of the corporate M&A practice, three other partners, three associates, and several staff members. This team ultimately produced standard M&A documents and templates, created standard phase and task codes, and mapped out their process based completely on the identification of best practices. In addition to these deliverables, the team identified the application of technology as a key enabler of efficiency. Aer comparing the various AI-based contract analysis tools available in the market, DLA Piper found what they were looking for in the machine learning tools from Kira Systems. About Kira Kira was founded by Noah Weisberg, who cut his teeth as an M&A lawyer at Weil Gotshall, and Alex Hudek, a Ph.D. in computer science who worked on the human genome project. "They partnered up and started what they thought was a few months' journey initially," according to Kate Boyd from Kira's marketing team. Though the pair quickly realized that there was a gap in the market for contract analysis soware that they could fill, it took a couple of years to create that technology. How It Works Kira handles first-level document review that had traditionally been performed by law firm associates. Once the documents for a given maer are loaded into the system, Kira takes care of identifying the type of document it is and marks the type of provisions or clauses that have been identified as relevant for that kind of maer. Kira has 240 "out-of-the-box" models created by lawyers that cover standard use cases such as real estate contracts and regulatory documents, but users can create their own models by training the soware to recognize language. Boyd compares this machine learning process to teaching children. "When your kids were lile," she says, "you taught them the different ways words can be spelled, and the different rules for [spelling] them." The soware learns that when it sees certain words or phrases organized in Contract Analysis: Software That Learns "It wasn't about AI or machine learning or Kira in particular, it was about process improvement," says Michael Tominna, Director of Technology in Practice for DLA Piper, a global law firm with more than 4200 attorneys. The firm is the mid-market leader in merger and acquisition deals, having completed more than 550 last year. The feedback the firm received from corporate and M&A clients was that the due diligence process should be as quick and affordable as possible. On a mission to address client needs, DLA Piper embarked on a process that led to the global implementation of Kira Systems software. by Joe Davis

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