Guest post, courtesy of Anna Lozynski

Gartner predicts that by 2024, legal departments will replace 20% of their legal team with professional staff (actually they used the non-PC term, non-lawyers).

It may be natural to assume these professionals are legal operations specialists.

But could it in time mean linguists and data scientists too?

Curious to test my own hypothesis, I connected with Dr Alexander “Alec” Sugar, who has been part of the product team at LexCheck for over two years, starting as Junior Product Manager and now serving as the Director of Data Science.

It’s a Thursday evening in New York City for PhD Dr Alec. Church bells chime at the start of our Zoom. Based on first impressions I can sense this is going to be a fascinating conversation.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language – endangered, existing and new. In the tech space, linguists play an important role in harnessing Natural Language Processing (a type of artificial intelligence) technologies to process data.

In fact, we are supported by the work of linguists every day: when we Google, or when we converse with voice activated apps Alexa or Siri, for example.

In law land, linguistics is central to harnessing natural language processing technologies for contract review. But it’s a team effort to create and maintain AI that is as good as (or better) than a human at contract red lining. Leading a small team linguists, Dr Alec works hand in glove with the company’s in-house lawyers, sales, marketing, and of course software developers.

Read the full article on Anna's blog, here.

LexCheck: Setting the AI-Powered Standard for Business Agreements

LexCheck’s award-winning legal technology enables corporate legal departments and procurement teams to employ an AI platform to accelerate contract review and negotiation according to a company’s specified guidelines. Characterized by speed and accuracy, LexCheck’s technology reviews and negotiates an agreement like an experienced in-house attorney by adhering to the company’s internal playbook and best practices. After uploading your agreement to the platform, your department will receive a fully redlined agreement with suggested revisions to ensure favorable terms—often in less than five minutes. Immediacy is the new standard, and an AI-powered contract negotiation platform brings today’s legal departments much closer to reviewing and negotiating agreements instantaneously.