Automated Intelligent Contract Review is a personal research project. The aim of this project is to assess what can be achieved in automating contract review by using state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques.
A number of solutions, both commercial and open source, already exist in this field. However, the use of these solutions has not yet been impressive. A recent survey by the American Bar Association (ABA) found that law firms are slow to adopt tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). One of the reasons mentioned is that "the available products have yet to demonstrate they can consistently produce the results vendors promise".
Also, many of the solutions found are offered through websites hosted in the United States. Do these tools also work for other jurisdictions than the jurisdiction of the United States? Because not only is the language of US contracts specific to the US, the US also, like for instance the UK and Australia, has a quite specific legal system called Common Law as opposed to Civil Law legal systems that are mainly found on the European continent. The system used has a strong impact on the type and number of clauses included in contracts and how contracts have to be interpreted and understood.
This research starts with a focus on contracts in the Dutch language, governed by Dutch law.
Why research this topic? I have been combining law and IT (software development) for many years now. AI and NLP will have a big impact on the professional future of lawyers, I'm interested to find out how! Plus, completing this research should yield a master degree in software engineering, complementing my earlier master degree in law.
Are you interested and do you want to know more? Please reach out!