AI contract management technology streamlines contract analysis, saving hours and reducing the potential for human error. This can be done through intelligent search, automatic data extraction, clause-level text recommendations, and more.
This allows legal teams to build contracts more quickly and with greater accuracy. It can also enable a faster first draft process using prescriptive suggestions for preferred clause language.
Artificial Intelligence
With the proliferation of AI, there are a lot of misconceptions about how it works and how it will impact people’s work. One common concern is that AI will replace humans completely for certain types of work, but the truth is, it will probably do more productive and higher quality work than human workers in some cases. In the context of contract management, AI can help businesses perform much of the necessary analysis to create and update contracts and ensure that they are in compliance with regulations.
While a great deal of media coverage has focused on the negative implications of AI, there are many ways it can be used to improve productivity and reduce risk for companies. AI can be used to streamline contract analysis, which is an essential task for legal teams in any business. In this way, it can save hours of time and avoid potential mistakes that may result from manual analysis.
AI can be used in a variety of ways to assist with contract review, including intelligent search, automatic data extraction, and clause-level text recommendations. It can also be used to identify inconsistencies, errors, and discrepancies that could be missed by human reviewers, ensuring that contracts are accurate and compliant with regulatory requirements. This can protect businesses from legal disputes and penalties that could result from failure to comply with industry regulations.
Generally, there are three categories of AI: machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. Machine learning involves algorithms that allow computers to learn and improve their performance without explicit programming, while natural language processing focuses on enabling machines to interpret and understand human speech, and computer vision deals with giving machines the ability to recognize and analyze visual information.
Another category of AI is expert systems, which combine AI with mechanical engineering to give machines the ability to solve complex problems in specific domains, such as contract management. These systems can emulate human expertise and make decisions that mimic those of an experienced lawyer.
A newer type of AI is generative interpretation, which uses large language models to generate potential responses to questions and scenarios. While this is useful for identifying the meaning of words, it can be biased and inaccurate, and could even be used to enable unethical or illegal activity. For this reason, it is important to use generative AI in combination with human expertise and not as a replacement for it.
Natural Language Processing
Natural language processing is a branch of AI that works to teach computers how to understand human writing and speech. It breaks down words into their component parts and analyzes those to determine meaning. This can help computers to identify and recognize contract terms and clauses, as well as determine if they are legally sound or in violation of existing rules and regulations.
This is a key component to the process of contract analysis, where it takes a significant amount of time to manually review contracts. Using NLP, AI can automate this process and get the job done faster and more accurately than a human could. It can also help to ensure that the contract is consistent and compliant, which helps to reduce the risk of legal disputes or costly penalties.
NLP also enables AI to quickly extract important contract data from large volumes of documents, which can save a lot of time and effort. This is particularly valuable for enterprise-level businesses that deal with a high number of contracts on a regular basis. One example is construction company HCC Ltd, which handles about 40,000 contracts at any given time.
One of the ways that AI can streamline this process is by automating tasks such as document management, document storage and retrieval, and identifying and organizing bulk uploads. It can also be used to create workflows, which can save time and resources by minimizing the number of manual steps needed to complete tasks.
Another way that AI can help is by analyzing the contract for potential risks, which can be challenging for humans to do effectively. For instance, when humans rely on templates to draft contracts, they can easily overlook ambiguous or problematic language. AI can identify these issues and alert relevant teams to address them, potentially reducing costs by cutting down on legal disputes or fines.
Lastly, AI can also help to reduce the workload of in-house legal departments by identifying issues and allowing them to focus on other matters. This is especially important for large organizations that have limited in-house resources and need to prioritize a diverse set of legal needs.
Machine Learning
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that allows computer systems to automatically learn from their interactions with the world. It’s often used for tasks that require human reasoning and is an important part of AI systems such as virtual assistants, voice recognition software and natural language processing. Unlike automated machines that are programmed with pre-defined rules, machine learning enables computers to analyze data and make decisions on their own.
One of the most visible examples of machine learning is Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, but it also powers the face recognition that makes self-driving cars possible; computer vision that enables drones to avoid obstacles and deliver goods to your doorstep; speech and language recognition and synthesis that power chatbots and service robots; facial recognition for surveillance in countries like China; finding patterns and trends in huge datasets to support business decision making; and predicting upcoming maintenance on infrastructure through analyzing sensor data from IoT devices.
UC Berkeley explains that machine learning algorithms can be split into two categories: supervised and unsupervised. Supervised machine learning uses historical data to teach itself, and it can then use that knowledge to predict future behavior or identify patterns in new data. Unsupervised learning is akin to a child observing and learning to recognize fruit without being taught the names of each fruit; unsupervised models look for similarities and group images into categories.
The most advanced forms of machine learning use complex, deep neural networks. These are the kinds of systems that caused a sensation when Google’s AlphaGo beat multiple top-ranked professional Go players in 2017; they’re also the kind of system that helps power photo classification apps, identifies objects in medical imaging and assists in interpreting medical texts.
The applications of ML are growing rapidly as technology evolves and hardware becomes more specialized. It’s becoming easier to run ML algorithms on mobile devices and in the cloud, and this is helping to fuel a revolution in digital products and services. For example, Google has rolled out local neural machine translation for 59 languages to its mobile app for iOS and Android. It’s a powerful tool that could enable business and consumers to communicate with each other more efficiently across borders and cultures, reduce costs for translation services and help us move closer to the global marketplace of one.
Machine Translation
When it comes to contract translation, machine translation (MT) has become an essential technology for reducing costs and improving accuracy. MT can improve productivity by automating the process of translating high volumes of text, freeing up human translators to focus on more complex tasks like proofreading and reviewing. It can also provide a valuable tool for legal professionals, ensuring that contracts are translated accurately and preventing costly misunderstandings and disputes.
Historically, machine translation has relied on rule-based or statistical methods. Rule-based systems use grammar and language rules and highly customizable dictionaries, while statistical models take advantage of large volumes of existing human translations to learn how to translate. Neural machine translation, or NMT, is a newer, more accurate approach that uses neural networks to mimic the way humans translate.
NMT is becoming more popular because it provides better results than other MT technologies. However, even the best MT programs still require some human editing. This is because machine translation can get tripped up on syntax and grammar rules, or even specialized vocabulary like industry terms and jargon. Moreover, it may not understand cultural nuances or the meaning behind certain words.
In a contractual context, these errors can lead to substantial financial losses. For example, a mistranslation of a single phrase in a marketing piece could result in poor sales or damage to brand reputation, while a mistranslation in a legal contract could cost the company in fines and penalties.
Contractual interpretation is a complex task that requires specialized knowledge of the subject matter. AI tools can help streamline the translation process by identifying key clauses and providing translations that are contextually appropriate, and consistent with the original text and the tone of the document.
The future of AI is bright, but it’s unlikely that machine learning and MT will replace human translation completely in the near future. Humans will continue to be essential for areas that require a deeper understanding of the underlying content than just simple word-for-word translations, including legal documents and marketing materials. Having the right team of linguists can make all the difference when it comes to getting these documents right.