LawGeex is a Tel Aviv-based startup founded in 2014 that creates software that uses artificial intelligence to study contracts, flagging any language or stipulations that seem out of the ordinary.
After training the AI with attorneys, the software was able to distinguish between information that's not just uncommon from a quantitative perspective, but from a qualitative perspective as well.
The legal platform has released its software early in 2017, but then decided to test the AI to show the public its capabilities.
In consultation with law professors from Stanford University, Duke University School of Law, and University of Southern California, the test pitted twenty experienced lawyers against LawGeex's AI to evaluate legal contracts.
Both sides were given five non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and had four hours to review and identify 30 legal issues: including arbitration, confidentiality of relationship, and indemnification.
The competition scored each side by how accurate they can identify each issue. And here, the law-trained AI won by margins.
On average, the human lawyers achieved an 85 percent accuracy rate, while the AI achieved 95 percent accuracy. What's more, in one of the contracts, the AI also achieved 100 percent accuracy, while the highest-scoring human lawyer scored 97 percent.
While the humans required about 92 minutes on average to complete the task, the AI did it in just 26 seconds.
So in addition to being more accurate, the AI was about 200 times faster than its human counterparts.
According to intellectual property attorney Grant Gulovsen, who was one of the lawyers competed against the AI in the study, said that the task was very similar to what many lawyers do every day.
Here, the AI advances won't be made (or capable) to fully replace human lawyers. But can certainly speed things up by highlighting the most important sections of a story. This achievement for AI can help lawyers to expedite their work, and free them up to focus on tasks that still require a human brain.
Erika Buell, a professor at Duke University School of Law, who LawGeex consulted for the study, said:
"I strongly believe that law students and junior lawyers need to understand these AI tools, and other technologies, that will help make them better lawyers and shape future legal practice."
"I would expect that the general public, to the extent they want their lawyers to work efficiently on their legal matters, will be excited about this new tool."
Lawgeex co-founder and CEO Noory Bechor, has spent six years as an attorney at Israel's law firm before deciding to pursue his own venture. "I had a growing frustration with how inefficient the legal world is," he said. "It's very repetitive and mundane, and there was no real technology that helps lawyers do their jobs better and more efficiently."