The IT Pro Podcast: The rise of automated contracts

Automation has been widely adopted across the sector, and firms have repeatedly applied it to laborious tasks such as document handling. Using machine learning and AI, a great number of documents can be processed, and decisions made without the need for painstaking human input.

But automation in the legal space requires careful thought, as contracts can be very complex and often require a human touch — here, a hybrid approach is needed.

This week, we spoke to Rich Somerfield, CTO at Summize, to explore the opportunity of automated workflows, and the demands of the legal sector when it comes to implementing tech of this kind.

Highlights

“I think what we've seen over the last 10 years or so, is people actually transitioning from other careers and sectors. And I think what we've found is that diversity is actually incredibly useful, incredibly beneficial people perhaps being in the services sector, for example, and bringing that to the IT team. I think, yeah, that that kind of diversity has been incredible, really, overall.”

“So typically, and this always raises a bit of a laugh with any lawyers I talk to, but they'll typically get an email on a Friday at 5.30 with a Word document attached from somebody in the business that just says "FYI". What does that mean? When do you need? What do you need me to do?”

“It's really that implementation phase where you have those business transformations, obviously, but it's the implementation phase where the business transformation really stalls. And so that's one of the real areas of focus for us, that we want to identify, like I say, the first milestone where you started to get successful, and then how it helped you through those.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• Gartner: RPA software market will continue to grow as business demand increases
• What is Robotic Process Automation?
• What is machine learning and why is it important?
• How AI can help – and hinder – the supply chain crisis
• AI is now powerful enough to automate the back office
• How can CIOs help to close the tech skills gap?

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