South Africa’s leading law firm leads the way to AI technology

Webber Wentzel, not just law but innovation tool

With Artificial Intelligence on the rise and showing no signs of declining anytime soon, companies want a piece of it! Webber Wentzel, one of the leading South African law firms has come to the party by adopting Luminance’s artificial intelligence to increase how their M&A transactions perform.

Image result for artificial intelligence 480x320px [Photo by The Daily Campus]

Weber Wentzel is the firm that has just recently won M&A Africa and BEE Legal Advisor of the Year 2017 by deal value at the 17^th Annual Dealbreakers Awards. Believing they can do better and that the sky, which is how high up they are, is not the limit, they chose to “deploy Luminance for its ability to effortlessly aid the work of its legal teams”. The firm found some favorable qualities in Luminance’s built-in collaboration tools which allow one to group documents, assign documents and track live progress among other things.

The AI platform is in partnership with the University of Cambridge, they use advanced machine learning programs from the university to “automatically sort, cluster and classify a data room”. Luminance, which began operating towards the end of 2016 has 70 clients across 18 countries. On the other hand, Webber Wentzel has been operating for 150 years and in making such an investment shows how the company is progressing with the times.

Image result for artificial intelligence 480x320px [Institution Machine]

Celia Pienaar who is the Legal Project Manager at Webber Wentzel said the company has always looked for ways in which to improve the quality of their work by using innovative technology. She also said that this was their next step in increasing their ability to handle “the management and review of increasingly large volumes of documents” by using machine learning technology.

The CEO of Luminance Emily Foges spoke not only kindly of the law firm but with great respect, as they are the first firm to use this technology in South Africa. She highlighted the importance of innovation in the legal sector and the joy they have at Luminance to be assisting the law firm with many of South Africa’s “largest and most complex transactions”. Artificial Intelligence is no longer something for fun and games, it’s in the corporate world. (WORD COUNT 351)

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