People often mistake Artificial Intelligence (AI) for how Hollywood portrays it in movies. While AI is becoming more commonplace throughout businesses, AI is still highly misunderstood by professionals in the legal field ”“ one of the industries slated to benefit the most from AI, particularly as it relates to contract data management.

It’s time to set the record straight: AI is here to help, not hinder. What an AI contract management system is designed to do is revolutionize the costly and labor-intensive way that lawyers are currently approaching document management, freeing them up to complete much more creative, interesting, and indeed important project management tasks.

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Fast Processes for Legal Professionals

Contract review software, for instance can scan a 50-page contract in about 10 seconds, pulling out the relevant information the lawyer requires. That task when done manually by a lawyer can realistically take hours and costs a lot of money. Hours taken away from productive, meaningful work, and money spent unnecessarily.

Interesting Engineering suggests, for many applications of AI contract analysis, the human-centered approach supports the concept of human-AI collaboration instead of AI competing against a human.

Bottom line is, deep learning reduces costs without sacrificing performance and accuracy when it comes to adopting a contract management solution for your organization type, in this case, a law firm.

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Adding Value for the Client

Contract review AI can research and automate processes at a pace far quicker than the average attorney, translating into major time and money reductions for firms, to be sure. But it also brings true value to the more repetitive tasks so that lawyers spend less time slogging through endless files and more time using interpersonal skills. Instead, they can rely on computer programs to read and scan documents, interpret contract terms in real-time, and identify the case-relevant results, in just a couple of minutes.

Legal work becomes more interesting as computers handle the grunt work so lawyers can concentrate on analysis, which adds more value to the client. Lawyers can then concentrate on client interactions, legal analysis, and strategizing. AI contract management systems also vastly reduces the chance for human error.

The truth is, law remains a human business””gray areas exist; legal issues require interpretation; legal solutions are not always straightforward; and the human touch is pertinent with clients. A machine cannot interpret feelings. A machine cannot pick up on nuances or facial expressions and will not respond in an understanding way while appropriately reacting to a human encounter.

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Emotional Intelligence

One thing that separates humans from robots is emotional intelligence.

Our nimbleness to react instantly in creative and on-the-fly ways, especially when it comes to management of contracts, is unmatched by any computer. An AI contract management system makes lawyers more effective and more efficient, giving them back the time they need to do more creative and analytical work. We still have a long way to go before robots can match those fundamental human skills and can understand emotional intelligence. In short, artificial intelligence won’t replace humans; it will make us superhuman.

However, AI frees up employees from having to handle administrative and repetitive tasks, so they can better focus on higher-value legal work instead of contract negotiations. AI can also advise users during contract authoring on choosing the most appropriate terms. An organization has completed thousands of contracts over many years; contract management systems should be able to run through all the past and active contracts, and then suggest to the user the best terms to reduce and negotiate business risks as part of the contractual relationship.

Also, enterprise contracts contain a long history and hidden patterns within the clauses over several versions of contract administration. The AI system is able to understand clauses, compare them with your own clause library, and recommend specific clauses and verbiage to the user. Parameters in contract management software can be based on anything from geography and type of vendor to value of the contract and different job roles. The opportunities are endless.

This type of cognitive assistance from an efficient AI tool can help your organization achieve the best outcome with a faster supply chain cycle.

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Contact Evisort

As a contract manager with technical skills, it’s important to educate yourself and your legal teams, and ensure your contract processes are ready to embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning. We can help. Get in touch today for a free demo on our contract review software systems to see how we can assist with your business needs.

Evisort streamlines legal workflow using advanced AI to classify contracts, extract data, and track key provisions within documents. Contact us for a best practices demo today!