How lawyers embraced the robots

"Does this count as an'act of God'?" That's the question legal teams everywhere were asking when Covid hit the US last March. Clients wanted to search out force majeure clauses in thousands of real estate agreements and other contracts, wondering if a pandemic could render them null and void. Not only were there more docs to review than usual, but also lawyers had to find quick answers to critical, unprecedented issues...all while working from home. The 100-person team at Luminance, a UK-based AI-for-legal startup, felt like they were at the center of it all. Founded by University of Cambridge mathematicians in 2015, the company specializes in automated legal doc review and analysis.