Race is on to provide first 'virtual assistants' for lawyers

The legal sector's recent infatuation with artificial intelligence (AI) continues to gather pace following Riverview Law's announcement that it has acquired a New Jersey-based knowledge automation business to develop the use of AI in the legal market.

The fixed-price commercial law brand sees the deal with CliXLEX as a major step towards the creation of 'virtual assistants' that will improve the quality and speed of lawyers' and paralegals' work while freeing them to focus on 'key tactical and strategic matters'.

Karl Chapman, chief executive of Riverview Law, said: 'The race is on to provide virtual assistants to knowledge workers, powerful tools that help people and organisations make quicker and better decisions and allow knowledge workers to focus on the key tactical and strategic matters. The legal market is not immune from this trend which will impact all sectors of the economy.'

The deal follows on from Riverview's recent partnership with the University of Liverpool to leverage the institution's AI expertise. Chapman said his business expects to make further investments in this area in the future.

CliXLEX owns and licenses a knowledge automation platform that enables lawyers with basic Microsoft Office skills to create, automate, maintain, and evolve complex end-to-end workflows and processes for all areas of legal, compliance, risk, and other related activity.

The platform manages all activity from instruction, triage, case management, document creation, and storage to alert triggers, workflow creation, and forensic audit. The CliXLEX technology combines advanced data collection and management, configuration, and machine-to-machine learning techniques with a growing level of AI.

Riverview Law has worked with CliXLEX for over a year to test the platform, which it says has proved highly successful and shows great potential to deliver significant operational, quality, and cost benefits for lawyers.

'We intend to lead the legal market in providing tools that enable legal and related work to be completed quicker, better, and more cost-effectively, whether conducted by lawyers, paralegals, contract managers, risk and compliance officers, or business people,' added Chapman.

In the UK, Riverview was advised on the deal, which was completed for an undisclosed sum, by the Birmingham office of Gateley plc, and in the US it was advised by the New York office of Gibbons.