An article in Artificial Lawyer reports that a challenge that pitted 20 highly qualified lawyers against a LawGeex artificial intelligence algorithm to identify risks in non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) resulted in a 94% accuracy rate for the AI vs. 86% for the humans.

The article explains that “The study asked each lawyer to annotate five [never seen before] NDAs according to a set of Clause Definitions. Each lawyer was given four hours to find the relevant issues in all five NDAs.”

These findings are astounding – only the most accurate lawyer matched the machine. Furthermore, the machine reviewed the five NDAs in 26 seconds, compared to an average of 92 minutes for the lawyers.

If the machine wins against highly qualified and experienced lawyers who were concentrating and not rushed, what would the results be with typical lawyers with dozens of other matters on their desks and minds?

The article quotes Dr. Gillian Hadfield, Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Southern California and one of the advisors on the study, as saying, ‘This research shows technology can help solve two problems: both making contract management faster and more reliable, and freeing up resources so legal departments can focus on building the quality of their human legal teams.”

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