Business of law: case studies

Standout

WINNER: Clifford Chance
Originality: 8; Leadership: 9; Impact: 8; Total: 25
The firm partnered with tech company Microsoft to create a generative artificial intelligence bot, launched in late October, that tracks and summarises press releases published by Hong Kong regulators.

Lawyers in the region took the lead on ensuring the tool had appropriate understanding of legal jargon and included a summarisation and context extraction function that will save the firm an estimated 480 hours of associate and trainee time per year. Output can be turned into interactive graphs and trends, which the lawyers use to advise clients.

Yulchon
O: 8; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 23
The South Korean firm created a service to help clients better comply with the country’s Serious Accidents Punishment Act (SAPA), introduced in 2022, which puts greater responsibility on businesses to ensure safety in their operations and facilities.

The service involves a free self-diagnosis tool that shows clients where they are most at risk of violating SAPA. The firm also uses automation to track news reports of SAPA-related incidents and has created a training programme with videos offering insights into the law. The programme uses an AI-powered search engine to help clients find specific information.

Highly commended

Clayton Utz
O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22
The Sydney-based firm launched an AI-generated compliance portal, Obligations Navigator, in December 2023. In a client assessment, the portal analysed 100 examples of case law and produced a hyperlinked list of 42,000 obligations, described in plain English and checked by human lawyers. Summarising compliance requirements can be labour-intensive, so the portal saves time and resources and gives the client a clear and comprehensive compliance process — helping them understand which obligations they must comply with, and how.

Commended

Lander & Rogers
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
The Australian firm developed an AI tool to extract relevant information from files submitted alongside compensation claims. The innovation and compensation law teams partnered with the firm’s legal tech incubator, Halisok, to digitise the manually-intensive sorting process in mass litigation and class action suits.

Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu
O: 5; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 21
Led by managing partner Soichiro Fujiwara, the firm’s technology start-up MNTSQ designed an AI-powered search engine that allows lawyers to search an internal contract database for relevant Japanese clauses and provisions, after the firm found public search engines such as Google were insufficient.

Rajah & Tann Singapore
O: 7; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 20
In June 2023, Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority implemented new requirements for anti-money laundering checks in residential property purchases. The Singaporean law firm launched an AI tool that automates these due diligence checks of potential buyers, which is now used by 30 property developers in the country.

MinterEllison
O: 5; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 19
The firm developed a contract review tool to help mining group Anglo American manage its supply chain and contracts. The firm approached the miner — a long-term client — after it struggled with the management of contracts. Lawyers used the company’s data to build the tool from scratch in 2023.
Commended individual: Benjamin Fox