When it was founded in 2000, Kira pioneered the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for contract review and analysis. Now Kira, which was acquired in 2021 by Litera, is employing the newest wave of generative AI to help legal professionals accelerate the process of due diligence and other forms of contract reviews.
Litera today is announcing the imminent launch of Smart Summaries, a new feature within Kira that uses generative AI to help legal teams synthesize the content that Kira uncovers in contracts and other documents, producing summaries they can then use in delivering recommendations and strategic advice to their clients.
“What’s really exciting about it is that it’s building on the power that already exists in Kira,” Meredith Johnson, Litera’s chief product officer, told me during a briefing on Friday.
Click the Generate button to create the summary.
Kira’s machine learning model already has over 1,400 so-called smart fields addressing more than 40 substantive areas. Based on these smart fields, Kira’s technology identifies and extracts common clauses and data points from contracts and other documents.
This new Smart Summaries capability uses generative AI to synthesize and create summaries of Kira’s smart fields, to help lawyers more quickly complete their analysis of a due diligence review.
The summary appears in the worksheet tab.
“We’re leaning into that smart fields functionality that already exists in Kira and then layering on top of it a generative AI workflow that allows for users to click that generate button and make those automatic summaries,” Johnson said.
The Smart Summaries capability has been developed using the Microsoft Azure OpenAI service.
Litera is targeting the last week of August for the release of Smart Summaries and will be demonstrating the feature next week at ILTACON.
First Of Several AI Products
Johnson said this is just the first of a series of new generative AI capabilities Litera will bring to market over the coming months, as part of the company’s amplified focus on and investment in generative AI technology.
Each month for the rest of this year and into next year, she said, Litera will be releasing more capabilities and enhancements, in Kira and in other Litera products, including its drafting suite and its Foundation law firm intelligence product.
Litera has formed an internal generative AI incubator with the mission of helping the company bring quality, tested, sustainable generative AI features and products to market over the coming months. The incubator is led by Greg Coates, vice president, generative AI, at Litera; Brett Balmer, cofounder of Foundation, which Litera acquired in 2021; and Haley Altman, former global head of corporate development at Litera and, before that, founder of Doxly, which Litera acquired in 2019.
“We’ve focused on two critical areas,” Johnson said of the incubator. “One, making sure that we have the best talent to shape the tools and the product roadmaps that we want to bring to our customers. And then, of course, working really closely with leading firms all over the globe to make sure that we’re designing purposeful and meaningful solutions that avoid the hype that might be out there in the market.”
For those attending ILTACON next week, Litera CEO Sheryl Hoskins will present a session on Aug. 22 at 3:30 p.m. where she will discuss Litera’s AI strategy in more detail.
