Linklaters says MatterExplorer, an AI powered search and knowledge management system, reduces search time for the firm’s 750,000 legal documents from hours to seconds. MatterExplorer has already run more than 185,000 searches, and the firms says if each of those searches saves even just five minutes of time, more than 15,416 hours have been saved across the firm in the last six months.

Exploiting knowledge

Linklaters developed the knowledge management system to enable simple and secure access to all matter and deal data and related documentation across all practices and offices. iManage RAVN consultants worked closely with the firm on the design and implementation. The new system uses AI to identify which documents are most relevant to search criteria and classify documents by type, including legal opinions and share purchase agreements, making it more efficient for Linklaters’ lawyers to find precedent documents. They can find information about past matters from a variety of perspectives (including sector, jurisdiction, area of law), access the full-text documents, and explore their connections to data in multiple sources (including, for example, matter details, financials, people data, client data, and time recording). This capability has resulted in a 400 percent increase in search utilisation compared to the system that MatterExplorer replaced. Sophie Mathur, partner and co-head of the innovation steering group at Linklaters, said “It's all about getting our arms around the knowledge that we possess, which, next to our people, is the greatest asset that we have. Our aim is to access our expertise and deliver it to our clients with greater efficiency in an era when the world is demanding a much more empirical approach to data. The individual experience of one lawyer is no longer enough. Matter Explorer allows us to be rigorous in the way in which we exploit what we know.”

"Textbook example"

Linklaters is continuing to work with iManage to further expand its use of iManage RAVN tools within MatterExplorer, focussing on automatically reading and extracting business critical information from documents and unstructured data to create content for marketing and business development, further enhancing new client engagements. Rachel Manser, head of knowledge & learning at Linklaters, said “MatterExplorer supports our strategy to invest in our clients and empower our teams by integrating knowhow and marketing information with financial information, so our lawyers can find, store, explore, and report on high-quality data, all at the click of a button.” Nick Thomson, general manager at iManage RAVN, said “Linklaters’ use of iManage RAVN is a textbook example of how firms can harness the power of AI to solve specific business problems.”