Mergers and Acquisitions, Technology

Why the iManage Acquisition Of AI Company RAVN Is Something To Crow About

The marriage of document management and artificial intelligence could well change how we think about both technologies.

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Let’s face it: document management systems are not very smart. Sure, DMS systems have made major strides in recent years in search, sharing, and ease of use. But when it comes right down to it, a DMS system is primarily a static repository where law firms store their documents and emails.

But what if you could sprinkle some intelligence into your DMS system? What if it could understand your documents and more intuitively organize them? What if it could extract and analyze key portions of documents and relate them to particular practice groups or use cases?

When I first learned that DMS company iManage had acquired U.K.-based artificial intelligence company RAVN Systems, it was for me an “Aha!” moment. How perfect, I thought. The marriage of document management and artificial intelligence could well change how we think about both technologies, turning DMS systems from static repositories to active law-practice tools and driving mainstream acceptance and appreciation of AI in legal.

Last week, I had the opportunity to discuss the acquisition with Sandeep Joshi, iManage’s vice president, business and corporate development. I asked him what he thinks the integration of AI technology will mean for document management.

“There is the ability now to move this technology from the back room to the front and center of what lawyers do on a day-to-day basis,” Joshi said. “The leap in productivity we’ll see because of this will look like a hockey stick curve.”

I also asked Joshi if he thought the integration of RAVN’s technology into a mainstream application such as iManage – which counts 3,000 law firms and corporate legal departments as customers – would drive broader adoption of AI in the legal industry.

It will, he said, but only if the technology is used to address real business problems the legal industry is facing, such as the pressure on both legal departments and their clients to reduce costs. “We have to talk in terms of actual business problems and use cases that this technology can solve.”

Sponsored

By way of example, Joshi cites the case earlier this year in which a team of seven investigators in the U.K. government’s Serious Fraud Office, using RAVN’s technology, was able to sift through 30 million documents at a rate of 600,000 a day to uncover large-scale bribery and corruption involving Rolls-Royce.

iManage has identified four capabilities RAVN’s integration will provide for its customers:

  • Auto-classify documents so they may be used or protected based on their content.
  • Extract key information from content, including dates, obligations, amounts, and more.
  • Identify documents that are subject to compliance requirements.
  • Find terms and clauses within content for more effective information reuse and enhanced knowledge management.

“What AI brings to the table is the ability to light up all this content, to make our customers more content-aware,” Joshi said.

Surprisingly, the timetable for implementing this integration is short, and the first stages will be completed and announced within a matter of weeks. This is because iManage and RAVN had already been working together and some integration had already been implemented.

Sponsored

Coincidentally, the two companies share a common past. Before founding RAVN in 2010, its top executives all worked at the former Autonomy, which at the time also owned iManage. In 2011, HP acquired Autonomy and, with it, iManage. But after the Autonomy acquisition turned into a fiasco for HP, iManage’s leadership was able to buy out the business in 2015 and restore its original cofounders to the helm.

When iManage separated from HP, it had 155 employees. Through growth and the acquisition of RAVN’s 50 employees, iManage is now at 375 people.

“We view this as the start of an incredible journey,” Joshi said. “In the coming months and years, we have the ability to really move the pace of productivity gains.”

Seems that every conversation about AI in law moves invariably to the question of robots replacing lawyers. Joshi said lawyers should view AI not as a competitor, but as a competitive advantage.

“The interesting thing here is the ability to automate the boring stuff,” he said. “Lawyers go to law school to help their clients by providing legal advice. What this tech does is automate the routine, boring stuff. This will actually speed up the work of lawyers. Many of our large law firm customers view this as a competitive advantage.”

This is one of those stories that has implications beyond these two companies and their customers. Document management is a technology that many lawyers know and understand. AI is still technology that many lawyers fear and don’t understand. By merging the two technologies, lawyers will see the power of AI to – as Joshi said – “light up” all that content. That will be a major step forward in making artificial intelligence a no-brainer.

Robert Ambrogi Bob AmbrogiRobert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

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