Pinsent Masons rolls out AI for Brexit challenge

The firm has developed a three-step tool to help clients identify risk in existing portfolios, address Brexit risk in future contracts, and surface any business-critical supply chain risk.

The end-to-end contracting solution brings together the firm’s SmartDelivery and Cerico platforms, and introduces components of Artificial Intelligence that the firm has developed in-house through its internal technology R&D team.

The AI component streamlines significant elements of otherwise daunting large-scale contract review exercises, and enables clients to work with Pinsent Masons to develop their own risk priorities, tailored to their business, their sector and their existing contract portfolio. Pinsent Masons uses its own AI platform, TermFrame, to extract, review and analyse key contract risks, and provide actionable risk reports. This AI technology has been developed over a number of years and successfully deployed by Pinsent Masons over the summer in the context of a number of multi-billion dollar transactions.

For ongoing contracts, the SmartDelivery platform enables businesses to use the firm's technology to create and embed business rules to manage Brexit risk through contracts. The SmartDelivery platform already underpins many of the firm’s most comprehensive client relationships including those with Balfour Beatty and E.ON.

Finally, through the use of the supplier due diligence solution created by Cerico, the firm’s compliance business, clients have the option of quickly and rapidly surveying their suppliers through the cloud to assess any material risk caused by supply chain.

David Halliwell, Director of Knowledge and Innovation Delivery at Pinsent Masons, says:

“A number of law firms are partnering with third party organisations to consider how to take off the shelf AI technology and apply it to legal challenges faced by law firms. We have taken a different approach, beginning with the challenges clients need to address and developing an AI solution to suit through our own R&D team. The technology has been successfully applied across a number of transactions and becomes all the more compelling when integrated with the firm’s wider suite of technology platforms.”

Clare Francis, a Partner in the Commercial team at Pinsent Masons who has led on the development of the Brexit Contracting Solution product, says:

“In the uncertain world of Brexit, our clients have asked us how best to manage the risk posed by that continuing uncertainty through their contracts and we wanted to develop a truly comprehensive response. By leveraging the firm’s various technologies we can build certainty, efficiency and consistency into an overall solution. That enables clients to guard against risks but also consider what competitive advantage can be gained through astute contracting. The result is an altogether better outcome for the client.”

The announcement comes following the launch of BASe by Pinsent Masons, a crowd funded Brexit advisory service which provides subscribers with responses to Brexit-related legal queries within 48 hours. Clients including Royal London and Lend Lease are among those to have already signed up to the service.

It also comes in the wake of the launch of Pinsent Masons’ UK-wide Public Policy unit following increased client interest in engaging with government in respect of Brexit.