Global Legal Sector 10X NetDocuments GenAI Demand

NetDocuments, announces that they have received record demand and adoption for its PatternBuilder MAX AI and automation capabilities, making its generative AI solution the most successful product launch by a factor of 10. From initial launch in October to early March, NetDocuments’ PatternBuilder MAX is now serving approximately 13,000 users in law firms, corporate legal departments, and government legal in the US, Canada, EMEA, and APAC regions.

From some of the world’s largest firms to 15-user and under firms, legal organisations are implementing their GenAI strategy responsibly and natively within the NetDocuments platform to ensure flexibility and control, all underscored by state-of-the-art security and compliance. To assure customers can “AI responsibly”, NetDocuments worked closely with Microsoft Azure OpenAI at the outset to receive exemptions to its abuse monitoring policy.

Customers are leveraging PatternBuilder MAX to tackle common problems like document summarisation, drafting, extraction, matter timeline creation, and running contract playbooks. This is now immediately possible without sacrificing the ability to easily modify, quickly build, test, iterate, and roll out their own novel apps to meet the firm's or department's unique needs.

In January, as part of the 2024 Legalweek Leaders in Tech Awards, NetDocuments was recognised with Best Use of Artificial Intelligence – Contract, Document & Project Management.

“The overall sentiment from NetDocuments customers has and continues to be extremely positive as it relates to our overall approach to AI. They are pleased with the thoughtfulness and relevancy of how AI has been applied within the platform, our roadmap strategy, and how we are delivering innovation in a way that’s enabling them to deliver even better work product and business outcomes on behalf of their own customers and clients,” shared Dan Hauck, NetDocuments’ Chief Product Officer.

User adoption is a critical measure of initial success with new innovations and a noticeable differentiation with PatternBuilder MAX. NetDocuments has seen customers build over 500 PatternBuilder MAX apps and leverage the generative AI solution for over 18,000 prompts. In one specific instance, a law firm user built a custom PatternBuilder MAX app, and by the fifth week, ran the app over 60 times. The app itself contained 10+ prompts chained together, meaning in just one week, the firm ran over 600 prompts. The result was over 30,000 pages of text that was “read” or drafted by generative AI – in a single week.

According to Kelley Drye & Warren CIO Judi Flournoy, the firm’s Client Service & Innovation Committee's AI Task Force reviewed various GenAI products and services. “Ultimately, we found PatternBuilder Max's capabilities highly suitable for multiple projects after attending several demonstrations.”

Leading UK law firm, Lewis Silkin, wanted to streamline the response process for intellectual property infringement investigations by developing an application that automates the creation of cease-and-desist letters. Lewis Silkin’s lawyers had traditionally spent around three hours analysing each lengthy investigation report, extracting details, and drafting tailored responses. Recognising the challenge posed by the complexity of large reports, Lewis Silkin collaborated with NetDocuments and PatternBuilder MAX to develop an application that divided them into manageable parts for processing by OpenAI. “This enabled our firm to ingest and extract information from long reports into the application. This is saving considerable effort and time, which we will be able to pass on to our clients,” shared Chief Technology Officer Alex Bazin and a primary AI champion at the firm.

“There is no need to wait for practical and useable generative AI tools … NetDocuments PatternBuilder MAX is already here and proving productive from day one,” shared Matthias Birkholz, Partner, Co-Founder of German firm lindenpartners. “I have been able to greatly streamline and automate document drafting with the PatternBuilder MAX app, quickly customised and refined to meet my needs. Smart AI tools like PatternBuilder MAX enable attorneys, even with limited technology know-how, to address common typically time-consuming workflows and make an immediate impact on client work,” added Birkholz.

According to Richard Allen, Managing Director, and Head of Conveyancing for English firm Lockings Solicitors, PatternBuilder MAX is the ideal generative AI tool for AI workflows. “Our relationship with NetDocuments is still relatively new, but we have already witnessed their dedication to the ongoing development of IT solutions that have a genuine application within our business. NetDocuments’ ndMAX solution enables us to effectively develop our own workflows leveraging the benefits of AI in a secure, reliable, and flexible environment.”

For Charly Duffy, Partner, Coghlan Duffy, a specialist corporate and commercial law firm based in Melbourne, Australia, PatternBuilder MAX has unlocked a world of potential opportunities with both client-facing and internal productivity tools in development. “We’re really excited about what we can do with PatternBuilder MAX’s ability to create apps that can analyse any sort of draft document and provide comments based on our firm’s playbook. This should allow us to scale our unique expertise and access new clients with a brand-new product.”

PatternBuilder’s functionality has also allowed the firm to automate many workstreams with their processes, which decreases staff costs and increases quality assurance. Ms Duffy added: “Our team has also enjoyed thinking like business owners by identifying opportunities and creating efficiencies by developing their own PatternBuilder apps. We expect PatternBuilder will be core to our firm’s strategies to create new revenue streams, enhance our client experience and increase our team’s productivity.”