Within the season of seemingly unending consumer conferences, the NetDocuments Inspire convention came about this week in Scottsdale, Arizona. NetDocuments is without doubt one of the main doc administration service suppliers and is discovering its method within the AI panorama. I got here to its convention frankly questioning whether or not its laser product focus and credibility might maintain it long run within the period of consolidation of features and choices. I nonetheless don’t know the reply.
The Opening Keynote
The opening keynote was primarily given by Josh Baxter, NetDocuments CEO, together with Dan Hauck, its Chief Product Officer.
Within the period of bombastic, over-the-top keynotes by C-suite authorized tech bros leaping concerning the stage, Baxter’s strategy was refreshing. He was understated and spoke in a peaceful, credible voice. As Baxter put it after I met with him individually, “We’re not a rock band.”
Baxter displays the corporate nicely. NetDocuments has all the time quietly delivered a workman-like doc administration system. It doesn’t overpromise, and it often overdelivers. I feel that’s why it’s utilized by so many regulation corporations. Its staff can stroll right into a room of skeptical legal professionals and let the merchandise promote themselves. Too typically, authorized tech distributors overlook that on the finish of the day, they’re promoting to legal professionals who’re educated to be skeptical and might spot bullshit a mile away.
An Apology
Baxter’s opening remarks mirrored this strategy and the corporate’s angle. He didn’t begin by touting NetDocuments successes; he began by taking duty for an outage final week that affected NetDocuments prospects. It’s a must to perceive how that performed. Baxter was speaking to a room stuffed with largely IT folks. He understood that when techniques from exterior distributors fail, offended legal professionals who know little about technical points flood IT personnel with calls for to get it up and operating instantly. Who will get the blame and takes the beating? The IT people. I talked to a few of them afterwards concerning the outage who confirmed that was precisely the way it performed out.
Baxter put that occasion up entrance and didn’t sugarcoat it.
The Announcement of AI Profile
The product announcement portion of the keynote primarily centered on a brand new software referred to as AI Profile. AI Profile is designed to run within the background (it’s no coincidence that a lot of NetDocuments instruments run within the background doing nuts-and-bolts work day after day that the consumer not often notices). It’s designed to make use of metadata to mechanically profile the crucial details about a doc, in order that customers can drill down and get the data they want. This permits customers to exactly seek for and discover explicit paperwork on explicit points.
Ahh metadata, I haven’t heard that time period a lot these days. The issue with metadata has all the time been that inputting good metadata into any system takes time. Legal professionals and authorized professionals aren’t and gained’t spend the time to enter crucial metadata about paperwork.
When they’re carried out working with a doc, they’re carried out. And it shouldn’t be shocking that that is the case: most NetDocuments prospects invoice by the hour. Inputting metadata isn’t billable.
The second downside? Legal professionals by nature are unbiased. Which suggests 10 legal professionals can produce the identical doc and name it 10 various things. And they’re all satisfied they’re proper.
And as one of many placards exterior the session rooms put it, “Legal professionals didn’t go to regulation faculty to fill out metadata fields.”
However it’s metadata that reveal the heart of a doc: its sort, its distinctive traits, and what it does. So, it’s useful and NetDocuments appears to have discovered a approach to automate its assortment.
How Does It Work and What Does It Do?
NetDocuments has created a prebuilt taxonomy and doc attributes to profile numerous paperwork primarily based on working with specialists in authorized taxonomy and knowledge extraction. (The taxonomy may also be personalized to fulfill explicit agency wants.) AI Profile will have a look at a doc and fill within the details about it primarily based on the prebuilt profile. This may be carried out rapidly throughout hundreds of thousands of paperwork.
Hauck gave an instance of the preparation of a cellphone tower lease settlement in Arizona. With profiling, I can entry all of the leases for cellphone towers in Arizona the agency has carried out after which entry the important thing distinctive clauses.
And by having AI instruments run on profiled paperwork, you cut back response inaccuracies.
In brief, based on Hauck, “metadata dramatically improves the search capabilities of AI. We’re doing issues with semantic search and AI search to have the ability to carve out outcomes which might be profoundly impactful.” It overlays “foundational GenAI capabilities into NetDocuments.”
However Isn’t This Previous College?
However Hauck posed the query that was operating via my thoughts, particularly after attending some current consumer conferences: “Isn’t this old skool? Aren’t there superb instruments that already can deal with unstructured knowledge?”
Hauck says, no, there aren’t numerous instruments that may try this, a minimum of rapidly. With AI Profile, “You possibly can formulate a generic search after which use complicated metadata to search for one thing particular like a sure type of settlement of a sure deal worth.” You are able to do issues like figuring out what number of instances a lawyer has carried out a sure process, which is efficacious for issues like RFPs and bringing the best experience to the desk. With out profiling, Hauck says AI instruments can’t try this precisely and rapidly.
Utilizing the filtered metadata can also be essential for safety: it might allow customers to seek out and make sure the safety of paperwork containing, say, personally identifiable data or private well being data and place these paperwork in safe folders.
NetDocuments’ Future
I don’t know if AI Profile will do what Baxter and Hauck say it’ll. I don’t know if different corporations that provide AI instruments that work on inner and exterior knowledge can intrude on the doc administration area and take over that perform. I don’t know if sometime NetDocuments will probably be acquired by an organization that provides AI instruments for exterior knowledge to meet up with competitors. Or if NetDocuments would possibly change into the acquirer.
However what I can let you know is that tech corporations which might be laser centered on one factor usually do it nicely due to that focus. NetDocuments isn’t attempting to take over the authorized tech world. As Baxter put it, “We’re not going to ship each functionality from the enterprise of regulation to the apply of regulation.”
What it’s doing is attempting to unravel frustration factors in doc retention and administration. It’s attempting to assist legal professionals and authorized professionals use their paperwork and inner content material in new and useful methods. Hauck instructed me NetDocuments desires “to present them the flexibility to entry content material on the proper second in the best method. With AI capabilities which might be constructed into the expertise,” as a substitute of being the expertise like others appear to wish to do. Baxter added, “We imagine there’s nonetheless this world the place assembly customers the place they’re is efficacious.”
So, I can’t reply whether or not NetDocuments can stay a participant by providing a doc administration product, as complete as it’s, particularly once we could also be approaching the period of tech Walmarts. However its credibility and historical past of providing good merchandise makes it a valued and trusted companion to many regulation corporations.
And that reality alone could maintain it in the meanwhile, at the same time as different distributors promise merchandise that may do extra throughout numerous disciplines.
Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and author. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a weblog dedicated to the examination of the stress between expertise, the regulation, and the apply of regulation.
