Norway's top tech law firm reveals how AI boosts their business

*Part of Simonsen Vogt Wiig’s TMT-team. PHOTO: Simonsen Vogt Wiig.*

Simonsen Vogt Wiig, one of Norway’s top tech law firms, boosts its business by using AI tools to automate and optimize various legal processes, such as document analysis, contract drafting, due diligence, and risk assessment. By using AI, Simonsen Vogt Wiig can deliver faster, more accurate and cost-effective solutions to its clients.

Simonsen Vogt Wiig is a law firm in Norway with a team of 185 lawyers, specializing in business law and have a strong focus on technology.

Their foremost position in the technology, media and telecom (TMT) sector is validated by prestigious rankings, including a Band 1 rating by Chambers and Partners and Tier 1 in Legal 500 within TMT.

Simonsen Vogt Wiig aims to be the go-to firm for tech suppliers, buyers, and investors, offering services beyond tech law, also including mergers and acquisitions, financing, labor law, and more.

How do you use AI in the company?

We’re now witnessing significant benefits in terms of efficiency and quality by using Large Language Models. These are some of the use-cases:

Text Enhancement: Instead of relying on AI for initial drafts, we craft comprehensive documents and then employ AI to refine and elevate the language, ensuring precision and clarity that align with our high standards.

Concise Text Generation: With carefully crafted prompts, AI assists us in creating succinct text elements, such as individual contract clauses, streamlining our workflow and enhancing our competitive edge.

Text Interpretation: Legal text interpretation is a domain where creativity is key. Surprisingly, AI has demonstrated a valuable capacity to present multiple interpretations, offering a fresh perspective on legal analysis.

Document Translation: We began with simple chat interactions. Now, we’ve progressed to uploading entire documents for translation, preserving original formatting. We still meticulously review each translation for accuracy.

We also use other digital tools, for instance:

tools for process risk analyses to better present and show the anticipated outcome of legal disputes (Eperoto).
recently we started with a tool that provides timeline functionally that is automatically created when providing several documents (Juristic).
create legal structures based on information from company registries (Juristic).
Furthermore, we are sometimes using the AI tool Luminance for Discovery cases to search for pertinent information in large collections of documents.

We are piloting private ChatGPT installation, hosted on Microsoft Azure and localized in the UK. This GDPR-compliant installation allows us to interact with AI without the need to anonymize data, ensuring client confidentiality while exploring the capabilities of ChatGPT and other technologies.

What goals does the company have for the future?

As the number of AI-applications is enormous and changing constantly we have a multiple track strategy. We aim at Microsoft Copilot for general use, a legal chatbot based on Azure Open AI and we keep looking at best-of-breed legal AI-applications for drafting, clause library, legal research and automation purposes.

Looking ahead, we believe that legal resources and services behind paywalls will be more effectively used, using AI. We also believe that the development of specialized contract drafting tools will mature.

Our approach remains cautious yet proactive, as we pilot new tools before fully integrating them into our practice.

Our sponsorship of the AI+ conference stems from a positive experience last year and the belief that it is an excellent opportunity to connect with AI professionals. We invite you to engage with us—whether it’s before, during, or after the conference, through LinkedIn or email, we’re open to conversations.

Facts about the company:

Name of business: Simonsen Vogt Wiig
Number of employees: 250 of which 185 lawyers
Location: Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Trondheim, Tromsø and Singapore
Industry: Lawfirm
Briefly about the product/service: We are a full-service business law firm with a tech edge

Simonsen Vogt Wiig is a silver sponsor at AI+ 2024.

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