Seyfarth Labs

The potential impact of artificial intelligence, automation, and related technology is currently the subject of enormous discussion within the legal industry. Seyfarth Labs is the home of our technology innovation team, where we explore and test these emerging technologies to transform how our teams work—and how our clients experience the delivery of legal services.

HOW WE HELP

Seyfarth’s long history with process improvement—beginning in 2005 with our adoption of Lean Six Sigma—gives us a deep understanding of the people and processes that support legal service delivery. This allows us to use emerging technology solutions to interact and coexist with people in a proactive way, smoothing  the technology interface and boosting adoption. We have always had the belief that technology, standing alone, adds only marginal value. Rather, it is technology coupled with a deep understanding of the underlying process and the human side of the equation that creates meaningful value. Our foray into the world of process automation and artificial intelligence has simply deepened that conviction.

Currently we are exploring the use of process automation in two spheres of our client service; first, within our core operations to bring greater efficiency to our financial systems, client intake, IT process and human resources. The second sphere is direct client service delivery and collaboration. This means both the tools that allow the lawyers to perform services more effectively as well as the tools that enhance communication and data flow between the firm and the client.

In order to drive this transformation, we built a center of excellence (or CoE) within Seyfarth Labs to help bring automation, AI and bot techniques to our business. The CoE is a strategic R&D initiative designed to build specialist skills and know-how that can be used across a number of business processes, and to support additional needs as they arise. The CoE comprises:

• Development of key competencies, such as product management, solution design, configuration and user support
• A dedicated team for efficiency and rapid development of new solutions
• Development of key industry partnerships that build our expertise  and technology offering
• Carefully selected projects, vetted for high impact potential.

We have invested in building our CoE because  believe that automation is a critical part of the legal service equation. Our goal is not to replace humans with robots, but to automate tasks within a process that people should not be performing. This, in turn, frees up people to perform higher-level, creative, problem-solving tasks. Using technology in this way, we are able to create new roles and opportunities for our people, improve client service, and help our clients provide greater value to their organizations.

Our Technology Partners

Choosing the right technology partner is critical to successful deployment of advanced technology. We have many years of experience working with outside technology providers and can bring the best of that knowledge to our work with you via our carefully curated technology toolkit. Today, Blue Prism, Kira Systems, and Neota Logic are central to our technology strategy.

Blue Prism. We have partnered with the leading choice for secure, scalable and transformational digital labor deployments. The company’s multi-skilled software robots are implemented as digital labor in the most demanding enterprise environments to eliminate low-return, high-risk, administrative and processing work to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness while reducing operating costs. Blue Prism drives many of our robotics solutions.

Kira Systems. This platform uses machine learning processes that automatically read, interpret, and extract key information from documents and return a desired business output. We also use an enhanced feature of the product to train and maintain complete control of the tool. Using the self-service portal and built-in essential smart fields allows us to speed up the data extraction process, increasing productivity within the organization.

Neota Logic. This software solution combines business rules with mathematical reasoning and weighted scorings to seamlessly and intelligently guide users through self-help and complex managed-services solutions. Neota Logic drives many of our legal and business workflow solutions, from intake and triage to assignment and completion of end-user requests.