Making contracts more human with state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques in Spanish

Project Information

Bounsel AI

Grant agreement ID: 101114381

DOI

10.3030/101114381

Project closed

EC signature date 1 June 2023

Start date 1 July 2023

End date 30 June 2024

Funded under

• European innovation ecosystems

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 75 000,00

Coordinated by

BOUNSEL SL
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Bounsel AI (Making contracts more human with state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques in Spanish)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The operational inefficiencies and complexities that surround contract management can make it a challenging endeavor for anyone working with contracts. Keeping track of changes and numerous versions of contracts, fully understanding legal jargon, and ensuring compliance with ever-changing regulations can overwhelm businesses, leading to potential high risks and costly missed opportunities. Traditional manual approaches to contract management can be time-consuming, error-prone, and may hinder overall productivity while considerably increasing the level of stress of legal professionals who work with contracts routinely. With this in mind, the EU-funded Bounsel AI project has completely reimagined contract management by developing an all-in-one software platform that offers a dream, comprehensive and intelligent contract management service (SaaS) that helps work with contracts be more human. Supported by a robust and secure Big Data infrastructure, this ultimate human-centric AI-driven solution is designed to streamline end-to-end contract lifecycle management (CLM) offering a simplified and efficient contract management that feels like magic. It leverages advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to tackle unstructured content, particularly in Spanish. Indeed, Bounsel AI uses NLP to automatically analyze and summarize large volumes of contracts, detect anomalies, and suggest improvements in just one click. This greatly reduces the time needed for review and closing contracts, making the CLM platform especially impactful in Spanish-speaking markets, where AI-driven legal solutions are less developed and accurate than in English-speaking jurisdictions. Overall, it makes contracts more human-like, allowing even non-experts to get superpowers by working with contracts stress-free and grasping their content effortlessly.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the Bounsel AI project, the work performed focused on the design, development, and implementation of advanced technical and scientific components crucial to the R&D project’s success. The key activity was the creation of a scalable and secure Big Data infrastructure in the cloud, designed to store and process large volumes of unstructured legal documents, particularly drafted in Spanish. This infrastructure laid the foundation for successfully deploying Natural Language Processing (NLP) models, specifically tailored to handle legal content in Spanish. The Bounsel AI project developed deep learning models capable of performing automatic summarization of legal documents, employing both advanced extractive and abstractive techniques.

In addition to AI model development, new software functionalities were created, such as a rule-based workflow expert system and intelligent tag recommendation, which further enhanced the contract management process. The project also integrated third-party applications via API, ensuring a seamless user experience. By the end of the project, Bounsel AI successfully automated the end-to-end contract lifecycle, from creation to execution, considerably improving the efficiency of legal operations. The outcomes include a scalable and secure AI-driven CLM platform that simplifies tedious contract management, particularly in spanish-speaking markets.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Bounsel AI has pushed the boundaries of legaltech by developing state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) models specifically tailored for Spanish legal documents. These AI models perform automatic summarization, clause extraction, and anomaly detection, which vastly improve contract lifecycle management. The integration of these advanced NLP models into a cloud-based infrastructure enables legal teams to automate complex legal tasks with precision, particularly in spanish-speaking markets, where such tools are underdeveloped.

Looking ahead, Bounsel AI plans to explore human-centric generative AI models to further enhance its capabilities, focusing on contract drafting and intelligent document generation. This requires additional funding, and we aim to secure further European investment (EIC Accelerator) to support the research and development of these advanced models. To ensure the success of our next phase, key needs include access to research funding, continued AI development, go-to-market and international expansion, and supportive regulatory frameworks for AI in legal contexts. Overall, the Bounsel AI project has created a scalable and secure AI-driven platform, setting a new standard for automated contract management.