Bengo4.com and Anderson Mori & Tomotsune Sign Basic Agreement for Provision of Advisory Services in the Legal Brain Business Utilizing Generative AI

Bengo4.com, Inc. (Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director, President and CEO: Taichiro Motoe; hereafter “the Company”) is pleased to announce that it has signed a basic agreement with Anderson Mori & Tomotsune (Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; hereinafter referred to as “AMT”) to collaborate by providing advisory services for the implementation of the Legal Brain business using generative AI. The impact of this development on business results for the current fiscal year is insignificant.

■ Background

With the increasing complexity of today’s society, the scope of duties and amount of information necessary for lawyers and corporate legal departments are increasing. This information is diverse, ranging from paper to digital data, from laws and legal precedents to specialist legal books. This increases the amount of research time spent searching for information, which is a huge burden. In light of this situation, the Company is working to develop legal products that enable users to refer to a wide variety of legal data, utilizing natural language processing technology to improve the efficiency of information retrieval. Utilizing these tools dramatically improves the efficiency of searching for and understanding information, and can significantly reduce the time and effort required in research.

In February 2023, the Company established Professional Tech Lab, which focuses on development of services using new technologies. In line with this, the Company set out to build Legal Brain (Vertical LLM), Japan’s first large-scale language model specializing in law, and in 2023 launched an AI legal consultation chat service and an AI-powered book search service for lawyers and corporate legal affairs departments.

The Legal Brain business was launched to bring this vision to life, and AMT will now provide advisory services. Under this cooperative framework, the Company will utilize the extensive experience and knowledge of AMT, one of Japan’s leading legal firms, to receive advice from various angles such as functional development of AI products in legal practice, feedback and UI/UX improvement when used in actual legal practice, and legal issues for the realization of Legal Brain. The Company plans to work on improving the accuracy of the product’s search capabilities and results output.

■ About Anderson Mori & Tomotsune

With a history of over 70 years since its founding, Anderson Mori and Tomotsune flexibly provides a wide range of high-quality legal services, creating synergies and expanding its areas of expertise through the merger of Anderson & Mori and Tomotsune & Kimura in 2005, and the subsequent merger / integration of Bingham Sakai Mimura Aizawa (foreign law joint enterprise) in 2015. It is one of Japan’s leading comprehensive (full-service) law firms, responding quickly and accurately to all manner of legal issues and complex cross-disciplinary cases faced by its clients.

■ Steady Progress of the Legal Brain Initiative

The Legal Brain initiative is progressing steadily, in the form of a joint effort between top runners in each field. In the technology field, PKSHA Technology Inc. (Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Katsuya Uenoyama) is leveraging its experience and expertise to effectively support the implementation of LLM. In the field of legal practice, AMT is leveraging its wealth of knowledge and track record in legal practice to provide advisory services. In the field of data science, LIC CO., Ltd (Minato-ku, Tokyo; President: Yasuo Sanui), a Bengo4.com Group company which provides the case law search database Hanreihisho, provides precedent information, and support in terms of both the quality and quantity of information. In this way, leaders in each field are working together to drive the Legal Brain initiative, and are taking concrete steps to make it a reality. These companies pursuing new possibilities while leveraging their expertise is a key element of this project.

■ About Anderson Mori & Tomotsune  https://www.amt-law.com/en/

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