Legal technology is an innovator's game, but it's also about cutting costs while improving output. There isn't a secret sauce for doing these in tandem, but many technology providers are turning to partnerships to stand out in the crowd.

LegalSifter, a contract management provider that touts artificial intelligence as its advantage, is among such companies. But rather than partnering with another vendor, LegalSifter going straight through the law firm to hit a target market of in-house legal departments.

This week, LegalSifter and UK law firm TLT announced what's being billed as a solution for “combined intelligence” in contract negotiations. Geared specifically toward operations teams, procurement professionals and in-house lawyers, the service essentially provides users with technology that scans documents for the existence or absence of concepts, then uses machine learning to provide advice configured by TLT specifically for the user. Thus, the advice accounts for the views of all organizations involved in the negotiation.

The tool is geared toward “everyday contract negotiations that occur in the working world,” Kevin Miller, CEO at LegalSifter, told LTN. “Businesses around the world are negotiating contracts frequently without legal support because lawyers are too expensive and too slow for some transaction. … For sticky wicket and strategic ones, they're perfect. But the risk of a $25,000 purchasing contract doesn't align with a $2,000 review bill, and that takes [two or three] days to turn around.”

Miller added, “As a result, you have a lot of nonlawyers doing these negotiations, a lot of overworked general counsel doing these negotiations.” This led to partnering with TLT for a solution “at fees that align with the risk and tolerance of those transactions.”

The solution will be open for use in January to clients in the UK and Ireland. Miller said LegalSifter will also soon announce a similar deal with the law firm Horty Springer & Mattern in Pittsburgh to focus on healthcare providers. LegalSifter's client base includes law firms and companies “of all different sizes, including a Fortune 100 company.”

“To the law firms, this is an expansion of their portfolio. It should be an expansion of revenue, expansion of margins, and it allows them to get deeper with their clients and serve them better,” Miller said.

For users, the platform's self-service option provides the technology with TLT advice, while a step up allows users to contact a TLT help desk, staffed by lawyers, with questions after sifting a document.

“We recognize that clients will have different levels of sophistication. We see that with our client base at the moment,” Jeff Wright, operations director at TLT, told LTN. Some, he said, will be “quite self-sufficient.” Using the product “naked as it were and having the person interact with the technology alone will be the right thing for them, where for others it will be much more bespoke down the road.”

Wright said he's experienced a “really big client drive” for this sort of technology, with a number of “large globals” and UK companies who want “that comfort of having a legal touch” on contracts without paying for full service.

LegalSifter and TLT's offering isn't the first pairing of “AI” with law firms. In the past two years, a spate of law firms in the US and UK, such as Baker McKenzie and Slaughter and May, have signed deals with providers. But TLT and LegalSifter see their offering as something unique in the marketplace.

“You're seeing a number of law firms make investments in AI-based products. What you're not seeing is law firms working hand-in-hand with technology companies to produce … those kind of wraparound services we're offering,” Wright said. “There are some partnerships out there, but we think this is a pretty novel proposition as a whole.”