Sign for the Columbia Business at Columbia University, an Ivy League private research university located in New York City. Sign for the Columbia Business at Columbia University, an Ivy League private research university located in New York City. Photo: EQRoy/Shutterstock.com.

An MBA course offered this semester at Columbia University used a legal tech startup as its subject, saying that the legal technology offers a prime example of using tech experts and industry experts—in this case lawyers—in the development of a needed business tool.

Columbia University offered “Evisort: An A.I.-Powered Startup Uses Text Mining to Become Google for Contracts” to its MBA students for the first time this fall semester. The course examined Evisort, a legal tech startup that uses artificial intelligence to scan documents, extract data, generate instant reports based on the data and other tasks.

“The idea of not just teaching the technology in a vacuum, but in a larger context,” said course professor Daniel Guetta, on the reasoning behind picking a real-life company to study for the course.

He picked Evisort as the course's subject because he wanted to study a text mining software company, and he “loved the idea of Evisort having AI people and lawyers working in tech.”

He said he stresses to Columbia students “how important it is to let the computer do its own thing and have domain experts to work with AI.” He noted legal technology is an industry that relies heavily on the expertise of technologists to ensure the software is up to par and has lawyers to verify the software and its product meet regulatory and legal standards.

Evisort's contract scanning capabilities make an essential part of a company—its contracts—beneficial for even non-law students, he added. Guetta said the far-reaching effects a contract can have for every branch of a company is also important for MBA students to know.

In fact, Evisort co-founder Jerry Ting said he's noticed more CIOs are facing pressure from their organizations to turn over document review faster and under budget. Many are looking toward software to quicken the process.

Before, said Ting, he saw “a nomenclature that only lawyers are reading contracts. This is changing. Businesses are looking at more contracts.”

Columbia's Guetta said legal technology is becoming more accessible because of artificial intelligence advancements and affordability. Business and IT leaders now use legal tech as a “very important part of a business arsenal,” Guetta said.

The importance of legal tech to non-law school students isn't new in New York state. Cornell University teaches a course open to its law school and technology students where students build an app based on the client needs of three legal aid organizations.