Manchester law firm Bott and Co has partnered with The University of Manchester to launch a ‘ground breaking’ artificial intelligence project.
The 30-month project will involve embedding a platform for legal text mining and predictive modelling into Bott and Co’s flight delay workflow process.
The tech aims to enhance efficiencies, productivity and the customer journey for the personal injury specialists, which has won two landmark cases at the Supreme Court for its work in flight delay compensation.
It will involve a combination of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques which will enhance decision making, reduce wasted costs and improve service delivery.
The new technology aims to enable the firm to enhance its flight delay compensation process and break into other areas of consumer law.
“As a consumer-focused law firm, we invest heavily in technology to provide the most efficient processes, so we can continue to deliver cost effective access to justice and excellence in customer service,” said Paul Hinchliffe, managing partner at Bott and Co.
“We are looking forward to forging a strong partnership with The University of Manchester who are world leaders in their field.
“The legal sector is going through change so staying ahead of the technology curve is important to us.”
The firm will be working closely with Professor Sophia Ananiadou, director of the National Centre for Text Mining and Turing Fellow, and Dr Andre Freitas, both from the University of Manchester, School of Computer Science.
Professor Ananiadou added: “Our research in text mining over many years has always been conducted with a view to discovering hidden knowledge, helping to solve practical problems, increasing productivity and contributing to innovation and growth, particularly in collaboration with business and industry.
“Our project with Bott and Co takes us into a new area that will benefit both the legal community and the public.”