LegalOn Technologies and DeepL: the power of law and AI technology

What you need to know about LegalOn Technologies, Inc.:

• LegalOn Technologies Inc., based in Tokyo, Japan, is a global leader in legal AI technology

• The company offers two main products in Japan: AI contract review platform LegalForce and AI contract management system LegalForce Cabinet

• DeepL API has enabled LegalOn Technologies to provide customers with fast, high-quality translations—enhancing the overall user experience

“Through the power of law and technology, we create a society where people can move forward with peace of mind.”
With this motto, it’s no wonder that LegalOn Technologies Inc. is dedicated to providing its customers with cutting-edge legal AI. 

Recently, we sat down with Shorei O, the Director of the Engineering Management Group, and Taizo Yamada, the General Manager of the Product Management Group, to learn more about LegalOn’s technology and growth plans—as well as how they use DeepL’s AI translation to provide value to their customer base.

Could you introduce yourselves, including your current roles and previous experience?

O: I’m an engineering manager at LegalOn Technologies Inc.
As for my background, I started my career as an engineer and worked for a major IT company developing billing systems, utilizing and analyzing data, and internalizing business management systems. In my previous position, I worked as CTO for two and a half years at a venture company developing IoT devices.


Since joining LegalOn Technologies in 2022, I’ve been responsible for the development of LegalForce, a legal tech software for the Japanese market. Alongside its translation function, I’ve also been working on other functions, such as the contract revision assistant that incorporates ChatGPT's API. Additionally, I’m involved in the development of LegalOn Review, an AI contract review software program for the US market, which is based on the LeglaForce software used exclusively in Japan.

Yamada: As a product manager for LegalForce, I’m in charge of features such as our newly released translation feature and a review feature that utilizes knowledge accumulated by the user’s company in the past. 

After working in corporate loan sales and screening at a financial institution, I worked as a product manager at a fintech company.
I joined LegalOn Technologies about a year ago.

Could you tell us about what your company does?

O: LegalOn Technologies, as the name suggests, is an IT systems company in the legal domain. It offers two SaaS products for the Japanese market: LegalForce and LegalForce Cabinet.

LegalForce is an AI contract review platform available in Japan based on an “automated review” function that uses AI to check contracts at the draft stage. It helps determine what risks are involved and whether they are acceptable.

LegalForce Cabinet is a Japanese market-specific service that allows users to manage their contracts by uploading the executed contract and extracting important information—such as the parties, signing date, due date, and whether it’s automatically renewed or not. The product manages contracts automatically, making it easier for companies to handle high volumes of contracts.

As mentioned earlier, our company's mission statement is: “Through the power of law and technology, we will create a society where people can move forward with peace of mind.”

Here, the term “law” isn’t limited to simple laws and regulations, but also includes the natural laws of the world and compliance within a company. We intend to continue to use IT to approach these issues. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, we’ve also started to expand globally—mainly in the US—and are aiming to become a global legal tech company.

What kind of customers use LegalForce and LegalForce Cabinet in Japan?

O: Many companies, from large corporations to small and medium-sized enterprises, use LegalForce in Japan, but it’s most often used by the legal department. However, a more diverse range of departments use LegalForce Cabinet. 

Contracts are not necessarily managed only by legal departments, but also by general administration departments. There’s also a need on the business side to refer to contracts. Thus, we intend to develop our products so that they can be used even more widely in the future.

You mentioned global market expansion. How are you approaching the development of your products in the US, where market conditions are different from those in Japan?

O: We’re developing a US version of LegalForce based on the Japanese version of the product.
We believe that the operations of legal departments themselves are essentially the same, whether in Japan or in the US.

However, the legal content required for AI to check contracts needs to be newly produced.
For example, the types of contracts that are often subject to review differ between Japan and the US. We call them “contract document types,” and some of them are only in demand in Japan—while others are only in demand in the US. Also, laws and regulations differ, so the content needs to be considerably fine-tuned. While there is certainly a need for features unique to the US, our view is that the system itself does not need to be changed too much.

You’ve now released a translation function to the Japanese market that enables contract review while viewing a Japanese translation of an English contract, correct?

Yamada: LegalForce has a function whereby the AI identifies risks and indicates the points where the contract needs to be reviewed. Now that the translation function has been released, it’s possible to simultaneously compare these points as well as the English and Japanese versions when reviewing contracts in English.

O: Originally, LegalForce had an optional feature called the “English review option.” If you sign up for that option, you can also review contracts in English. Some of our customers wanted to understand the content of English contracts at a glance. We thought that adding a feature for translation would provide value to our customers, which led us to introduce the translation function.

Could you tell us about your decision to choose DeepL as the engine for your AI translation?

Yamada: We’d been using the web version of DeepL in our company and, thus, were aware of DeepL. I personally use DeepL in various situations, including daily communication.

When introducing the translation function to LegalForce, we compared several translation engines. The decision to choose DeepL was based on its particularly fast translation speed and high accuracy.
Additionally, we chose DeepL because of the large number of languages supported as well as advanced initiatives such as DeepL Write—which we believe can be linked to LegalForce when we expand its functions in the future.

How have customers reacted to the translation function since it was released?

Yamada: Customer response has been very positive. When we announced the beta version of the translation function to users who had subscribed to the English review option, we immediately received responses from more than 100 companies.
Our Sales team has also told us that customer feedback has been positive.

For customers that speak English well, the English review option that we had previously offered was acceptable. Many customers who were not as comfortable with English, on the other hand, were using a translation service alongside LegalForce in Japan.

With this approach, they switch screens to view the Japanese translation on the translation service while viewing the points in the contract on LegalForce. Or, they upload the contract to the translation service again, and then copy and paste it. 

Clearly, there was a need for a translation function within LegalForce. There were also people who were concerned about information leakage with a free translation service, and we were able to solve this problem by working with DeepL.

O: Many customers in the legal departments of companies were already using some kind of translation service. Nonetheless, quite a few Japanese customers still find it valuable to be able to complete translations within LegalForce, which they use on a daily basis.

We’ve been able to include the translation function within the product, which was a very meaningful development. I think it was also very valuable that we were able to clear up concerns about the integrity and confidentiality of the information by using DeepL API.

You’ve been using DeepL API for product integration, but what were your impressions as you worked on the integration?

Yamada: The good thing is that DeepL API is easily accessible from the Github repository. So, we could start the verification process at a stage when we were still considering which translation engine to use. We were able to look at the documentation at an early stage and touch on the API at the same time, which led to a quick release.

O: If we want to add value to our customers with speed, we believe it will become increasingly important to work with third parties.

This time, we were able to incorporate DeepL's product and provide value to our customers in a period of only three months. Of course, it’s important to improve the features we developed in-house, but we feel strongly that we need to develop our products while also building win-win relationships with companies that provide excellent technology and services in a flexible way.

What would you like to work on in the future?

O: In addition to this translation function, LegalOn Technologies will continue to actively incorporate new technologies such as generative AI into its products. We believe that in order to expand our business globally, it’s essential to stay up to date with the latest technologies and seek new ways to provide value to our customers. 

We want to make our product and company attractive to engineers who are interested in these advanced technologies and in global business.

Want to talk to our experts about implementing and utilizing AI translation in your company? Our Sales team would be happy to have a chat.

Interview date: July 6, 2023