Startup

Start-ups, algorithms and LLMs for lawyers and accountants. Where do we stand?

A growing number of artificial intelligence software is now targeting the world of accountants and lawyers. Here is a brief guide.

14 November 2024

5' min read

Automation of repetitive processes - accounting, tax, legal. Supporting the analysis of data, documents. With a double benefit: saving time and improving the quality of one's work. A growing number of artificial intelligence software is now targeting the world of accountants and lawyers. A market that is maturing, so much so that the big names of American software houses are being joined by many Italian companies. Specialised start-ups or historic names in Italian software.

Commercialists

For example, 'we use DK Mind from Datev Koinos and Team Systems,' says Fabio Grieco, an accountant at Srg Associati. The former is a 2002 company resulting from the collaboration between the Datev cooperative of accountants and the German software house Koinos. TeamSystems Spa is a well-known Italian manufacturer of management software since 1982. 'DK Mind uses artificial intelligence algorithms to translate documents, even paper documents, into accounting elements automatically,' he adds. So there is an automation of accounting, invoices. "Thanks to machine learning it learns by itself how the different invoices loaded should be accounted for; it avoids repetitive manual processes and saves time."

Another advantage, "it allows the use of unbundled accounting data to compile databases on which to make historical and predictive analyses of business activity. For example, it helps to forecast cash needs, to predict - based on payment history received and expected growth - the financial needs of a business client of that accountant. The professional is therefore more effective in supporting clients.

"TeamSystem's AI does similar things, but we mainly use it to make work on customers more efficient," says Grieco. "For example, it estimates the working time of each employee on each customer and can thus help us understand if we are devoting an incongruous number of hours to a certain customer, to the point of working at a loss, because we have assigned it to an employee who is not suited to that type of task." "Then simply assigning the customer to another employee can greatly improve efficiency."

Another possible frontier is generative AI, 'we are experimenting with some clients with the Hector software (by the Canadian company of the same name), to automate the writing of self-defence petitions, appeals; but it does not work very well yet. It manages to retrieve all normative references but the Italian tax situation is so particular that it does not allow this level of automatic generalisation,' Grieco explains.

In the field of generative AI, a different key offering comes from Partitaiva.ai, a company from Catania. It offers, among other things, ad-hoc chatbots (based on Gpt) for answering customer questions from professionals and companies, customised with that subject's knowledge base.

Partitaiva.ai also has predictive AI services to help companies or their accountants assess a financial situation and then make data-driven decisions. It also has process automation services but not specialised for the accountant world.

"Among the most popular Italian software for accountants is Ago Infinity Zucchetti, which automates accounting flows with artificial intelligence. Automatic bank reconciliation and direct access to company accounts reduce onerous manual operations and allow access to client financial data to provide better advice," explains accountant Daniele Tumietto. "Other Italian software with AI for our profession are Nassau, a semantic engine that answers questions on tax, legal, accounting and social security issues; Taxman, which helps with a virtual assistant in tax advice;

Startax, a unique platform that provides assistance to accountants, lawyers and fundraising experts specialised in start-ups, to support accounting, tax and financial management,' adds Tumietto.

Some of these solutions are aimed at both lawyers and accountants.

Lawyers

However, AI for lawyers has been widespread for many years, with traditional (non-generative) solutions. It has long been a market presided over by foreign players such as the English Luminance or the American LexisNexis and Harvey. But Italian players are also arriving here.

"We have been using Luminance since 2017 and were the first Italian law firm to do so," says Yan Pecoraro, partner at Portolano Cavallo. "A solution developed by a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge that uses artificial intelligence, with supervised and unsupervised machine learning modes, to support the analysis of contracts and more generally legal documentation." "We employ this product in particular in the context of extraordinary transactions to enable our professionals to analyse, in a secure and privacy-compliant environment, legal documentation more accurately as we add the additional layer of artificial intelligence review to human review." "The platform also enables a more efficient management of document review processes through project management functionalities. The tool is fully integrated in our organisation and is used to support the majority of due-diligence activities while verifying compliance with the conditions of use and confidentiality requirements in each case,' adds Pecoraro.

In fact, these features are also found in Italian products.

See Lexroom.ai, a Milan-based start-up with a product specialised in simplifying legal research through AI. It allows the lawyer to ask legal questions in natural language, provides a first draft of an opinion, and cites the legal sources used. Thanks to this system, the founders calculate, more than 70 per cent of time could be saved compared to a traditional search. Lexroom.ai has entered into a co-design partnership with the law firm Gianni & Origoni.

It is possible to customise the platform according to the specialisation of the lawyer. It is aimed, in terms of cost, at medium-sized law firms, a feature shared by many of these solutions. In a few years, however, the scalability of these technologies should reduce prices and open up the market for individual lawyers and accountants.

TeamSystems also has a product for lawyers, Legal AI, which acts as a virtual assistant to create draft contracts, opinions and automates some common tasks.

Different is the approach of the Pisa-based Aptus.Ai, a start-up that has raised over four million euros in funding. With artificial intelligence, it transforms any legal document into an interactive readable version, where another AI can answer questions or prompts about that text.

In this examination, we have not considered 'generalist' AI software such as the well-known ChatGpt or Gemini, which 'accountants use more and more anyway', says Tumietto. Specialised solutions, however, promise greater efficiency, fewer hallucinations, and have ad hoc services and interfaces. The Italian ones, then, tend to be more trustworthy both in terms of the assistance given to the user and the privacy of data. Generative AI, however, could hybridise these two worlds; it is already doing so as we see with some solutions that use customised Gpt models or, as LexisNexit does, connect to Copilot.