Baker McKenzie partners with MaxVal

Baker McKenzie partners with MaxVal

This deal is part of the company's Reinvent innovation strategy, follows 2021's partnership with Spark Beyond

With the help of tech company MaxVal, Baker McKenzie is creating an IP management solution tailor-made for the firm's brand management practice clients.

Under the agreement, Bakers will harness the technology of MaxVal's Symphony platform along with its attorney expertise and scale to develop the system. As part of Baker's global innovation strategy, Edison is part of the firm's "Reinvent" initiative, which employs technological global innovation to help clients solve specific challenges. A combination of the latest automation and machine learning technology with the best possible user experience made up of the Edison project is meant to aid brand managers, lawyers and trademark professionals with their IP matters.

"We are not interested in becoming a technology company, but we do want to partner with the best technology companies in the market to redefine the standard of good," says Ben Allgrove, Partner and Chief Innovation Officer at Bakers.

He noted that Bakers is using machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to solve many of the problems that have caused significant delays in the disruption of legal services and the legal industry.

An IP project has been backed by GE, a multinational client.

"Our company's trademarks must be cleared, protected and enforced all around the world," said Catherine Mennenga, GE's general counsel for marketing and brand management. Baker McKenzie and MaxVal are developing a trademark management system that will considerably improve our trademark management. We look forward to its roll out this year."

Bakers entered into the MaxVal joint venture after partnering with New York-based AI experts Spark Beyond in May last year. This partnership focuses on three different fronts: boosting the firm's pro bono social impact initiatives through machine learning-driven research and improving the firm's operations through data insights.

Danielle Benecke, a digital innovation officer and IP specialist for Bakers, has been hired as its new data science and machine learning team led by former Elevate digital strategy head Brian Kuhn. Their responsibility is to oversee Spark Beyond's relationship with the firm.

Linklaters is another firm with dedicated Legaltech development teams. Atticus, the company's web-based document verification tool, the first major product launched by its Legaltech team in August, 2021.