A start-up called Luminance has gained the backing of Mike Lynch, founder of investment technology fund Invoke Capital and formerly Autonomy to use artificial intelligence to quickly read through legal documents. Luminance, set up by Cambridge University students, has been working with law firm Slaughter & May to speed up the legal process. Luminance has created software that it says can read and understand hundreds of pages of documents every minute, with clients charged according to usage. "Lawyers will be able to do the things that matter rather than trying to plough through 50,000 documents." Said Mr Lynch.

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