Today in AI: Diligen launches real estate contract assistant

August 7, 2018
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Written by Amira Zubairi. As featured in Betakit: Canadian Startup News & Tech Innovation

Several Canadian startups and post-secondary institutions have made announcements and launched new partnerships to make strides in AI. Here’s the latest on Canada’s movers and shakers.

Diligen launches AI contract assistant for real estate documents

Toronto-based Diligen, which has developed an AI-enabled contract assistant, announced that it has extended its platform to real estate documents.

Diligen’s assistant focuses on streamlining the contract review process, which includes sorting documents, summarizing contracts, and spotting critical provisions. Diligen for Real Estate will allow lawyers to identify provisions, clauses, and contractual obligations that are important to real estate law practices.

“Teams doing lease review have a key opportunity to innovate the otherwise tedious and time-consuming manual effort tied to analyzing contracts and managing the review process,” said Konrad Pola, co-founder and CEO of Diligen. “Diligen is trained to accurately identify over 60 provisions most commonly found in real estate transactions which lawyers can use to identify high priority documents for review. For example, a landlord purchasing a commercial building will need to review all existing leases before they close. With Diligen, they can quickly uncover any provisions that could increase their commercial risk such as rent abatement or early termination, or a right of first refusal on additional space in the building.”

University of Waterloo partners with Plum to match students with employers

The University of Waterloo has announced a partnership with Plum to connect its students with employers that recruit from the university each year.

Plum’s software uses AI to help organizations hire and retain talent. The company leverages human data points to accurately match candidates with positions at companies that they are predicted to be compatible with.

The University of Waterloo said that as of this summer, all students at the university will have the option to complete a Plum profil— which consists of a 25-minute assessment test—allowing students to learn what type of work and work environments best suit them. Employers that recruit from the University of Waterloo will also have the option to complete a Plum match criteria assessment, which outlines the behaviour job requirements that hiring managers are seeking.

Once both employers complete a match criteria assessment and students complete the Plum assessment tests, students will be matched with open employment positions.

“While we have excelled at helping match students with employers based on skills and knowledge, we have wanted to add a dimension that captured who our students are as humans,” said Dianne Bader, director of co-operative and experiential education services. “Research, including our own here at Waterloo, has shown that human talent—things like work ethic, teamwork, leadership and creativity—is just as important as skills and knowledge when predicting job performance. We’re thrilled to roll out our integration with Plum and to reinforce our position as a leading North American public university committed to innovation.”>

The University of Waterloo said the partnership will help create efficiencies in the student job placement process by providing valuable information about candidates to hiring managers and campus career service staff.

“We’re really excited about launching this partnership with the University of Waterloo,” said Caitlin McGregor, co-founder and CEO at Plum. “Thanks to funding from the Build in Canada Innovation Program, employers can now quantify students’ potential for success in their unique roles. Employers will be able to understand students’ ability to execute, be innovative, and work well on teams. This is unparalleled insight that UW is uniquely positioned to offer their employers.”