Founded in 2015, Luminance has spent a decade in-market refining an AI platform built specifically for legal work. Graham Sills, co-founder and Director of AI, has been here since the start, and developed much of the underlying technology behind the Luminance platform. In this conversation, he explains what Legal-Grade™ AI really means, how our technology differs from other models on the market, and why a long-standing presence gives us the agility to stay ahead.

The AI market is noisier than ever before. What makes Luminance stand out?

We describe our AI as ‘Legal-Grade™’, meaning our AI has been purpose-built for legal application from day one. This kind of specialist model is crucial in the legal industry, where accuracy is non-negotiable and requirements differ from day-to-day use. Every workflow is designed to prioritise accuracy, reliability and accountability. We use advanced reasoning models and agents that show their workings - step-by-step logic, calculations, and clear rationales. And crucially, when the AI doesn’t have enough information, it returns the question and outlines what’s missing rather than guessing. We also point directly to the source passages the AI relied on to reach its outcome, so users can quickly verify the answer themselves. That’s how lawyers work in practice; no associate simply says, “Yes, they’re liable.” They present the evidence, logic and calculations behind the conclusion. Luminance does the same.

This transparent reasoning and step-by-step logic strengthen confidence in outputs, and in turn this reliability enables greater autonomy when you’re letting the AI take action on your behalf.

How does Luminance’s AI differ from general-purpose systems at a technical level?

We use a mixture of experts approach, combining the strengths of various models – including generative, embedding and reasoning LLMs, often fine-tuned or fully trained on our own data. Since we operate in the legal world, we like to compare it to a panel of judges. Different models bring complementary expertise; they check each other’s homework as they process a request. An orchestration layer acts like a supreme judge, validating the final output and enforcing strict guardrails.

This multi-model method has lots of advantages; It ensure the best model is applied to each sub-task across end-to-end legal workflows, reduces bias and hallucinations with multiple perspectives, offers varied expertise to cater for novel or complex use cases, and means new models can slot in easily - keeping our AI ahead of the curve at all times.

How does Luminance compare to newer players on the market?

Our longevity is our agility. A decade of real-world use has given us some major advantages. We spent our first few years working exclusively with top law firms, meaning our AI has been trained, used and validated at the very highest level, with a constant iterative feedback loop. And we’ve curated a high-quality, sanitised legal dataset - millions of contracts with a high density of legally verified labels. What’s more, our architecture is designed to plug in new models instantly. When a breakthrough model appears, whether that’s public, commercial, or internal, we can benchmark it against our data the moment it’s released to assess its value and integrate it accordingly. Not only that, we can specialise models for the legal domain in a matter of days by fine-tuning. Vendors without this foundation either guess based on hype or end up waiting for external feedback; often by then the market’s moved on.

Ultimately, our rich, well-structured data is unmatched, making learning much faster and more accurate. What this means is we can rapidly harness the best innovations and put them to work in the right context. So, our customers benefit from a platform that is both proven and perpetually up-to-date.

Everyone’s excited about Agents – where do these fit into Luminance?

Agentic AI is core to Luminance. If Luminance is the brain of a business, our agents are like a network of neurons operating in the background - reading, reasoning and taking action with minimal setup. These constrained subagents are orchestrated and controlled through supervisor agents, so activities are focused, auditable and safe. Multiple workflows can run in parallel, and outputs are cross validated to keep the AI on track.

What this means in practice is routine, compound tasks are automated, freeing teams for higher-value work. But most importantly, the system learns continuously from dynamic inputs - workflows, preferences, priorities- - and self-evaluation drives iterative improvements in accuracy and speed.

With advanced memory capabilities, Luminance even aligns with each organisation’s standards and style, growing more bespoke with every interaction. In a legal context, the ‘right’ action can vary depending on the situation. Perhaps at end-of-quarter when stakes are higher, you’re more likely to deviate from standards, or guardrails are different depending on who’s negotiating e.g. the General Counsel vs. a junior lawyer. Our agents incorporate that context before acting.

In short: Luminance’s Legal-Grade™ AI stands out because it combines a proven heritage with a future-proof architecture - multi-model reasoning, agentic execution, and a curated legal dataset - all engineered to deliver clear, auditable and reliable outcomes at the speed modern legal work demands. Users feel the benefits of a decade of legal focus combined with today’s best models. Setup is light, workflows are agent-driven, and reasoning is visible. We’re uniquely positioned to stay agile and flexible, bringing customers the latest advances without sacrificing the trust and rigour legal teams require.