“From the smallest tussle to the most extraordinary of Commercial Court battles, claims come in all sorts of unexpected shapes and sizes in marine trades. After all, it was the enduring frustration of working for three decades in the legal and insurance branches of the shipping industry that first inspired our founder to pair human insight and machine learning to solve marine claims rapidly.
This, however, was only the beginning of the story.“
The idea was born out of a conversation between a shipping lawyer and a tech developer on the sun-kissed sandy beach of a Greek island in the Eastern Aegean in 2017; the conversation went something like this:
Tech Developer: So what’s the problem with shipping law solutions these days? What is it that people don’t like about them?
Shipping Lawyer: That’s easy to answer; shipping lawyers’ are expensive and the process of managing the claims takes far too long!
Tech Developer: Well then you just need to make it cheaper and quicker.
Shipping Lawyer: Yes, and can we do that with technology?
Tech Developer: We certainly can if we get the right machine to do the hard work.
Shipping Lawyer: Great, let’s get started.
…and the Marine Judge platform had its naissance in that moment.
Over the next three years, and even throughout the Covid pandemic, site designers, computer engineers, lawyers, and analysts all worked to create a simplified system to read, analyse and solve any marine claim with the support of humans in the loop. The program slashes time wastage and management costs in relation to dealing with claims.
Marine Judge is a trail blazer in the field of automated claims solutions in the shipping and transport sector.
As the world’s logistical networks slip quietly from their antiquated 20th century analogue systems into the 21st century’s dazzling digital era, the Marine Judge platform will be there to support the sector by providing fast, accurate and focused answers to all of our customers’ claims, and provide these solutions at a fraction of the costs.
The Founder
SOTO SKINITIS – Solicitor LLB
Soto qualified as a shipping and international trade solicitor in London in 1999. He went on to practice with Jackson Parton and Norton Rose before founding his firm, Skinitis LLC in 2006.
In the time since then, he has acted in litigations and arbitrations around the world for shipping and aviation companies, banks, insurers, and UHNWIs.
Over the years of developing the firm’s practice base, in parallel, he also prioritised the adoption and implementation of IT management systems to improve the efficiency of the firm and provide costs benefits to his clients. Skinitis LLC opened its first cyber office in 2011, and it maintains physical offices in London, Nicosia, and Hong Kong.
In 2017, his determined interest to implement better IT systems in the firm led him to the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Noting the obvious benefits that these technologies provide for document review, claims analysis, and dispute resolution in international trade – he went on to found Marine Judge in 2018. His vision was to deploy these new technologies to help protect organisations that had exposure to marine claims.
Between 2018 and 2020 in London, he, and a combination of experts in software development and data science built Marine Judge to expedite claims processing by reviewing and analysing standardised documentation faster and more accurately.
Today, Marine Judge has grown to the point of assisting any organisation involved in international trade with their claims and giving them the competitive edge on the resources used to do so.
Soto is fluent in English and Greek and has a good command of French. He is regularly published in the Shipping Press.