Welsh Government Urged to Provide Legal Tech Grants to SME Law Firms
The Law Society of England and Wales recently published their report on ‘Reimagining Justice in Wales 2030’ under the Commission on Justice. Researchers and solicitors are urging the government to invest in legal technology.
The aim is to provide grants for small and midsize enterprise (SME) law firms to adopt productivity-boosting technologies that may otherwise be unattainable through private funding alone. With Singapore’s ‘Tech-celerate for Law’ serving as the blueprint, these grants would allow law firms to get up to 80% funding for these expenditures.
Given the rapid advancement of technology in recent years, it’s the right time for legal industry SMEs to adopt the right tools and invest in boosting talent and effectiveness. 92% of UK businesses have stated that technology is crucial to their survival, so players in the law industry need to keep up with other sectors.
What is legal tech?
Legal tech covers all technology and software used in the legal market to serve providers within the industry and services offered to those seeking legal aid. Various solutions exist for different legal matters and aspects of the trade, but the most common use cases have been related to document management, contracts, automation, financial concerns, and research.
One essential function of legal tech in widespread use is document drafting and review software. Definely makes the process of drafting legal documents and contracts easier by reviewing, creating, drafting, and proofreading everything in an all-in-one tool. Legal practitioners can connect this to existing internal repositories and cross-reference from different documents without losing their current position. Considering the amount of paperwork done in law, this type of automation makes the process much easier and faster for legal teams to serve their clients better.
It also leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in drafting and inserting everything from clauses to additional information. Language models have become increasingly popular assistive tools since major tech developers developed more robust variants. Major law firms have already invested in efforts like Microsoft Copilot, which uses generative AI to help lawyers triage instructions, manage playbooks, and build out. According to Addleshaw Goddard’s Michael Kennedy, 82% of their firm already uses an internal build of the GenAI tool with some training.
Microsoft’s move to become a primary choice over ChatGPT in the industry has led to significant collaborations with other legal tech vendors like Litera as well.
Online payments have also been a topic of interest for legal tech, with a study showing that UK law firms regularly waste more than 50 days a year chasing late payments. As such, online payment solutions like Clio have seen more adoption from British conveyancers and attorneys. The portal uses click-to-pay links to make transactions easier and more secure on both ends, separating client and firm accounts.
The future of tech in legal use cases
Though legal institutions and private firms have been relatively slow to adopt new technologies in the past, AI has seen a more promising uptake in acceptance across the board. Judges in England and Wales recently addressed the use of AI within court settings and for legal writing. In a review of its implications, the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary gave approval for the usage of AI as long as it is integrated with care. Any document produced with the aid of AI must then be held to the human individual bringing it forth, who must then take full responsibility for any work.
This is a promising foray into the future of legal tech, provided that language models are trained further to work alongside legal professionals. A previous case in New York famously resulted in significant fines for both parties as legal briefs submitted were, despite being grammatically correct, actually incoherent to knowing barristers. Still, improvements only continue to come with every update.
Right now, divorce law is seeing a surprising slump in Wales. The cost of living crisis is mainly being pointed at as the root of this decrease in legal separations, but the new no-fault divorce rules will likely result in an uptick in the following years. Considering how much easier these laws make divorce possible, it will be no surprise to see most tasks and paperwork related to proceedings primarily handled by AI-powered assistants and tech tools, which can meet fluctuations in service demand.
Research from the University of Manchester and University College London has also found that legal professionals are increasingly willing to embrace new legal tech if it makes their work more efficient. While actual adoption has still been relatively limited, a shift is underway, led by senior management within existing firms. Private startups creating new legal tech solutions are already getting millions of pounds in funding, so the future looks significantly more digital for law.
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