Guest post by Brian Liu, founder of LegalZoom and a LawtechUK panel member
Liu: The future of law is expertise and relationships
At a time when most technology innovation still flows from the US and China, UK lawtech is attracting growing international attention and capital.
Recent figures from LawtechUK show investment into UK lawtech companies rose by more than a third in 2025 compared with the previous year.
That may surprise some, as Europe is not usually seen as a tech leader, compared to Silicon Valley products such as Anthropic. But companies such as Luminance, Lawhive and Wordsmith AI are rapidly gaining attention and traction.
The UK’s pragmatic regulatory environment and willingness to rethink how law is practised give it a certain advantage. In the UK, there’s no US-style unauthorised practice of law. Alternative business structures already exist.
On the other hand, the American regulatory landscape is fragmented, with state-by-state variations and a deep-rooted litigation culture. In the US, the first reactions to tools like ChatGPT are often: Will I get into trouble for using it? Is someone going to sue?
They are right to be concerned, as many attorneys have been sanctioned for using AI-generated content.
In the US, large-firm partners have historically made very good money doing things the old-fashioned way. They have little incentive to change, despite paying lip service to AI adoption. But there is no doubt this is an AI revolution – and there is no stopping it.
In the UK, by comparison, there has been a greater willingness to explore new delivery models while maintaining professional standards.
Change needed to legal education
One of the biggest barriers to growth in 2026 will be legal education. It is no longer enough merely to know the law.
Yet too many lawyers still lack the digital and data skills needed to engage fully with new tools, and many practising lawyers still lack the digital and data literacy required to engage fully with emerging tools.
It’s like being a mathematics PhD – you can either memorise all formulas, or you can master the tools and computers that do quantum-level calculations. You choose your future.
Just as law schools used to teach students to use Westlaw and LexisNexis, they must now prepare students for a world in which AI tools are embedded in practice. If all you can do is manually perform the equivalent of long division, you will be overtaken by someone with a calculator.
Without faster reform, the profession risks constraining a sector that could strengthen, rather than undermine, the delivery of legal services.
The profession must move up the value chain
Although the most growth has been seen in B2B tools, AI is also accelerating change at the consumer and small-business end of the market.
Small business owners are increasingly turning to tools such as ChatGPT to draft agreements, generate letters and review documents. While a real lawyer is best, for a startup operating on limited resources, paying £7,500 for specialist advice may simply not be viable when an AI system can produce something that appears ‘good enough’ in seconds.
AI may compress margins in routine work. But for complex litigation and major transactions, the value of human oversight remains obvious. If you are doing a billion-dollar merger, spending tens of millions on legal fees is justifiable as a percentage of risk and value. But the way that value is presented may need to change.
Specialised large language models, such as Anthropic’s Legal plugin, trained exclusively on legal materials and designed to cite only real cases, are already emerging. In the near future, you will have AI systems that do not hallucinate.
For certain routine tasks, they will replicate – and in some cases outperform – junior legal work. It’s estimated that up to 74% of hourly billable tasks could be automated with AI, putting pressure on the traditional hourly billing model.
Investment bankers have never charged by the hour. They charge as a percentage of value delivered. Real estate brokers charge commission. Nobody pays it upfront and most clients accept that the broker will earn their 5% by securing a better overall outcome.
This is likely to be popular with clients – 71% of whom already say they prefer a flat fee for a case.
Lawyers may need to rethink how they frame their value proposition in similar terms. Instead of selling time, they must sell outcomes, negotiation strength, contextual advice, risk mitigation and judgment.
Many in-house counsel say tools like Claude have made them four times more efficient. They produce more, faster, and then apply their human judgment on top.
And law remains a relationship business. Even in a world of AI, big law is still practised on relationships. If you cannot build trust, persuade clients and navigate human dynamics, technical knowledge alone will not make you indispensable.
What is the law for?
Ultimately, AI forces us to consider a more fundamental question: what is the purpose of law itself? Regulators will need to think about fulfilling the purpose of the law, not just its processes.
Law is ultimately about governing relationships. Jury trials are not decided purely on factual correctness; they turn on persuasion, narrative and human connection. You are not going to see robot advocates delivering closing arguments. Technology may support preparation, but delivery will always remain human.
The future of law is expertise and relationships. The future of lawtech is innovation built within clear regulatory boundaries. And the future of the profession depends on lawyers embracing tools, redefining their value and focusing on what machines cannot replace.
That means focusing on relationships, persuasion, empathy, ethics and judgment. It means ensuring that regulation protects the public while enabling innovation.
And it means recognising that access to justice depends not only on professional standards, but on affordability and usability. That’s how we get access to justice, a better society and better relationships.
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