Practice Management

DoNotPay – the chatbot that aims to make access to the law free – has received $1.1m (£840,000) in backing from leading Silicon Valley investors, and even some lawyers. DoNotPay is the brainchild of English-born student Josh Browder, who started the site as a teenager to fight his own parking tickets.

Thousands of small businesses are flocking to a purpose-built legal hub, operated by alternative business structure LHS Solicitors, to access online documents. Some 35,000 documents have been downloaded from the Federation of Small Businesses Legal Hub – provided by LHS on a white-label basis – since its launch last month.

A ground-breaking battle between lawyers and artificial intelligence has ended in a comfortable victory for AI. Lawyers had a week to predict whether real PPI complaints were upheld or rejected by the Financial Ombudsman, using their own resources and unlimited time, before AI got to work.

Efforts to recruit an initial 2,500 barristers to direct access website MyBarrister failed miserably, it has emerged in a court ruling that details an ongoing dispute with the recruiters charged with signing them up. “These were, as things turned out, demanding targets,” the judge observed.

Almost half the staff at SME law firms say their firms have been attacked by fraudsters within the past 12 months, a survey has found. At the same time, the research into how firms are responding to risk management and compliance found evidence more generally that firms are “turning regulation into a business driver”.

Law firms are facing a “pivotal moment” where they need to turn talk of improving efficiency into action, with those that are seeing the competitive advantage, new research has claimed. It said firms “appear to be in a holding pattern, pledging forward-looking action, while cleaving to traditional thinking”, such as hourly billing.

Singapore has begun marketing itself to UK law firms wanting to access Asia’s lawtech start-up community, as well as UK start-ups wanting to expand beyond these shores, with what it says in south-east Asia’s first lawtech accelerator.

Basic digital housekeeping like keeping software up-to-date and backing up data separately from your network will solve most cyber-security issues – with corporate espionage one issue law firms have to face – according to a former assistant director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Law Society has agreed a deal with a crowdfunding platform to connect solicitors with lawtech start-ups looking for investment. Meanwhile, a lawyer at a magic circle law firm told yesterday’s Legal Geek conference that while clients welcomed the idea of innovation, when it comes to the crunch they often chose old-style methods.

A new online service for family and immigration clients is launching today, giving them access to lawyers at prestige firms such as Withers and Farrer & Co. The founder said she wanted the website to help “thousands of people” reduce their legal costs in a “very substantial way”. Users can buy answers to legal questions for between £4.99 and £200.