Technology

Online dispute resolution “will become the norm for much of the less complex work in civil, family and tribunals jurisdictions”, the Senior President of Tribunals said over the weekend. Meanwhile, it was also predicted that the administration of justice across all courts and tribunals could be transferred to the “cloud” within the next four years.

Four Cambridge university law students have created a free artificial intelligence ‘chatbot’ using natural language input with the aim of clarifying whether a criminal offence has taken place and making it more likely the police will take victims of crime seriously.

There is a correlation between a company’s success in litigation and its subsequent stock market performance, legal IT company Premonition has claimed. The US-based start-up, which operates in the UK as well, operates an artificial intelligence system that mines big data to find out which litigators win.

The author of a visual map of the lawtech start-up scene said it revealed the UK has a lower number of new technology ventures relative to the size of the legal market as a whole, compared with other European countries.

The use of artificial intelligence is more widespread in the law than in other sectors, and IT chiefs see more applications for it in the future, a survey has found. It said that 55% of senior IT decision makers in law firms have adopted predictive coding and 48% machine learning technologies.

Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, is trialing software that helps to predict the likely course, cost, length and outcome of litigation, Legal Futures can reveal. The strategic adviser to its NextLaw Labs subsidiary said that so far its lawyers have been “really impressed” with the results.

The Internet will take over as the main way SMEs and consumers access the law, the owner of the biggest online advice service for small businesses has predicted. Rory MccGwire said consumers would rely on a mixture of online DIY, telephone or online help, and lawyer-matching or comparison websites.

Academics at Westminster Law School have joined forces with their counterparts in the university’s Department of Computer Science to create a virtual reality ‘game’ that they hope will teach students criminal law.

Online legal services business Rocket Lawyer is expanding into continental Europe on the back of its success in the UK to date, which has seen nearly 200,000 people sign up to the service and create more than a million documents in less than four years.

A lawyer-matching service for SMEs has raised £50,000 in less than three days as it bids to crowdfund £360,000 for the next stage of its development. LawyerFair told potential investors that “legal services are an inefficient, low innovation marketplace” and that within three years it would be turning over £4.6m.