Technology

LexisNexis, working closely with the Civil Justice Council and others, is poised to launch the first of three projects to create digital tools for the advice sector, it has emerged.

An AI-backed product that uses natural language processing to help not-for-profit agencies identify precisely the legal nature of a problem is set to launch next year.

Email will be replaced within five years by a more secure means of communication for law firms, an expert predicted this week. Meanwhile, the SRA is using behavioural science in its messaging.

Contract review business ThoughtRiver has been awarded funding from the government for a £400,000 development project to develop “thinking AI”.

Law firms must be able to explain “automated decisions”, including those involving artificial intelligence (AI), the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned.

A legal technology conference organiser is attempting to crowdfund £5,000 for a challenge to the trademarking of the term ‘legal tech’, owned by a US-based legal publisher.

AI-backed lawtech has the potential to improve access to justice but also carries a danger that automating law will be used negatively, an innovation charity has warned.

The employment tribunals are set to host the pilot of an end-to-end online service through which cases would be run, the president of tribunals has revealed. Machine learning could also be introduced.

There is no reason why litigants could not access the courts on their smartphones in future, the Lord Chief Justice said yesterday, but questioned the extent to which AI would handle judicial tasks.

The Lord Chancellor yesterday hailed the impact of alternative business structures in driving competition and fostering innovation in the legal market.

A new app that offers users the full range of consumer legal advice and support for £24 a month is to be piloted in the coming weeks ahead of a roll-out early next year.

The government is to fund research into the potential for AI to improve the legal system, with a warning that, if the technology is mishandled, it could have dire consequences.

The Lord Chief Justice is optimistic that digital exclusion resulting from the government’s court modernisation programme will be a “very small problem”, he said yesterday.

Law firms are adopting new technology in wide variety of ways, contradicting the received wisdom that they have been slow to embrace change, according to a new report.

An artificial intelligence-backed platform designed to elicit key information from new law firm clients and put them at their ease has launched in the UK, initially targeted at family law practices.