Technology

A London and Cape Town-based law tech start-up that provides companies with tailored regulatory compliance advice, has raised just over $1m (£740,000) in a seed funding round that included investment from the global law firm Dentons’ business accelerator, Nextlaw Labs.

The market for blockchain-backed ‘smart contracts’ should grow quickly, according to a partner at a global law firm, who is already working with the emerging technology. Lee Bacon, a partner at Clyde & Co, made the prediction as his firm launched a consultancy aimed at advising insurers and other clients on them.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service is to start hosting digital family court bundles centrally next year as part of its project to digitise the courts, it has emerged in a briefing sent to family judges. Moving from manual paper bundles to digital bundles in the family courts is widely seen as the best way to eliminate errors and reduce costs.

A contract review technology company incubated by Cambridge-based law firm Taylor Vinters today launched an artificial intelligent product that it claims is on average 60 times faster and 30% cheaper than traditional paralegals.

Law firms embracing artificial intelligence are expected to create new business models to pass on the benefits to clients, research by City giant Herbert Smith Freehills has suggested. The way trainees learn about the law will also change and may reshape in the traditional pyramid shape of the large firms, it said.

Legal chatbot pioneer Josh Browder has launched a new service – dubbed the first automated law suit – to help those affected by the Equifax security breach bring small claims in the US, and has told Legal Futures that he is planning to bring it to the UK as well.

Machine learning could be used to explain even the most complicated and obscure wills in plain English, a software entrepreneur has predicted. He said another development over the coming years could be the use of chatbots to handle routine enquiries.

A law student has become the latest entrepreneur to try and crack the problem of how to use online technology to improve the experience of consumers wanting to contact lawyers to solve their legal problems at a reasonable cost. Legista is a platform that will use artificially intelligent software to understand their matter and locate the right lawyer to deal with it.

Top UK law firms are ahead of their US counterparts in the use of artificial intelligence, an index of legal service delivery innovation has suggested. However, the creator of the Legal Services Innovation Index said it might just be that UK firms are “savvier about marketing this stuff to their clients”.

‘Robot lawyer’ LISA, an artificial intelligence (AI) app, has teamed up with Billy Bot, a barrister’s clerk chatbot, in what has been heralded as the first ‘robot relationship’ in the legal services world. For those LISA users who want help from a human lawyer, Billy Bot can refer them to a direct access barrister.

City giant Allen & Overy has named the seven companies which will work in Fuse, its new lawtech incubator, including a well-known artificial intelligence business and a charity working on a platform to assist asylum seekers in gaining access to pro bono advice.

Two commercial solicitors are attempting to break into the online legal templates market with an ambitious strategy to expand into non-law professional services. So far Legalo has around 100 templates for sale and plans a further 250. Its website also has a find-a-solicitor type referral service.

A pioneering online court formally launched in China last week to handle internet-related cases, such as online trade and copyright disputes. Located in and for the e-commerce hub of Hangzhou – home of Chinese technology giant Alibaba – the Hangzhou Court of the Internet is said to be the first of its kind in the world.

The entrepreneur who developed a web-based contract checking service almost five years ago is to launch another venture along the same lines, it has emerged. Ralph Ehlers launched Check-A-Contract in 2012 and sold the website two years later, and has now gone live with contractreviewexperts.co.uk.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service is working with Microsoft to build a prototype for a fully virtual hearing, which will tested in October, it has emerged. The latest development in the £1bn modernisation of the courts and tribunals, it will pilot virtual case management hearings in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber.