Technology

A legal tech start-up has won funding from the country’s leading social tech funder to help develop its speech-to-text tool, which also uses IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence (AI) system, so that it can be used in courts. Meanwhile, Dentons’ business accelerator has made its latest investment in an “AI-powered expertise finding platform”.

Blockchain-backed ‘smart contracts’ will be a “game changer” in property transactions, increasing certainty for buyers and sellers as well as speeding up the house-buying process, it has been claimed. It follows the successful pilot of a fraud-resistant blockchain-based title registration system by Sweden’s land registry.

Innovative chambers Clerksroom is building Billy.Bot, a ‘robot junior clerk’ that will do the work of a traditional barristers’ clerk and also provide basic legal information to online users, Legal Futures can reveal. That is, except for taking a cut of barristers’ earnings.

Lawyers should control the supply of “so-called standard electronic documents”, such as confidentiality deeds or contracts, a report has suggested. The report also highlighted the ethical and regulatory issues raised by artificial intelligence.

The partnership behind an pioneering online dispute resolution platform for divorce is to be disbanded for commercial reasons, and the venture will be replaced by a scaled-down project that will for the first time involve face-to-face contact with lawyers.

A record number of start-ups targeting the legal market received funding around the world last year, new research has found. It comes as City giant Allen & Overy is to nurture legal tech start-ups with the creation of an incubator.

The pioneering digital tribunal thought to be the model for England and Wales’s online court will begin resolving small claims disputes worth under about £3,000 on 1 June, it has emerged. British Columbia’s civil resolution tribunal claims to be “the first online tribunal in the world that is integrated into the public justice system”.

Leading conveyancing firm Convey Law has launched what is said to be the first fully automated chatbot that can engage with potential clients, provide instant conveyancing quotes, and then arrange a follow-up conversation with a member of its team.

City law firm Kennedys has launched an extended version of its virtual defence lawyer, which for the first time enables clients to send cases directly to counsel without the need for a solicitor. The firm is currently building a more advanced version of litigation management system KLAiM using AI.

A solicitor and online legal services pioneer who developed the first automated system for clients to send briefs to counsel, is launching a private client service this summer that “enables people to pick and choose the legal services they need and want to pay for”.

The days of lawyers as trusted advisers are numbered because a reliable outcome to their issue is more important to clients than a relationship with their lawyer, Professor Richard Susskind has claimed. He also expressed concern about the impact of Brexit on the UK maintaining its focus on a period of unprecedented technological progress.

AXA Insurance has teamed up with alternative business structure rradar to launch what they call “a world first in legal and risk advice”, powered by IBM Watson technology. ‘Grace’ is described as “a machine learning-driven app which engages businesses directly with a virtual assistant to deliver the knowledge and experience of legal and risk management experts”.

International firm Bryan Cave has set up a team of tech-friendly lawyers from its offices around the world to cut through the “hype” around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in law firms. It said AI has “enormous potential”, but the real value comes from “lawyers being part of the conversation when these tools come out”.

More than a quarter of law firms that fall victim to ‘ransomware’ – software used by cyber crooks to block access to computer systems – end up paying £5,000 or more to retrieve their data, according to research.

Magic circle law firm Clifford Chance has for the second time in four months deployed artificial intelligence in a standalone product aimed at assisting clients to comply with complex regulatory changes. It has devised an online tool to enable financial institutions to make sense of MiFID2.