Technology

A student who set up a DIY website to help consumers challenge parking tickets, and claim compensation for delayed travel or missold PPI, has added a natural-language ‘robot lawyer’ to draft documents. It has been welcomed by the solicitor who created a ground-breaking automated website aimed at helping people charged with motoring offences.

An ambitious new firm of licensed conveyancers has developed its own case-tracking app in a bid to become the biggest conveyancing business in the country. Managing director Simon Bath said the firm had funding from individual investors and private equity.

A ground-breaking legal ‘hackathon’ – pitting computer programmers against each other to reach the best solution to a legal technology problem in the space of a weekend – is to be held in London with the aim of generating technology that will assist law centres.

Lord Justice Briggs has set out radical plans to create an online court, which could become the compulsory starting point for money claims worth up to £25,000, and which would be designed “for use by litigants without lawyers”.

A counsellor and a tech entrepreneur are launching an app to help couples going through separation or divorce, and cut down on the need for lawyers and the amount spent on them. The first version of the ‘amicable app’ will go live at the end of March.

Automation by computers is unlikely to replace much of the work currently done by lawyers any time soon and the negative employment effects of technology have been overstated, according to a study.

Legal Beagles, a consumer rights forum, has launched a comparison website using its own research on fixed fees to decide which law firms are listed. Kate Briscoe, chief executive of Legal Beagles, said only around 500 firms published fixed fees on their websites.

The managing director of a law firm involved in testing Veyo has described how the Law Society realised too late that it had “built something nobody wanted”. David Bridge said what was left of Veyo should be converted into a secure portal for conveyancers.

One in ten legal advice agencies warn that they are likely to close next year, a report for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has revealed. More than half had been forced to make major changes as a result of LASPO.

The first online dispute resolution (ODR) system for divorcing and separating couples in the UK is to be launched by Relate next spring. Relate has received no government funding for the project, and instead relied on a number of sources, including Google.

The Law Society “must be held to account” for the collapse of conveyancing portal Veyo, the founder of the Bold Legal Group has said. Rob Hailstone accused the society of “hiding the truth about its mismanagement”.

A law firm has become a minority investor in a legal tech company, in what is understood to be the first move of its kind. Taylor Vinters said it wanted to develop new technology through collaboration with other businesses,

A Canadian law firm which runs offices inside Walmart supermarkets is planning to almost double in size next year, it has emerged. Mark Morris, co-founder of Axess Law, said the firm could potentially expand into the USA and the UK.

Riverview Law has unveiled the technology which will power a range of legal ‘virtual assistants’ it is preparing to launch next year. Riverview said ‘Kim’ was already being used outside the legal world.

The demise of the Law Society and Mastek’s online conveyancing portal Veyo gives the “green light” to rival system Free2Convey, the chair of the Legal Software Suppliers Association has said. Matt Lancaster said Free2Convey could now become the “central conveyancing portal”.