Technology

The courts service is already seeing benefits from the early stages of the digital delivery of justice, it said yesterday as it outlined its plans for further rationalisation of the physical court estate. The proposals included the potential closure of eight courts, including Blackfriars Crown Court, which was meant to be one of venues for the flexible operating hours pilot.

The Link App, the communications application for law firms and their clients created by former The Apprentice candidate Lauren Riley, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise £300,000 as it continues to establish itself. Sir Nigel Knowles has taken over as chairman of the company.

City law firm Clyde & Co has teamed up with computing students to undertake data analysis for clients, including predictions of the likelihood of disputes going to trial and potential litigation outcomes. Meanwhile, Bristol-based TLT has taken a share of a US artificial intelligence contracts review software supplier.

The Land Registry has unveiled plans to use artificial intelligence in conveyancing and also publish data on conveyancers’ performance. It comes as a Legal Futures report – published today – highlights how the use of data is set to change commercial conveyancing and the law firms which do it.

The courts need to “move fast” to develop online dispute resolution and other forms of speedier dispute resolution, “before the millennials lose faith in the way the older generation is content to deliver justice”, the Chancellor of the High Court has warned. He also said that technology that aimed to forecast the outcome of disputes was “very useful”.

A lawyer has launched an artificial intelligence-backed (AI) chatbot that powers what he calls the ‘Law Firm Without Lawyers’, initially aimed at consumer and tax law but shortly to be extended to domestic violence. Ailira is short for Artificially Intelligent Legal Information Resource Assistant.

Up to 70% of the law can be carried out by robots and all legal documents will be automated within a decade, according to the student entrepreneur who created the ground-breaking DoNotPay chatbot. He painted a picture of the future in which voice-activated chatbots would assist litigants-in-person and online courts would interact with chatbot

City law firm Kennedys has called in artificial intelligence (AI) experts at Manchester University to help develop a new product to combat insurance fraud. The two-year project, co-funded by the government agency Innovate UK, will involve academics develop a new system based on the law firm’s databases.

London law firm and alternative business structure Mishcon de Reya has invested cash in two of the six lawtech start-ups that its incubator, MDR LAB, chose from among a crowded field earlier this year. Mishcon also announced yesterday that it would run a similar competition in 2018.

Billy Bot, the ‘robot junior clerk’, is now managing up to 100 new instructions a day from solicitors and members of the public, agreeing fees, booking barristers, checking for conflicts and even making the coffee. The time the system saves has already meant that the clerks at Clerksroom have to work fewer hours than before, with no cut in salary.