Technology

A new online service for family and immigration clients is launching today, giving them access to lawyers at prestige firms such as Withers and Farrer & Co. The founder said she wanted the website to help “thousands of people” reduce their legal costs in a “very substantial way”. Users can buy answers to legal questions for between £4.99 and £200.

Leading legal artificial intelligence company ROSS Intelligence has unveiled a new $8.7m (£6.6m) funding round, some of its from Nextlaw Labs, the business accelerator backed by UK-based global firm Dentons. ROSS has developed AI technology that can read and answer questions about the law.

An internet conveyancing platform last week completed what it claimed was the first property to be digitally exchanged online and moved instantly to a live blockchain. It reported the property – in Trowbridge, Wiltshire – went from initial marketing to a verified online exchange in just seven days.

More than 50 solicitors, barristers and in-house counsel have volunteered to outsmart predictive software based on artificial intelligence in a ground-breaking lawyer v machine challenge. Lawyers will have a week to predict whether real PPI complaints were upheld or rejected by the Financial Ombudsman, before CaseCrunch has its go.

A European legal services provider specialising in advising tech companies has launched a prototype of what it calls the first business-to-business legal chatbot and, continuing its rapid expansion, plans to open a London office at the end of the year.

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.