Harper: KTP will get our data more organised
The only thing that makes it hard for smaller law firms to invest in legal tech is “compromising profits today for growth tomorrow”, the founder of a fast-expanding commercial law firm has said.
Toby Harper, chief executive of Harper James, said the Birmingham-based firm was working on a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) with Aston University, backed by funding of almost £238,000 from Innovate UK.
Mr Harper said: “A lot of small firms are very profitable, but if traditional partnerships extract all the profit, they won’t have it for future development. The only thing that is hard is compromising profits today for growth tomorrow.
“It is a deliberate decision I have made to invest in tech rather than profits today. It’s an investment in our people.”
Mr Harper also said “a lot of small law firms” could get support with legal tech, for example through a KTP.
“It’s more of an internal challenge. Change is happening. You can’t bury your head in the sand. You’ve got to be proactive.”
Innovate UK will provide £237,799 in funding for the KTP, which will run for three years, while Harper James contributes £117,125.
After applying to Innovate UK last year, Mr Harper was introduced earlier this year to Professor Abdul Sadka at Aston University in Birmingham, “one of the leading universities in the UK for tech innovation, particularly involving data”.
He said the law firm, which specialises in advice for start-ups and scale-ups, had been building extensions to its existing AI assistant and was “in the process of educating personas” so that, for example, the sales team had AI sales assistants and the lawyers AI paralegals.
“The aim of the KTP is to get our data more organised so we can use it more effectively.”
Mr Harper said humans currently trained the firm’s AI “on the data you want it to learn and work with”. The ultimate goal of the KTP was to give the AI “power over our data to educate itself”.
Harper James is in the final stages of recruiting an associate from Aston University, an academic with experience of industry, to work in the law firm during the KTP.
He described the law firm as hybrid, with a sales team in Sheffield and an operations team in Birmingham, and serviced offices which could also be used by lawyers in centres like London, Manchester and Cardiff.
He said staff numbers, currently at over 140, were likely to expand to over 160 by the end of the firm’s current financial year in September 2025. Nine out of 10 staff are full-time employees, the rest consultants.
He predicted that turnover at Harper James, which hit £12.2m in September 2024, could reach over £15m in that time.
Harper James charges its clients mainly through different ‘service plans’, rebranded in September as ‘Engage, Enable and Extend’.
Mr Harper remains sole owner of the firm, which had grown organically, and he was “not looking for external investment”.
He added: “I’ve been making massive investments in technology over the last two years to build the right foundations for the future”.
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