Cardiff: Nearshoring viable
The Welsh government should provide grants for SME law firms to invest in legal technology, according to a Law Society report.
Meanwhile, Welsh law firms have proposed that law students should receive additional bursaries if they agree not to leave the country for at least five years.
Many Welsh law firms are small and medium-sized, lacking the resources available to larger firms to invest in technology, it said. Identifying the most useful technology could be “tough”, while choosing the wrong one was costly.
“The Welsh government, ideally in collaboration with the UK government, should look towards developing a grant scheme to support SME law firms with the costs of adopting productivity-boosting lawtech.”
This could be modelled on international legal tech schemes, such as Singapore’s Tech-celerate for Law, through which law firms could obtain up to 80% funding for tech investment.
When it came to artificial intelligence (AI), researchers said: “Firms must be supported by the Welsh government and in partnership with tech firms in both the procurement and implementation of AI, to understand the full potential and understand the risks as the technology evolves.”
They added that UK and Welsh governments should, “as a matter of urgency”, look to conduct a “joined-up, collaborative review of past, current, and potential future utilisation of current and emerging technologies in the legal system in Wales.
“In the interim, it is certainly the case that what is required as a bare minimum in Wales is a far more fundamental level of support from UK government, such as the upgrading of the current basic software and hardware across the justice system.”
The comments came in the discussion paper From Caernarfon to Caerdydd: Reimagining Justice in Wales 2030, which built on the 555-page report, published in 2019, of the Commission on Justice in Wales, chaired by former Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas.
In a section in the latest report, ‘Reimagining the Model Law Firm of 2030’, researchers said 17 out of 20 SME law firms interviewed told them that recruitment was the biggest issue they faced.
Despite a large increase in the number of law students graduating each year, a previous report on the Welsh legal sector, the Jomati Rapid Review, concluded that legal education in Wales was “overwhelmingly geared” to the export of talent.
Law firms put forward a number of ideas to reduce this, including “Welsh incentives early on as to studying”, such as “additional bursaries to remain practising in Wales for five years post-qual (although clearly there would be contractual and moral ramifications to consider)”.
Larger firms, with more security, should consider setting up minor ‘bases’ around Wales and “drop-ins throughout smaller locations, even as a desk space to attend once a week”.
The introduction of Level 7, degree-equivalent apprenticeships, which had been “highly successful” in the legal sector in England, was “vital to the transformation and sustainability of the legal sector in Wales – particularly when looked at in the context of further devolution of justice functions”.
Echoing reports like the Jomati review, researchers said the Welsh government should actively support ‘nearshoring’ – the outsourcing by large City and international law firms of legal and non-legal functions to lower-cost centres in the UK – to Cardiff, where there was a “realistic prospect” of it happening.
The report highlighted the growth of legal ‘advice deserts’ in Wales and the way access to legal advice was concentrated around “the urbanised M4 corridor of in the South of Wales”, leaving those in rural areas of Wales cut off.
Mark Davies, chair of the Law Society’s national board for Wales, said he was “deeply concerned about the growing legal advice deserts across our country”.
On devolution of justice, which the report cautiously welcomed, Jonathan Davies, the Law Society’s head of Wales, said the Welsh government must “put the building blocks in place” before it happened.
“For example, we will continue to echo the importance of a minister for justice, which would create a much-needed budget line for the sector.
“This idea of evolution, not revolution, will ensure that the sector is in the best place before the Welsh government take the reins.”
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