LawTechUK’s generative AI (GenAI) event held yesterday (5 February) was an unequivocal success, demonstrating the transformative potential of GenAI across the legal sector. Those lucky enough to be in the room were treated to a fast-moving agenda of speakers who covered how GenAI is impacting all areas of the legal world, from Big Law to the Judiciary and everyone in between.
The atmosphere in the room was charged with enthusiasm for the possibilities of GenAI, and it was refreshing to witness the shift from scepticism to keen interest over the last two years.
We were welcomed by Christina Blacklaws, chair of the LawTech Advisory Panel, who expertly hosted the event that had been curated by the team at Legal Geek.
Elliot White, director of innovation & legal technology at Addleshaw Goddard then kicked us off in a Q&A led by Legal Geek director Beth Fellner, sharing the learnings of his firm around how to implement and scale the use of GenAI. The fact that the firm allowed lawyers to “play” in a safe environment and to then find the use cases themselves, appears to have been a large part of Addleshaw Goddard’s success.
The showstopper for me was the talk by Dee Masters, barrister at Cloister Chambers, speaking about how GenAI saves her approximately five hours a week. She gave helpful examples of how she used it and got us all thinking about the impact on the justice system if we could get judges to use it too. Five hours is the sitting time of a judge in one day, and cases currently can only go as fast as it takes the judge to compile and summarise their notes. The time savings to be made and the potential to free up the overstretched court system are huge.
Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, championed the use of GenAI in the UK and the work of LawTechUK. He referred to the strict approach taken in New South Wales, Australia, banning the use of Gen AI when preparing, for example, witness statements or affidavits, compared to the UK’s more liberal approach. As pointed out in an interesting post on LinkedIn by Jemma Macfadyen, director at Spinnaker Consulting & Research, The Master of the Rolls said that AI is not a choice for lawyers – it is about HOW to understand it and use it effectively.
In my session, I spoke about GenAI for legal work, focusing on document drafting. I broke down drafting into different tasks and document types and gave examples of where GenAI can and should, and perhaps controversially at a GenAI event, should not be used.
Sophia Adams Bhatti, former director of legal and regulatory policy at The Law Society of England and Wales, talked about her recent report, AI in Our Justice System, which you can read here: https://justice.org.uk/ai-in-our-justice-system/ – it proposes the first rights-based framework to guide AI use across the UK justice system, to help us harness AI’s power while guarding against its risks.
Melina Gisler, co-founder of Edenreach, and Dr Jean-Pierre Gauci, senior research fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, shared the findings of their research and highlighted the justice needs of the most vulnerable in society.
We then had a quick fire round of five minute talks:
Wendy Jephson, founder of Let’s Think, blew my head off with how they are using behavioural science to improve the curation of knowledge management. They have joined with Kingsley Napley, a top 100 UK law firm, to develop The Knowledge Exchange MV;
Uwais Iqbal, founder of Simplexico, got everyone on their feet and gave fantastic leftfield examples of GenAI tools as microwaves, pizza ovens and private chefs; and
Lucy Tyrell, general counsel at Wordsmith AI – gave a demo of their product, which had notably beautiful UI.
The final expert panel of the day, which was made up of Theresa Yurkewich Hoffmann from Microsoft, Rowena Rix from Dentons, Alison Berryman from BizTechLawyer, and Hannah Richardson from Microsoft Health Futures (refreshingly all female) who took questions around assessing GenAI tools, benchmarking, switching models, and the importance of governance.
All in all, a resounding success and well done to all.
Catherine Bamford is a legal engineer and founder of Bam Legal. She is recognised globally as an expert in document automation and legal service transformation.