We speak to co-founder and CEO Philip Young about what underpins the landmark law firm launch
The UK Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has authorised the first law firm providing legal services purely through technology, with Garfield.Law Ltd now able to provide regulated legal services in England and Wales.
Co-founded by former lawyer and CEO Philip Young (pictured below) and technologist Daniel Long, Garfield.Law offers small and medium sized businesses, as well as other law firms, the use of an AI-powered litigation assistant to help them recover unpaid debts through the English and Welsh court system, guiding them through the small claims process up to trial.
Young told Legal IT Insider that under the hood is a hybrid AI and expert systems platform, commenting: “As you can imagine, the mainstream media don’t get the nuances of that.” Anything much beyond that, Young says, is a trade secret. Users can calculate the amount of money owed to them, write a letter before action, issue a claim or file for a default judgment. In terms of the AI element of the platform, users can drop information into the platform and Garfield.Law will help put the case together for them.
In a world of AI press headlines, it is natural to be cautious about what Garfield.Law really is and isn’t. Is it tech-only or tech-first, we want to know. Under the SRA’s rules, Young, the named regulated solicitor, will still ultimately be accountable for the firm delivering high professional standards. This means he is also responsible for all the system outputs and for anything that goes wrong.
The former founder of City boutique law firm Cooke Young & Keidan, Young is reassuringly forthcoming with his answers. “We’re a regulated law firm that’s not providing services through human lawyers,” he says. “I’m the COLP and COFA and it’s my responsibility to oversee the platform. I’m responsible at a high level but also to begin with as part of the rollout I’m checking everything before it goes out. Over time, I’ll move to a risk-based sampling approach.” Young has a core team of five and a wider team of 15 that includes three other ad hoc consultant solicitors and a barrister.
Garfield.Law is, Young says, intended to level the playing field, with its inspiration coming from Young’s brother-in-law Andy, a self employed plumber, who has to write off unpaid debts rather than pursue them through the courts. Interestingly, Young also wants to help law firms to scale and says: “We’ve built something that law firms can use not only for their own fixed fees but also to be able to use for their clients.
“All of the firms that have seen demos all instantly say, ‘this is helpful, we can use it to scale rather than hiring more people and still maintain quality. We can use a more limited number of people to discharge claims in a more economical way.'”
Currently B2B, Young says there will be probably be some B2C work in the future, commenting: “This technology is exciting because there are plenty of areas of legal deserts where it’s difficult for people to get access to justice.”
The magnitude of Garfield.Law becoming regulated should not be underestimated. In the United States, where the regulatory landscape is far stricter, platforms such as DoNoPay have attempted to accomplish similar goals and been shut down amid a flurry of litigation for practising law without a license.
The UK regulator says that it is encouraging the development of new approaches and models due to the potential consumer benefits. AI-driven legal services could deliver better, quicker and more affordable legal services. There are, however, potential risks to the public, so the SRA also says that it has been making sure there are appropriate checks in place to make sure that consumer protections are not diluted.
One of those checks was that there are appropriate processes in place to quality-check work, keep client information confidential, and safeguard against conflicts of interests. The SRA has also checked the firm is managing the risk of AI hallucinations. The system will not be able to propose relevant case law, which is a high-risk area for large language model machine learning.
The SRA stresses that Garfield.Law is not autonomous and will only take a step where the client has approved it, and furthermore there are supervision and monitoring processes in place. This includes greater oversight of claims in the initial launch phase, so that issues or risks can be identified.
Paul Philip, the SRA’s chief executive, said: ‘The first regulatory approval of an AI-based law firm is a landmark moment for legal services in this country. With so many people and small businesses struggling to access legal services, we cannot afford to pull up the drawbridge on innovations that could have big public benefits. Responsible use of AI by law firms could improve legal services, while making them easier to access and more affordable.”
Slightly more curiously he adds: “Any new law firm comes with potential risks, but the risks around an AI-driven law firm are novel. So we have worked closely with this firm to make sure it can meet our rules, and all the appropriate protections are in place.”
As this is likely to be the first of many AI-driven law firms, Philip says that the SRA will be monitoring progress of this new model closely. Stay tuned.