Just under a week ago the UK regulator’s approval for the launch of “the first AI-driven law firm” Garfield.Law generated breathless headlines, attracting mainstream media attention – including a spot on the Today Show – and sparking an inevitable wave of scrutiny from the legal tech community. What does “the first purely AI-based firm” really mean? Is this the start of a disintermediated legal future, or great marketing? And if Garfield – and the others that will inevitably follow – help to solve the access to justice crisis, should any of us care?
As a reminder or in case you’ve managed to miss the furore, Garfield is delivering debt recovery services to SMEs and law firms—services such as letters before action and small claims filings to recover invoices of up to £10k through the English small claims court. It has been given approval by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to undertake regulated legal activity, led by solicitor and Garfield co-founder Philip Young. The techy behind it is quantum physicist Daniel Long.
What’s super cool is that clients – who will eventually include consumers – are able to buy, for example, a chasing letter, for £2. A letter before action is £7.50. Furthermore, businesses that would struggle to do their own generative AI testing or enterprise roll outs can just use Garfield out of the box. In fact, there are a few groundbreaking things about Garfield. It just feels important to be clear on what those are.
The tech
Garfield, Young told me a week ago, is a hybrid AI and expert systems platform. Other than that, he and Long are keeping their cards close to their chest. “Daniel will murder me if I say more,” he joked.
As Garfield expands outside of its debt recovery beginnings into housing and beyond, as Young has suggested publicly is the plan, it appears that Long and his team will be building a different portal, and that this is not an agentic AI play.
However, in these still heady days of generative AI, it’s worth noting that many of us have become unqualified mechanics with our heads under the hood, sucking air through our teeth as we remark on how much LLM is involved here.
Should we care whether and how much of the platform is ‘old AI’ and how much is new?
Acclaimed author and public speaker, Professor Richard Susskind
, tells me the answer is a clear ‘no’. “For those who are tempted to dismiss a system for being an ‘expert system’, as I explain in my new book, How To Think About AI: A Guide for Perplexed, expert systems are in fact first generation AI systems,” he says. “Also in the book – to be focused too much on the underlying technologies and techniques is to run the risk of engaging excessively in ‘process-thinking’. We should, in this context, be much more engaged in “outcome-thinking” – asking what benefits, outputs, and value will be brought to users.”
He adds, with regard to Garfield’s regulatory green light: “I can’t vouch for the particular service but am hugely encouraged to hear that the SRA is supportive of the idea that AI, directly or indirectly, might enable legal services to be more accessible. While some might want to quibble about the purity or autonomy of the AI involved, our main focus and excitement here should instead be on the possibility of more affordable and reliable access to the law.”
Much of the quibbling stems from the fact that people feel hoodwinked by organisations with overzealous AI marketing campaigns. There is a backlash against terminal innovation by press release. Some very serious and respected voices out there are downplaying the impact that AI will have full stop.
Crispin Passmore, a consultant on regulation and innovation who previously led the regulatory reform programme at the SRA, argues that it is now also hard to disaggregate AI powered and human powered advice: all firms are using AI in their basic MS Office desktop set up. “It’s good to celebrate anyone moving things forward buts let not pretend anything is unique that isn’t,” he says.
The regulated entity
In terms of what has been regulated and whether it is correct to describe Garfield as a tech-only law firm (as I did last week, albeit with caveats), it is important to remember that the SRA has regulated the human-led law firm Garfield, not the AI product.
Strategic technology adviser and lawyer Jenifer Swallow, who is the former CEO of LawtechUK, tells me: “There’s a lot in the timing and positioning here. Garfield AI has captured the imagination of the mainstream media and that’s fine, but it’s not correct to say that the firm is tech only. This is a new law firm that has been launched to take care of money claims and has deployed technology to do that.”
Young is the registered lawyer behind the firm and will always have to sample the output for accuracy. Were the firm to fail, it would be Young that’s on the hook.
Passmore says: “I think people overthink the regulation of AI. It’s a tool. A quite smart one and eventually one that disrupts current models of delivery, but the fundamentals don’t change in my view. Customers contract with entities or people that have legal personality and AI doesn’t have that. So, it’s more accurate to say that’s SRA has regulated an ‘AI powered’ law firm.”
Importantly, he adds: “The SRA cannot authorise AI to deliver legal advice under the current legislation and I see no need for it to be able to do so.”
To an earlier point, most of Garfield’s services – such as sending a chasing letter – are not regulated legal services at all.
The pricing
Is Garfield an AI-only law firm? It is not. But if we take Susskind’s advice and focus on the value it brings to clients through efficiency and cost-effectiveness, then we come back to the pricing per unit.
For Swallow, this is the most exciting part of the launch. She points out that even the cost-conscious conveyancing sector hasn’t achieved a pay-as-you-go, unit-based model like this. Swallow was previously general counsel at Transferwise, which had the stated objective to drive the cost of moving money down to the point that it was negligible. “The fact that Garfield AI have unbundled pricing is the most interesting thing in all of this,” she says.
Taking a leaf out of Transferwise’s book, Garfield could seek to drive the price down even further.
The next step, she says, will be for the private sector and the State work together to help achieve true access to justice, for example enabling providers to become certified and plugged into the State’s infrastructure via the likes of Money Claim Online.
Conclusion
While Garfield may not live up to some of the more dramatic claims or expectations, it is a tech-enabled model that brings real value to underserved users of the justice system.
Its unbundled pricing and accessible platform point to a future where we won’t think twice about using the justice system to claim back money that we’re rightfully owed – a position that is currently inconceivable for most.
As with any ‘end of lawyers’ type AI story it has attracted more attention than it deserves. Young himself will be pleased when the furore blows over and he can get back to the day job.
As to whether Garfield is AI hype or access to justice hope, it’s obviously both.