Garfield Law, which in May was given UK regulatory approval to provide online AI-driven legal services, today (29 September) today provided an example of one of its first use cases, recovering £7,000 in invoices for a transport consultancy for just £7.50 in fees.
Mayer Brown (the consultancy) sent a debtor a letter before action and David Bone, finance director at Mayer Brown, said in a statement: “Using Garfield allowed us to successfully recover around £7,000 in outstanding invoices with only a few minutes of work. It is an incredibly effective and efficient tool that has really helped with debt recovery.”
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Garfield’s co-founder and CEO Philip Young said: “The key point is that this took less than five minutes for £7,000. It’s a demonstration of the potential productivity gains that AI can have. Imagine multiplying that across all the unpaid debts out there.”
Garfield’s launch earlier this year was greeted with column inches heralding the world’s first AI firm. A few months down the track, Young says that Garfield’s customers range from sole traders to large companies with full finance functions. “It’s working,” he said. “People have said that AI is just hype but we’re proving that if you build in a responsible way and build something that works, it’s not hype.”
He added: “Our users go through phases of putting a couple of invoices on as a test and then when they start getting paid they are euphoric.” You can claim for an unpaid debt for up to six years for a simple law contract and 12 years for a deed, so companies may well be digging through their filing cabinets.
Law firm clients are currently using Garfield to chase their own debt but Young said: “They are picking up on the fact that they can use us for their clients, especially since the Mazur judgement.” In Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys, the High Court declared that an unqualified employee such as a paralegal can’t conduct litigation under the supervision of a solicitor – supervision does not transform an unauthorised employee into an authorised litigator.
Young said: “The court said that unqualified people, even if they work in a law firm, can’t conduct litigation. We’ve been approached by law firms looking to substitute unregulated people for AI.”
You can find that case here: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/2341