The Legal Services Board (LSB) is playing a key role in the government’s newly launched AI Growth Lab, an important step in promoting regulation that harnesses AI’s benefits for consumers and drives economic growth.
Announced today at the government’s AI Adoption Summit during London Tech Week, the Lab gives AI companies the opportunity to test products and services in real-world conditions under regulatory supervision before bringing them to market. This ‘advisory sandbox’ offers legal services providers and innovators greater confidence to innovate quickly, without requiring changes to existing legal or regulatory requirements.
Richard Orpin, Chief Executive of the Legal Services Board, said: “The AI Growth Lab is a pragmatic and timely initiative to accelerate the responsible adoption of AI in legal services. By bringing regulators and industry together, the Lab can provide the clarity and confidence that legal services providers and innovators need to innovate safely and quickly, driving growth in the sector.
“Our research shows that consumers are open to the benefits of AI in legal services, but that trust depends on strong safeguards, transparency and accountability. The Lab provides a practical way to apply these insights in real settings to support and enable safe innovation.”
The LSB will work alongside the regulators it oversees, including the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), as well as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), to help firms navigate practical questions around client confidentiality, data protection, explainability and the safe use of AI.
Innovation already happening across the sector
The kind of innovation the Lab is designed to support is already emerging. Garfield.Law, an AI-driven firm authorised by the SRA, specialises in helping small and medium-sized businesses recover unpaid debts through the small claims court. By working directly with the regulator, the firm was able to understand how its AI model could operate within existing rules and put in place appropriate safeguards, including clear user disclosures, all under the supervision of a qualified solicitor. The Lab creates a structured environment for more firms to follow a similar path with confidence.
The Lab also enables firms to engage with several regulators at once, rather than approaching each organisation separately. In one case, a large law firm developing an AI tool to support conveyancing and family law work was able to bring questions about data use and compliance to the SRA, CLC and ICO together. That joined-up approach gave the firm much greater certainty about how the different regulatory frameworks fit together in practice.
In another example, a conveyancing firm is using the sandbox to test an AI tool that analyses property sales packs to flag issues requiring closer attention. The firm is working to show end users not just what the tool has identified, but why, providing assurance about its reliability without requiring users to have any technical understanding of how the AI works.
Participation in the Lab does not constitute regulatory approval, endorsement or authorisation. Following testing, the LSB and the regulators it oversees will consider what regulatory changes, if any, may be needed to further support innovation and growth, while ensuring consumers remain protected.
Applications for AI innovators, including LawTech companies, legal services providers and conveyancing firms, will open later this summer.