The Legal Services Board (LSB) has published its latest detailed picture of levels of innovation and use of technology in legal services in England and Wales (PDF), tracking changes since the last survey in 2018. The report is based on surveys with 1,310 firms, including solicitors’ firms, barristers’ chambers, other regulated legal services firms, and unregulated legal services firms.
The survey shows a step change in the use of innovation and technology to develop and deliver legal services. Law firms overwhelmingly (92%) say that the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated restrictions have increased their trust in and use of technology.
‘Technology for access’
- Over nine in ten (95%) firms found that implementing new technologies has made them more responsive to clients’ needs and reduced the time to deliver services (84%).
- 61% of firms have introduced at least one of 13 ‘technologies for access’, making it easier for people to access legal services. These include video conferencing, electronic signatures, identification-checking tools, websites with interactive features, live chat or virtual assistants and custom-built smart apps.
- The technology that law firms most commonly use with clients is video conferencing (80%).
- Six in ten (60%) firms agree that their clients expect them to use technology to deliver legal services, and nearly half (49%) agree that technology can make it cheaper to deliver legal services.
Other key findings
- The use of more advanced technologies like technology-assisted review, predictive technology, robotic process automation, and blockchain or distributed ledger technology is low at between 2% and 5%. However, 12% to 15% of law firms expect to use them in the next three years.
- Since 2018, the percentage of firms agreeing that legal services regulation stops them from using technologies more widely has dropped from 27% to 18%. Two-thirds (65%) of firms disagree that regulation is a barrier to using new technologies.
- Just under half of those firms who have introduced significantly new services (47%) say that it costs the same as expected, with 27% saying it costs less than expected.
- Law firms found that implementing new technologies has also reduced their environmental impact (87%).
Alan Kershaw, Chair of the Legal Services Board, said:
‘From AI to video conferencing, technology has the potential to widen access to legal services dramatically, and the LSB is committed to ensuring that regulation unlocks its benefits for consumers and providers. The Covid-19 pandemic has speeded up the adoption of technology, and we must build on that momentum to foster a culture of innovation that designs services around the needs of consumers.
‘While it is encouraging to see that the perception that regulation is a constraint to introducing new technology has fallen, several factors still prevent the wider take up of technology. Regulators must be proactive in understanding the opportunities and risks and remove barriers which prevent innovators entering the sector and stop consumers from accessing services.’
The LSB is developing new statutory guidance for regulators on promoting the use of technology for access and will consult publicly later this year. This guidance will clarify our expectations of regulators, including the need for regulatory frameworks to be open to technology and innovation that benefits consumers and that regulation should be a positive, enabling driver for change.
Notes to Editor
About the LSB
- The Legal Services Board (LSB) is the independent body responsible for overseeing the regulation of legal services in England and Wales. We are independent of both government and the profession. We are funded by a levy on the approved regulators.
- We oversee ten approved regulators, some of which have delegated their regulatory functions to independent regulatory bodies.
- We operate within a statutory framework set out in the Legal Services Act 2007, which describes our functions and our powers. The Act sets out eight regulatory objectives, which we share with the approved regulators and regulatory bodies.
- We also oversee the Office for Legal Complaints, which is responsible for administering the Legal Ombudsman scheme, and we have specific functions in relation to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
About the research
- The LSB commissioned Pye Tait Consulting (https://www.pyetait.com/), after a competitive tendering process to conduct the data collection. The LSB then carried out the analysis and reporting in house. The aims of this survey were to:
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- understand firms’ level of use of service innovation and technology to design and deliver legal services;
- and what drives or constrains that use (including leaving the EU and the Covid-19 pandemic);
- measure changes over time, particularly from our last survey wave in 2018.
- Pye Tait interviewed 1,310 legal services organisations through computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI).
- Organisations were sampled from solicitors’ firms, barristers’ chambers, other regulated legal services providers and from unregulated legal services providers by size group, country/region, and ABS (alternative business structure) status. They were then statistically weighted to be as representative of the legal services market as possible.
- The thirteen technologies the survey asked about are:
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- Technology Assisted Review (TAR), which automatically classifies documents
- Automated Document Assembly, which uses templates to generate documents
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA), which automates repetitive tasks
- Predictive technology, which forecasts data patterns
- Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology, including smart contracts
- A website with interactive features, such as embedded contact forms and case tracking*
- Live chat or virtual assistants on your website, directing consumer queries*
- Cloud-based solutions or similar for data storage
- ID checking tools, facilitating verifying identification*
- Electronic signatures, removing the need for in-person meetings to sign documents*
- Cyber security measures, bolstering firms’ protection against e.g., online malware
- Custom built smart device applications for clients, enabling consumers to access advice or updates from your organisation*
- Video-conferencing with clients, removing the need for consumers to attend in-person meetings*
*Technologies for access