Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System

I have recently posted a number of items relating to the application of information technologies in the delivery of legal services.

Another source of information and support for the development of technology in the delivery of legal services may be found at Lawtech – part of a range of initiatives that have been formed under the overall Tech Nation label. (Other activities of Tech Nation relate to, for example, the finance sector, AI, cybersecurity, the net zero economy.)

The objective of the organisation is to support new companies wanting to develop new services in the areas covered by Tech Nation. Considerable innovation has occurred in recent years in the ways in which financial services are delivered. The challenge is to see how the provision of legal services can similarly be transformed.

The Technation website states:

The legal and tech community have the opportunity and responsibility to restructure and reinvent legal services, to meet and exceed the evolving demands of business and society, in our digital world.

LawtechUK is an initiative that will help transform the UK legal sector through tech

This work is supported by a Lawtech Delivery Panel (LTDP), chaired by Christina Blacklaws, a former President of the Law Society.

This is a government-backed initiative bringing together legal sector leaders and experts from government, the judiciary, academia and industry in a single forum, to support the digital transformation of the UK legal sector. The LTDP act as an important advisory board to LawtechUK

An introduction to LawTech may be found at https://technation.io/lawtechuk/

Law tech companies that have been supported through Tech Nation are listed at https://technation.io/lawtechdatacommons/lawtech-startups-and-scaleups/

Further impetus for these developments has been given by an important report published by the Law Society in October 2019 on the importance for law firms of Law Tech. In particular, it offers encouragment to solicitors in small firms and sole practitioners to take Lawtech seriously.

The Law Society Report may be downloaded at https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/campaigns/lawtech/guides/introduction-to-lawtech