We have responded to the Legal Services Board (LSB) session on its draft statutory steerage on selling expertise and innovation to enhance entry to authorized companies.

The proposals

The LSB’s draft statutory steerage for authorized companies regulators goals to advertise:

• larger entry for customers to a broader vary of authorized companies that higher meet their numerous wants;
• a authorized companies market that’s open to expertise suppliers and authorized companies innovators who want to enter the market and ship companies to customers; and
• improved entry to justice and a discount in unmet authorized want.

If the steerage is launched, the LSB will think about how regulators take account of it by way of its annual regulatory efficiency evaluation.

Our view

We are broadly supportive of the LSB’s intentions to assist the adoption of expertise and innovation within the supply of authorized companies to handle authorized wants.

However, whereas the consideration of expertise and innovation to enhance entry to authorized companies and identification of regulatory obstacles to innovation by offering steerage is vital, we don’t imagine that statutory steerage by the LSB is an acceptable or efficient response on condition that:

• the limitations to expertise adoption, significantly amongst SME companies, are sometimes pushed by monetary and useful resource constraints; statutory steerage will neither change this panorama nor tackle these points with out further assist
• there are totally different ranges of abilities, information, and experience concerning expertise throughout companies of various sizes; there’s a danger that regulators is probably not delicate to the context by which totally different authorized service suppliers function when implementing the steerage
• addressing unmet authorized wants and bettering entry to justice are advanced, multifaceted challenges that expertise alone can not resolve
• wider consideration of challenges and potential dangers for companies in expertise and AI adoption, equivalent to information safety and cybersecurity want extra detailed consideration
• we might have considerations if mandates for expertise adoption (or comparable) are a sensible consequence of how regulators interpret the steerage

We advocate that exploring the necessity for overarching ideas or non-statutory steerage, and sharing greatest observe, could be various, optimistic and ample first steps to selling expertise and innovation within the authorized sector. This strategy would additionally guarantee a larger consistency of strategy throughout the totally different regulators.

What this implies for solicitors

Technology and AI innovation are evolving at a fast tempo and there’s important momentum driving its growth which will have long-term transformative influence on the observe of regulation.

As a occupation, this includes understanding each the alternatives and challenges new applied sciences convey.

We imagine that statutory steerage will place important regulatory and monetary burdens that disproportionately have an effect on SMEs, who’re in a special place to massive companies with greater capability for expertise innovation and devoted groups to implement it.

Further, the authorized occupation itself is just not a barrier to expertise adoption.

Instead, there are important historic, technical, monetary, in addition to human and organisational limitations that may forestall the adoption of applied sciences.

While expertise can play an vital function in bettering entry to authorized companies or addressing unmet authorized want, it isn’t a silver bullet.

We imagine that extra basic treatments to handle unmet authorized want are obligatory, equivalent to restoring the supply of authorized assist at ample financial ranges.

Next steps

The session closed on 2 October 2023.

Read the consultation on the LSB website.