Lord chancellor David Lammy appears poised to throw a financial lifeline to LawtechUK, the government-funded initiative charged with driving digital transformation in the legal sector.
In his speech on criminal justice reform this morning, the lord chancellor also alluded to the potentially transformative effect of online digital tools to open up access to justice.
‘Lawtech is central to this,’ he told an invited audience of journalists and key stakeholders at London’s Excel exhibition centre. ‘We can be proud that the UK is leading the charge. Forty-four percent of European lawtech start-ups are based here in the UK. In 2019 we had around 110 lawtech ventures. And we’ve got no intention of slowing down.
‘We’re making sure that the conditions are right for lawtech to thrive, because from digital tools that reduce administration, to AI-assisted case analysis to help legal teams identify key issues more quickly, it’s enabling lawyers to do more work at their best, applying their judgment, weighing up the facts and delivering fair outcomes.’
Lammy said he will be allocating funding of £1.5m a year for the next three years ‘to support the sector further and make sure the UK continues to be at the frontier of lawtech’.
Lammy did not confirm how the £4.5m will be spent. The Ministry of Justice has been contacted for comment.
LawtechUK’s funding is due to run out at the end of March. In March 2025, the then five-year-old initiative, which is run by contractors CodeBase and Legal Geek (acquired last year by transatlantic legal information giant Law Business Research), was handed a £1.5m lifeline by justice minister Sarah Sackman to continue for another 12 months.
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