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Thank you Anonymous at 09.41. Let me pick up on your points as you are perfectly entitled to raise them.

“It’s all been done before”. I don’t know what resources or tools are available to conveyancers or other areas of law as I’m focussed solely on family law. My own practice has invested heavily in various bits of kit and tech over the years to help clients but when I was looking for specific software in 2009/10 I could not find it. I even looked in the North American market imagining that they were bound to be ahead of us in client-facing software and collaborative working. Since it didn’t exist, I had a crack at it myself. So, I honestly don’t think it has all been done before, and certainly not in family law.

“You’re one hack away from a claim”. We are all one hack away from a claim with the tech we employ right now across our various firms. But, I entirely agree with your risk-averse sentiment and that is why most of the funding has gone into the build of the system architecture and the multiple encryption modes for keeping data safe in transit. Security was the starting point in the design rather than being an afterthought to a pre-existing system. The security is formidable. It has to be. It exceeds the level of security we trust to our online banking every day.

“It will be obsolete when the courts bypass lawyers”. Clients will still need lawyers like us (I’m pretty sure you’re a lawyer) whatever happens to the court system. I have an apprehension that my particular branch of the profession (but the point could easily apply to the Bar) is being bypassed in the very public debate taking place between the judiciary and the executive over online courts. Professor Susskind has been telling us we are dying for a very long time. The good professor also has some more positive news for us as well if we listen to him about a future profession that will have to rely more upon its core skills rather than just filling out forms. I’m comfortable with that. Siaro envisages a future that has online courts and digital pathways but it places lawyers at the centre of it and not at the margins. Why go to court if your local solicitor has the tools to resolve your family dispute? That local solicitor might be wearing the hat of mediator, collaborative lawyer or family law arbitrator. I don’t want to say much more as I would like to keep my powder dry for conference.

“Don't tell me you'll be telling us "AI" is the future next!” AI has been the future for years (apparently). We know that the big boys, Dentons et al, are beavering away at AI applications for their commercial work to please their clients. It makes sense to use intelligent automation on multi-million pound M&A deals. I have followed, with keen interest, discussions on AI in the law but the focus has very much been on high-end commercial practice. That’s great. But, and I’ll step onto the soapbox for a minute, why don’t Mr and Mrs Jones facing the upheaval of a separation or divorce deserve access to the innovation taken for granted by the blue chip clients of the Magic Circle? Why are the needs of Mr & Mrs Jones, including the best interests of their children, less important, less valuable to the body civic, than the needs of global corporates? I don’t see why Mr and Mrs Jones should wait at the back of the queue. I have zero interest in whether Siaro qualifies as AI or not. But, and here is a full and frank admission, I had no idea that the terms bandied about in AI such as ‘assisted case framing’, ‘predictive analysis’ and ‘social deliberative skills’ were labels that I could apply to Siaro. Who knew? I didn’t. I just built something that I thought would solve a few problems for lawyers and family law clients alike based on my experience over the years. You can apply the AI tag to Siaro if you wish but so long as it works our clients won’t care what label we put on it.

“We are and will remain a people business”. Agreed. That is our key asset. Siaro just makes it easier for clients to engage with us, access our expertise and have a objectively valuable service from us.

“And what is "soft time" and how do you quantify it?” Well, I was referring to all the time taken on the ‘phone to potential clients and in deeply frustrating free half hours (which always become an hour or more when, as usual, there is a high level of client distress). We lawyers are risk-averse to answering the most difficult questions posed to us at these first consultations because we don’t have the facts, and you can see and feel the frustration from clients that they don’t get a straight answer. Clients in family law consultations don’t want information. They want advice. They want to know what to do. They want the advice now. I’m afraid our ‘traditional’ way of working, against the backdrop of regulation and risk, and only getting the facts during that first meeting, makes it almost impossible to satisfy that client need on each occasion. I simply used Siaro to strip out most of the ‘soft’ cost and risk of seeing clients for the first time. The client engagement changes utterly when you have the key information (and a lot more) about your client, their spouse, family, income and assets, including every discretionary factor you could dream of, before stepping into the room with them.

I reckon you’re a lawyer, so come to the conference on 17th March and I will happily buy you cake and coffee (other beverages are available) and we can chat further.