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Thing is, if you cut out the buzz words, the you-are-all-luddites-if-you-dont-agree-to-pay-me-money shouting, and the daydreaming, there's nothing concrete left.

Pretty much as with all "innovations" in the legal services field in the last 15 years.

As I said flippantly in another post on a different article, law is a social construct. It does not exist. There is no right and wrong. It is decided upon by people.

I personally can not conceive of how this can be computerised. How is the computer going to decide whether a party has acted reasonably or not? Or whether a contract term is fair?

Or whether the maintenance provision of the highways authority is a system that complies with the Act?

And when a person goes on the online portal and tries to sue their District Council for breaching a contract, and the grounds are that the person tripped on a Defective paving slab, how is the computer going to know that the correct defendant is the County Council, and that the cause of action is breach of statutory duty?

And when the District Council replies online and says "we deny liability as there was no contract with us and we do not maintain the pavement" how is the person going to know that this is a valid defence but he has alternative options, as opposed to this is a case worth proceeding with?

And when he does eventually sue the County Council online, and they say "we deny liability because we inspected that road on the 3rd April and only two class 3 repairs were noted", how will the person know that this is a case worth running?

You could win votes by saying, "now, kill all the lawyers - with a Little Help (tm) from Martin Lewis (a registered service mark of Moneysupermarket.com PLC) you can resolve all your disputes online, with only a few clicks!".

But when people realise that those few clicks invariably end up with "computer says no" what then?