The UK has become a global hub for LawTech, with nearly 4,500 people now employed in the sector, according to financial industry body TheCityUK’s annual legal services report.
The UK is home to 44% of all LawTech start-ups in the EU, a fact the report attributes to ‘an extensive network of 'tech labs' created by law firms, universities and other businesses. It found the industry ‘benefits from a highly developed legal market, a technology talent pipeline, a competitive tax system, a liberal regulatory regime and the recognition of the importance of innovation by government’.
Barclays, for example, has set up a hub for LawTechs in London, to encourage co-working and mentoring, while the Law Society of Scotland launched a programme in 2018 to stimulate innovation.
Government support has included the creation of the UK LawTech Delivery Panel, which announced in May that it will help develop a LawTech Sandbox, a testing hub modelled on a similar ‘sandbox’ that was used to help develop the fintech industry.
Consequently, investment in UK LawTech has tripled in the past two years, with start-ups and scale-ups now attracting £290m investment.
TheCityUK report, ‘Legal excellence, international renowned: UK legal services 2020’, published last week, also highlighted that total growth in revenue generated by legal activities in the UK rose 44% between 2010-2019 to £36.8bn last year, in a ‘golden decade’ for the legal sector.
Miles Celic, chief executive officer, TheCityUK, said: ‘As we look ahead to the next decade, there will be challenges to navigate resulting from the global Covid pandemic and our new relationship with the EU. Yet there are also many exciting opportunities for UK legal services to take forward.
‘These include continuing to build on its early leadership position in Law Tech innovation, to further enhancing diversity and inclusion across the sector, and consolidating the UK’s significant international legal services leadership.’
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