Law has been a career that dates back hundreds of years. Lawyers are tasked with making sure that individuals and businesses stick to local laws, rules and guidelines.
According to Global City, the UK is home to the largest legal services market in Europe, only second to the US globally. This is not only because the UK is a big business hub, but it is also well located geographically to bridge European, Asian and US markets.
But like almost every other sector, the legal industry has continued to evolve with technology.
Now, the way lawyers draft contracts, review agreements and interact with new guidelines has all been changed through tech.
What is LegalTech?
LegalTech, or legal technology, refers to any technology designed to help with legal tasks.
As lawyers can often be faced with mountains of paperwork, thousands of emails and documents to draft – it’s no surprise that they have looked to the world of technology to help.
According to Global City, there will be “2.2bn of projected investment per year in LawTech by 2026. 61% of UK solicitors also said they plan to use LawTech more frequently in the next 5 years.
This has been spearheaded by the Ministry of Justice, who invested £3 million into its LawTech programme back in 2023.
So there is demand, and there is investment – but how exactly will LegalTech continue to shape the law industry in 2025 and beyond?
We asked the experts, and here is what they had to say:
Our Experts
- Jennifer Poon, Legal Solutions Director at NetDocuments
- Graham Sills, Co-Founder and Director of AI at Luminance
- Paul Gaskell, Chief Technology Officer at Avantia Law
- Patrick Grant, Associate Professor of AI and Technology at The University of Law
- Sean Duffy, Managing Director at CIBC Innovation Banking UK & Europe
- Beth Fellner, Director at LawTechUK
- Toni Nijm, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at RightHub
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Jennifer Poon, Legal Solutions Director at NetDocuments
“Just as the advent of the internet sparked concerns about technology replacing jobs, AI has long been viewed through a similar lens of fear and uncertainty. However, the reality is quite the opposite for the legal sector. Although there has been concern that AI will replace lawyers, in 2025 AI will increasingly create more opportunities for them, not fewer.
“At a top level, because AI is democratising access to advanced legal tools, more legal cases will be put forward. This means that AI will be creating opportunity across the board – meaning we need more lawyers, rather than fewer.”
Graham Sills, Co-Founder and Director of AI at Luminance
“2025 will mark a paradigm shift in our journey towards using AI for full-scale automation. Today, humans use AI themselves, most commonly to automate and augment their own actions. In 2025, we will see the beginnings of that dynamic inverting. If 2023 and 2024 was the era of the AI ‘co-pilot’, we are now witnessing, as with Agentic AI, the shift of AI to become an active driver, with humans providing approval and acting as the safety net.
“In 2025 we’ll see further evidence of what these agents can do: increasingly, entire complex workflows will be handed over to AI, with efficiency gains far beyond what we’ve seen to date. For instance, the creation of a centralised ‘legal brain’ capable of pulling key clauses from across your repository to draft a complex contract in seconds. For this to be adopted widely by businesses, it will be essential for providers to allow observability and expose some of the AI’s chain of thought to the user.”
Paul Gaskell, Chief Technology Officer, Avantia Law
“In the next 12 months, we will start to see a fundamental shift away from the traditional SaaS model, as businesses’ expectations of what new technologies should do evolve. This is down to two key factors – user experience and quality of output.
“People now expect to be able to ask technology a question and get a response pulled from different sources. This isn’t new, we’ve been doing it with voice assistants for years – AI has just made it much smarter. With the rise of Gen AI, chat interfaces have become increasingly popular versus traditional web applications. This expectation for user experience will mean SaaS providers need to rapidly evolve or get left behind.
“The current SaaS models on the market can only tackle the lowest dominator problem felt by a broad customer group, and you need to proactively interact with it to get it to work, and even then, it can only do 10% of a workflow. The future will see businesses using a combination of proprietary, open-source, and bought-in models – all feeding a GenAI-powered interface that allows their teams to run end-to-end processes across multiple workstreams and toolsets”.
Patrick Grant, Associate Professor of AI and Technology at The University of Law
“Since the handbrake was released on Generative AI in late 2022 we have seen the legal marketplace adopt this technology at an impressive rate. So much so that according to a Lexis Nexis survey in September 2024 “60% of the legal industry has made at least one internal change to implement generative AI”.
“Now the legal sector is becoming more confident with Generative AI, and as it becomes more established in everyday life, 2025 is the year for the technology to trickle down to areas that need it the most.
“It is easy to forget that there is still a cost-of-living crisis, and many living perhaps unnecessarily under the standard poverty line. Generative AI can assist massively in Access to Justice and Access to Advice.
“Contextually constrained models can offer well-grounded assistance to those who need it the most, whilst taking the pressure off Advice Charities, Local Authorities and not for profits.
“Democratising Generative AI in 2025 will be a huge step in the right direction and will not only offer real help to people but it will also empower them.”
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Sean Duffy, Managing Director at CIBC Innovation Banking UK & Europe
“The evolution of AI has already taken centre stage, but we have yet to see exactly which industries it will have the quickest and biggest impact on. AI is built on software and data, so SaaS should be one of those.
“As demand for more specialized solutions grows, industry-specific AI-driven SaaS is set to boom. AI capabilities will become a core feature of SaaS platforms, enabling hyper-personalization, automation, and real-time insights across various functions.
“Critically, we should also see more and more solutions adapted to specialised workflows in specific sectors. In healthcare, where it can support diagnostics and patient care; in finance, where it can enhance risk management and fraud detection; in retail, where it can power personalised recommendations; and in logistics, where it can accelerate predictive planning and optimization.”
Beth Fellner, Director at LawTechUK
“We expect to see increased funding levels in UK legal tech in 2025, up from the £1.38 billion in the funding received in 2023. 2024 was a huge year for mergers and acquisitions in UK lawtech, with acquisitions like Lawtech 365 and Office & Dragons fueling growth, and we expect that trend to continue.
“Another key trend is likely to be diversification. There’s a prominence of lawtechs operating in the Documents & Contracts space, currently 24% according to LawtechUK’s Ecosystem Tracker. We are expecting the sector to expand beyond this to focus on compliance and risks, particularly as companies aim to stay ahead of AI developments and implementation approaches, particularly as companies aim to stay ahead of AI developments and implementation approaches. As different jurisdictions and regulators grapple with the onset of Generative AI in legal, practitioners will likewise adapt their selection of tech tools based on those different frameworks.
“We expect UK legal tech ventures to attract even greater interest from international investors in 2025, particularly from the United States, where Y Combinator has seen a huge rise in legal tech representation in its cohorts. U.S.-based venture capital firms like Accel have also established themselves as some of the most active investors in the UK legal tech space.
“At home, with the regional partnerships and local hubs established over the last few years, we can look forward to seeing much more innovation beyond London.”
Toni Nijm, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at RightHub
“2024 has been a year of significant learning for the legal sector, with emerging technological mediums redefining how businesses and professionals operate. With increasing demands for faster, more reliable and highly accurate services, the need for businesses to harness the latest tools and technologies is crucial for adapting to the evolving legal and IP landscape in the year ahead.
“AI-Driven Transformation in Legal Workflows: AI-driven transformation has transformed the way the legal sector operates, with technology playing a strategic role in decision-making. In intellectual property (IP) and legal workflows, AI tools are streamlining complex tasks, like patent filing and infringement analysis, while offering predictive analytics that can guide legal strategies. The emergence of AI-assisted tools and advanced technologies enables IP professionals to focus on high-value tasks, transforming the way legal services are delivered.
“Bridging Global IP Ecosystems: As intellectual property becomes a more integral part of the global economy, the need to bridge IP ecosystems is greater than ever. AI and digital solutions have played a key role in the past year and are expected to be critical in unifying dispersed systems, allowing seamless integration of IP management with broader digital platforms in the year ahead. Through this IP businesses can effectively enhance collaboration, transparency and efficiency across borders, ensuring legal professionals are equipped with the right tools to handle increasingly complex global cases.
“Future-Proofing the Legal Workforce: To stay competitive in an area of rapid automation, legal and IP professionals must prioritise upskilling their workforce using AI. From understanding AI-driven tools to leveraging them effectively to optimise processes, these skills will be crucial for adapting and maintaining relevance in the upcoming year. By embracing technological adaptability early on, legal businesses and workforces can thrive in a landscape where advanced tools and platforms are no longer optional but essential.”
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
