Lawtech: We must not take our leading position for granted

Earlier this summer, I travelled to Singapore to showcase the UK’s trailblazing lawtech sector.

Like the UK, Singapore supports and fosters innovation in legal services – using new and emerging technologies to make them more modern, more efficient and to increase access to justice. That shared commitment makes trade missions like this – building relationships, forging ties with future business partners, and sharing knowledge – vital to promoting UK legal services overseas and maintaining our competitive edge in a crowded market. 

The delegation to Singapore, run by the Ministry of Justice’s GREAT Legal Services campaign, included UK lawtech firms providing a range of solutions to legal business – from established contract automation firm Avvoka, to regulation tech specialists like REG-1. Several delegates made connections that are expected to lead to export opportunities and business wins. 

We also discussed how best to take forward our commitment around lawtech cooperation under the UK-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement (DEA). The first agreement of its kind anywhere in the world, it commits both sides to sharing knowledge and encouraging lawtech suppliers to explore business opportunities in the other’s markets. 

My visit to Singapore was part of a longer trip to the Asia-Pacific region and included stops in South Korea and Malaysia. 

It’s all part of this government’s wider drive to open up market access for UK legal services and professionals, expand business networks, and generate export wins for UK law firms and chambers.

As an export, legal services are hugely important for our country – bringing in over £4 billion annually to our economy from across the world. It’s why we are continually pushing for growth opportunities overseas and negotiating better operating conditions for UK firms to reach international clients. 

We’re also tackling trade barriers, working closely with government counterparts and supporting regulator-to-regulator dialogue in priority markets.

We work closely with the sector, helping you to make connections and showcase what you do. Since 2017 our GREAT Legal Services campaign has helped to promote our legal services internationally, and in the last financial year helped to generate more than £6 million in projected business wins for UK lawyers, over 60 business leads, and 120 business meetings for UK businesses. The campaign promotes a variety of UK legal services and continues to expand to include exciting and innovative areas like lawtech. Last year we reached millions online in key markets around the world, and we’re well on track to achieve even more in 2023. That’s a fantastic achievement, but we want to go even further.

While the strengths and expertise of the sector speak for themselves, we should never take our leading position for granted. The sector has remained at the top of its game not just by chance, but because it continually evolves, identifies new trends and turns challenges into opportunities. 

We are determined to support this evolution. Technology is clearly the bright future of our legal services, with potential annual demand for lawtech products and services within the UK estimated to be worth up to £22bn year – and could grow even further if we play our cards right. That’s why we’ve invested an additional £4 million to continue the LawtechUK programme – aimed at supporting growth in the sector – until March 2025.  

Our ambition is to make the UK a hub for lawtech, and a haven for legal innovators. Working with the sector, we want to understand the barriers to innovation and how we can support lawtechs to overcome them.

We also need to keep pace with technology. Businesses want certainty on how the digital and emerging technologies they use will be treated under English and Welsh private law. So, we’re supporting the work of the Law Commission, and the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce, to provide clarity in this area. 

This will lay the foundation for English and Welsh law to continue to play a leading role in governing global business and international trade, now and in the future. 

As someone who had a career in the private sector before I came into politics, I know just how important legal services are to this country – the nuts and bolts underpinning every single commercial transaction, the machinery that keeps our economy moving.  

More than that, legal services are critical to the UK’s future as a global, outward-looking, free-trading nation. It’s a sector that is worth around £30 billion to the UK economy, with a trade surplus of around £5 billion. We already hold an enviable global position, and as a government, we’ll do all we can to help – not just to maintain it, but build on it for an even better future. 

Mike Freer MP is minister for courts and legal services at the Ministry of Justice