The government has found £1.5 million to keep the LawtechUK programme going for a further year, the Ministry of Justice announced today. Courts and legal services minister Sarah Sackman KC told the LawtechUK conference in London that technology would 'help provide solutions to some of the challenges our justice system faces'.
LawtechUK, which has already received some £6m in government funding since 2019, had been due to conclude this month. The new funding would support work on self-service access to justice for lay people. 'Clients will solve their legal problems themselves with the help of technology, hugely empowering people,' Sackman said.
Lawtech, along with legal services, would form part of the government's industrial strategy to be published later this year, she revealed. 'Lawtech has fundamentally changed and is changing the market for the better,' Sackman said. 'This isn’t just a win for law firms, or even the prestige of our legal services sector. Lawtech is also a powerhouse for the UK economy, she said.'
Earlier, the master of the rolls told the conference that work has begun on drafting a legal statement on the liability of developers and users for harms caused by AI. Currently there is 'genuine market uncertainty', Sir Geoffrey Vos said. The new project by the UK Jurisdiction Task Force - part of the Lawtech programme - comes as the EU prepares to pass a regulation which would create a 'presumption of causality', he said. 'The idea would be, in effect, to reverse the private law burden of proof.'
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