By Insider.co.uk

Copyright insider

As an adopted Scot, I’m proud to lead a company that’s part of the country’s booming lawtech sector, helping the people of Scotland – and beyond – access legal advice at an affordable price.

Overall, Scotland’s legal sector contributes £1.37bn to the economy every year and employs around 24,000 people.

Technological innovation, badged as ‘lawtech’, is starting to cement the nation’s reputation for entrepreneurial growth.

We launched Valla in 2022, helping UK employees navigate employment disputes without the need for hiring law firms. Our AI-supported platform has already assisted over 13,000 people in bringing employment tribunal claims; many of whom would otherwise be unable to afford legal support.

Having previously unbundled financial advice and accounting services through technology, I knew we could transform legal services in the same way. I realised that if we can build apps that handle tax returns on your phone, we can empower people to navigate their own legal challenges.

Valla’s services are designed for employees, offering accessible and affordable legal support for issues like unfair dismissal, withheld pay and workplace discrimination. However, our use of AI also includes a generative engine that acts as a legal secretary, taking notes and managing administration, which can help smaller law firms with their case load. This allows legal professionals to focus on the core issues, dramatically reducing time and cost.

Here in Scotland, we’re part of a thriving ecosystem of companies that were founded and/or are based in the country.

For example, My Customer Lens is utilising AI to transform client feedback into actionable business intelligence. Glasgow-born Wordsmith AI has developed contract-reviewing algorithms that enable legal teams to work with unprecedented speed and accuracy. They’re also a record-breaking start-up: the first in Scottish history to reach a valuation of $100m.

With 14 innovative companies and growth rates that trail only London and the south east, Scotland has quietly become one of the UK’s most exciting hubs for legal technology. However, while headlines celebrate start-up valuations and groundbreaking AI tools, there’s a real danger that the benefits will bypass the firms that form the backbone of our legal system.

We need to ensure that innovation reaches every firm, not just the large ones with the budget and in-house expertise to adopt new tools early.

This is a challenge. Scotland’s smaller law firms do sterling work providing everyday legal services that local people rely on, but they may lack the capacity to embrace a technology transformation. Training in particular is seen as one of the biggest hurdles to this kind of progress, according to the Law Society of Scotland.

We have to find a way round this, not just because lawtech is a major opportunity for those small firms, but because it holds the key to something bigger: improving access to justice.

The risk in this transformation is that we end up with some law firms able, for example, to analyse documents via AI instantly, but others falling behind. That’s not good for the industry, or for people who need legal support.

I’m convinced we can find a way around it. We’ve already got start-ups blazing a trail in lawtech innovation, so let’s also set the standard in lawtech inclusivity, ensuring that legal practices – both large and small – can adopt a new breed of tools that can improve the services they deliver and help more people in need.

How do we do that? The foundations already exist in the form of LawtechUK, which is backed by the Ministry of Justice and provides, free of charge training programmes, toolkits, and access to networks of other legal firms.

This offers the potential to help all of Scotland’s legal firms make a start in understanding the new technologies, accessing them and putting them into practice.

We need to do more, of course, and the key to making this transformation a success in Scottish law firms is coordination and targeted support for smaller firms that face a capacity challenge.

The potential is huge. The UK is home to the largest proportion of Europe’s lawtech start-ups, and Scotland has already demonstrated that it has the talent and momentum to set the pace.

If we get this right, our lawtech boom won’t just be another business success story – it will be proof that innovation can elevate the whole sector, and the communities it serves.

Danae Shell is the co-founder and chief executive of Valla