What should legal automation actually replace?
The debate keeps asking how much of the solicitor can be automated away. Dan Yeo argues that is the wrong question, and that the real opportunity is removing the process that surrounds their expertise rather than the expertise itself.
Legal technology is often discussed in terms of replacement. Will AI replace lawyers? How much legal work can be automated? Which parts of the profession are most vulnerable as technology becomes more capable? But perhaps we are focusing on the wrong thing. The biggest opportunity for legal automation may not be replacing solicitors at all. It may be removing the repetitive processes that surround them.
Solicitors spend years developing the legal knowledge, judgement and professional experience required to interpret the law, recognise risk and take responsibility for the work they approve. Technology can support that expertise and make its application considerably more efficient, but it cannot provide the same professional grounding or accountability. The more useful question, then, is not how much of the solicitor we can replace. It is how much unnecessary process we can remove before their expertise is required.
Not every part of a legal service requires legal judgement
Most legal services are made up of a series of very different activities. Some are highly structured. Information needs to be collected, parties identified, dates recorded, documents assembled and agreed terms accurately captured. Missing details need to be identified and inconsistencies resolved.
Other elements are fundamentally different. They require interpretation, experience and professional judgement. A solicitor may need to recognise an unusual risk, determine whether standard drafting is appropriate, understand the implications of a particular provision or identify something a client may not even realise is significant. Historically, both types of work have often existed within the same delivery process. That is where technology presents a genuine opportunity.
A well-designed digital workflow can collect information systematically, adapt according to the answers provided and identify where required information is missing. Automation can reduce repetitive data entry and assist with consistent document production. AI can increasingly help classify information, compare documents and flag matters that may warrant closer attention.
These are useful capabilities, but they are not a substitute for legal expertise. They are a way of ensuring that expertise is not consumed by tasks that do not require it.
Commercial leases demonstrate the opportunity
Commercial lease creation provides a good example. A significant amount of the information needed to create a commercial lease is structured. The parties, property, rent, term, permitted use, deposit arrangements, repairing responsibilities, service charges, insurance and provisions concerning alterations all need to be established.
There is little benefit in requiring a qualified solicitor to manually gather every piece of that information through a succession of emails and telephone calls if it can be captured accurately through a structured digital process.
Technology can make that initial stage faster and more consistent. It can ensure required questions are answered, reduce duplication and organise the information before it reaches professional review. But a commercial lease is not simply the sum of the information entered into a system.
An unusual repairing obligation, a particular service-charge arrangement, property-specific rights, proposed alterations or inconsistencies between heads of terms and the resulting documentation may all require legal judgement.
There are also important statutory and procedural considerations. The Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, for example, can affect a business tenant’s security of tenure and involves specific requirements where the parties agree that those protections will be excluded.
That is where the distinction between creating a process efficiently and providing legal assurance becomes important. Technology can structure the journey. A solicitor brings the legal grounding required to assess the result.
The solicitor should remain at the centre of assurance
As AI becomes more capable, this distinction becomes even more important. Generative AI can produce sophisticated and highly convincing outputs in seconds. But convincing output is not the same as professionally assured legal work.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has made clear that the use of AI does not diminish a solicitor’s professional obligations. Its guidance emphasises appropriate human oversight, effective supervision and the continuing responsibility of authorised individuals for legal services delivered with the assistance of technology.
The Law Society has similarly highlighted both the opportunities and limitations of generative AI, including the risk that systems can produce plausible but inaccurate information. These are not arguments against legal technology. They are arguments for deploying it in the right place.
A solicitor’s value is not derived from manually transferring a client’s name from one document to another or repeatedly requesting information that could have been collected at the beginning of a process. Their value comes from their legal training, their ability to recognise risk and exceptions, their judgement and the professional responsibility they take for their work. The strongest legal technology should therefore be designed around that expertise rather than attempting to remove it.
Efficiency should translate into better value
There is also a significant commercial opportunity. Professional services have traditionally been heavily dependent on professional time. When highly qualified people undertake both routine process work and complex judgement-based work, the cost of both ultimately forms part of the service delivered to the client. Automation changes that equation.
If information gathering, administration, checking and repeatable elements of document production can be handled more efficiently, professional time can be concentrated on the stages where professional expertise genuinely adds value. That has the potential to make legal services faster and their costs more predictable. Importantly, lower process costs do not necessarily have to mean lower professional standards.
Much of the discussion around disruption assumes that reducing price must involve reducing the amount or quality of professional input. Technology provides another route: reduce the cost of the process surrounding the expertise rather than the expertise itself.
For businesses accustomed to increasingly efficient digital services elsewhere, that distinction is likely to become increasingly important. Clients will continue to value professional assurance. What they may become less willing to pay for is inefficiency around it.
Good automation needs to know when to stop
There is, however, a limit to what should be automated. Structured systems work particularly well when a matter falls within the parameters for which they were designed. The real test comes when something does not. An unusual answer, conflicting information, a non-standard requirement or a situation carrying greater legal risk should not simply be forced through the same automated route.
It should trigger professional attention. This may ultimately become one of the most important measures of quality in legal technology. A good system should not only be judged by how much it can automate, but by how reliably it knows when to stop automating.
AI makes this especially relevant. As automated outputs become more sophisticated, there is a danger that the apparent quality of an answer is confused with the professional assurance behind it. Legal services cannot afford to make that mistake.
Replacing inefficiency, not expertise
Legal automation does not need to become a contest between technology and solicitors. There is a far more useful model. Technology can collect and organise information, automate repetitive processes, improve consistency and identify matters requiring attention. AI can add further capability to that process as the technology develops.
Solicitors can then concentrate their time on interpretation, exceptions, risk, judgement and ultimately the professional assurance of the legal work. Used in this way, automation does not diminish the solicitor’s role. It makes better use of it. And that brings us back to the question of what legal automation should actually replace. Not the solicitor. The inefficiency around them.
Declaration of interest. Dan Yeo is the founder of LeaseAssured, a commercial lease technology business, and therefore has a commercial interest in the subject of this article. He disclosed that interest when offering the piece. The article is his opinion, names no product in the body, and was published because the argument stands on its own. Law Week received no payment for it.