Law Society sets new AI strategy

The Law Society of England and Wales has announced a new artificial intelligence (AI) strategy (here).

The strategy focuses on three long-term outcomes:

1. innovation: AI is used across the legal sector in ways that benefit both firms and clients in legal service delivery.  This includes that firms have medium-to-long-term AI and technology strategies, and are able to adopt AI and digital technologies suited for their needs.
2. impact: there is an effective AI regulatory landscape that has been informed and influenced by the legal sector. This includes the legal profession helping to set global governance standards and understanding the regulatory environment.
3. integrity: the responsible and ethical use of AI has been used to support the rule of law and access to justice. This includes legal professionals appropriately adopting technology to address legal need, and the legal sector improving data provenance, availability and quality.

The Law Society considers the underlying key question when it comes to its work around AI is: 

how does the Law Society fit into this changing landscape and make the most impact?

The Law Society has already undertaken work related to AI, including responding to the UK government AI regulation white paper (see our summary here) and publishing a guide to generative AI, including a checklist of considerations. In the ‘next few months’ it plans to continue to engage with regulatory and policy positions, wider resource offering in respect of AI, and publish research on the impacts of AI specific to its members.

If you would like to discuss how current or future regulations impact what you do with AI, please contact Tom Whittaker, Brian Wong, Lucy Pegler, David Varney, Martin Cook or any other member in our Technology team.

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