Google backs £9.5m London legal tech firm which ‘combines AI with human lawyers’

Google’s venture arm is backing Lawhive, a London-based legal tech company that combines artificial intelligence (AI) with human lawyers to make legal services more affordable.

Google Ventures (GV) has led a seed round worth £9.5m to fund Lawhive, along with participation from Episode 1 Ventures. It follows a £1.5m investment in April 2022.

Lawhive’s technology automates day-to-day, repetitive administrative tasks such as client onboarding and document collection. 

To do this it uses its ‘AI lawyer’ called Lawrence, which successfully passed the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) scoring 81 per cent against a pass mark of 55 per cent.

Lawrence can carry out legal work at the level of a junior lawyer or paralegal, handling mundane tasks and allowing senior lawyers to focus on handling the harder parts of the case.

Lawhive plans to use the capital to grow its team, hiring more AI engineers and software developers to imporve Lawrence.

Vidu Shanmugarajah, partner at GV, said: “As a lawyer by training, I have experienced  firsthand how needed technology-driven innovation is in the legal sector. Lawhive represents a transformative shift for both lawyers and consumers. 

“Through combining a feature-rich platform with groundbreaking AI, Lawhive not only dramatically improves legal workflows but also makes high quality legal advice more accessible and affordable to a broader audience,” he added.

The number of lawyers using generative AI tools at least once a month has more than doubled in half a year, according to a recent survey. Twenty-six per cent of legal professionals say they now use tools like Chat GPT, or in-house equivalents, every month, up from 11 per cent in July 2023.

“Access to the law should be a basic right, available to everyone,” said Pierre Proner, chief executive and co-founder of Lawhive, founded in 2021. “Unfortunately this isn’t the case. Our vision is to combine AI and best-in-class lawyers to reduce the time and cost of providing high-quality legal support, increasing access for millions of people who need it,” he added.

But, amid fears that the technology could steal jobs, Proner insisted that Lawhive’s AI platform will not fully replace humans.

“Our AI lawyer Lawrence is doing work that human lawyers don’t want to do and are wasting their valuable time doing,” he explained.

“AI is allowing more people to access high-quality legal help from a qualified professional at an affordable price, while also allowing some of the country’s top lawyers to work more efficiently on the parts of the law that they enjoy, and earn more money doing so.”