CLA News / Transforming Legal Practice Through AI: Towards Greater Access to Justice by CLA President Steven Thiru

“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.”[1]

The legal profession is undergoing its most profound transformation since the advent of word processing. Artificial Intelligence (AI), once viewed as a distant disruptor, is now embedded in our daily work, reshaping how lawyers serve clients and, more importantly, how justice can be accessed by those who need it most.

Generative AI is Here — and It’s Changing the Game

Just two months ago, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”) in the United Kingdom (“UK”) announced that it had approved the country’s “first law firm providing legal services through artificial intelligence (AI)”. The firm leverages an “AI-powered litigation assistant” to support clients in recovering unpaid debts, guiding them through the small claims court process up to trial. This is a significant regulatory milestone — not only for the UK legal sector in its willingness to support innovation in legal services, but potentially for other Commonwealth jurisdictions looking to do so as well. In its statement, the SRA noted that it is “encouraging the development of new approaches and models due to the potential consumer benefits. AI-driven legal services could deliver better, quicker and more affordable legal services.”

As part of the approval process, the SRA conducted a robust review to ensure that the law firm would be able to adhere to professional and ethical rules and standards. Crucially, the SRA underscored that solicitors remain ultimately accountable for the standard of services provided — reinforcing the principle that AI augments but does not supplant a lawyer’s professional judgment and ethical responsibilities.

The appetite for generative AI has been insatiable in recent years. An estimated 79% of legal-related start-up investment since 2024 — nearly $2.2 billion — has flowed into companies leveraging AI, including notable players such as Clio, Harvey, and Luminance. A Thomson Reuters survey in July 2024 reported that AI could free up additional work time of four hours per week within one year, increasing to up to 12 hours a week in five years with the predicted pace of AI adoption.

The extent of economic and productivity gains in the legal sector, however, will depend on how quickly and broadly AI is integrated across the profession.

Two Transformations Are Underway

The opportunities generative AI presents are manifold, and can be broadly characterised by two major shifts:

Supercharging the lawyer’s workflow

The first is a “turbo charging” of today’s legal practice, where emerging AI-powered products and services significantly enhance how lawyers operate at every stage of a matter. By streamlining time-intensive tasks such as information gathering, compilation and summarisation, search and retrieval, document review, and legal research, these tools enable lawyers to work more efficiently.

Take the following illustration[2] — you receive a new client brief involving a complex contractual dispute.

1. Onboarding clients and conflict check: You can seamlessly organise and capture client data using client-relationship management platforms such as Lawmatics, Clio, or Intapp, and can run a conflict check across your firm’s database.
2. Gathering and reviewing information and documents: You can input the documents through platforms like Reveal, Everlaw, or RelativityOne, which will help review, cluster, and tag documents by keywords or topics. These tools can also help identify potentially privileged content, and visualise data patterns for ease of review. Tools like Kira Systems or Luminance can extract key clauses, compare versions, and summarise contractual obligations or risks, while products such as Draftwise and Spellbook can plug in directly to Microsoft Word to assist in drafting contracts.
3. Legal research and drafting: You can now use sophisticated engines such as Lexis+ AI, Westlaw Precision with CoCounsel, vLex, or Harvey[3] to conduct legal research. These platforms can provide natural-language answers to legal questions, as well as summarise the relevant cases, statutes, and precedents. You can then generate initial drafts of legal documents. BriefCatch is an alternative product that can directly plug in to Microsoft Word and can review legal writing, providing editorial feedback on aspects such as tone, clarity, and structure.
4. Trial preparation: As you prepare for the hearing or trial, platforms such as NexLaw and Lex Machina can inform your strategy and risk assessment by providing litigation analytics, including providing profiles of judges, tracking case outcomes, and highlighting historical patterns and trends.

You have now saved hours that would otherwise have been spent on manual review, drafting, and research — time that can now be reinvested into higher-level analysis, strategic thinking, client engagement, firm development, or engaging in other professional and public interest work. These legal innovations offer a glimpse of what is already possible — and what may well become the global norm — as the technologies continue to mature, expand, and gain broader adoption across the legal profession.

However, AI is not here to replace the role of lawyers. The efficiency gain is only one part of the equation, and it is essential to recognise where the true value of legal work lies. As Kate Barton, Global CEO of Dentons, rightly observes, technology may sharpen our tools, but “the true competitive edge lies [in] emotional intelligence (EQ)” — uniquely human strengths such as “judgment, persuasion, empathy, and trust” that “AI cannot commoditize”. She urges law firms to view EQ as a core competency, and invest in EQ development at every stage.

Empowering the AI-enabled client

The second, more transformational shift is the empowerment of the “AI-enabled client”, whereby individuals, small businesses, and start-ups gain access to legal guidance independently, and can complete basic legal tasks with minimal professional assistance. Increasingly accessible AI tools are enabling users to prepare contracts and generate legal correspondence, while the recently approved AI-powered law firm in the UK — mentioned at the outset — demonstrates how these tools are growing more sophisticated.

These shifts are best understood not as binary or mutually exclusive; instead, they lie along a continuum where its spread, accessibility, and adoption vary across jurisdictions, practice areas, and clients. In reality, the boundaries between these shifts will increasingly overlap, as AI innovations become more ubiquitous.

The end result is a broader and more inclusive expansion of access to justice. The delivery of legal services is increasingly being shaped by technology-enabled approaches that not only drive productivity gains for lawyers and deliver more impactful outcomes for clients, but also empower the clients to engage with the law in a more direct, intuitive, and user-friendly manner. Some examples include:

1. Citizens Advice (UK): Following a successful pilot, Citizens Advice is rolling out Caddy, an AI-powered assistant designed to help frontline staff, such as trainees and advisors, to provide rapid, guided responses to clients’ legal queries. Drawing from verified and trusted sources, Caddy generates proposed responses to support advisers in their interactions with clients.
2. BarefootLaw (Uganda): This non-profit organisation complements its team of full-time attorneys with Winnie, its AI “lawyer”, which assists citizens in rural areas with legal queries. It has reduced the time taken from an average 72 hours for lawyers to respond to queries, to 24 hours with Winnie. As of January 2024, BarefootLaw has reportedly facilitated over 800,000 users to access their services, and resolved over 20,000 cases.
3. Citizens’ Gavel (Nigeria): PodusAI, an AI-powered tool that offers initial legal guidance, helps users report human rights violations, and connects victims to nearby pro bono lawyers, was launched last year. It prioritises urgent cases such as police extortion, brutality, illegal arrest, illegal detention, and other issues involving fundamental rights. Over 30,000 Nigerians have since benefitted from the service.
4. Migrasia (Hong Kong): With support from Linklaters Asia, Migrasia launched PoBot, an AI chatbot assisting migrant workers with legal concerns related to forced labour. PoBot triages user queries and provides advice, significantly reducing response times for straightforward legal questions.
5. India: Similarly, the rise and development of AI-powered chatbots and digital assistants such as NyayGuru, LawBot Pro, and LawPal is transforming access to legal support, making legal information more accessible to diverse communities across the country, and helping individuals better understand their rights and responsibilities.

In this evolving landscape, the role of lawyers is reimagined: not merely as service providers, but as architects and stewards of justice systems that democratise legal support for the public. These emerging models offer the potential to make legal services more affordable, accessible, and responsive to the needs of a wider segment of society, offering a path to bridging the justice gap.

The value of professional legal services lies in our ability to deliver meaningful and effective results to our clients and the public, rather than the use of specific techniques and methods to get there. As Richard Susskind put it, “Clients don’t want lawyers—they want outcomes.”

Ultimately, the responsible adoption and integration of AI in the legal industry is not only to enhance efficiency and reduce costs, but to deliver justice that is proportional, inclusive, and accessible to all.[4]

AI Training for CLA Members: Equipping You for What’s Next

Last month, I had a productive meeting in London with Ian McDougall of LexisNexis, and plans are underway to hold a series of AI training webinars for CLA members.

This collaboration builds on the remarkable work of the CLA’s Legal Technology and Innovation Committee, whose co-convenors are CLA Treasurer, Maria Mbeneka (Kenya) and CLA Council member, Amirali Nasir (Hong Kong).

Through this forthcoming training initiative with LexisNexis, we hope to empower CLA members with the tools, understanding, and confidence to adopt AI responsibly and effectively in their work.

Leading the Change in an AI Future That is Just

AI is not a passing trend. It is a turning point that requires a manifest reset. It invites us to reimagine our work, expand our reach, and democratise legal support for all.

As lawyers, our responsibility is not merely to adapt to new tools — but to deploy them for good. We must ensure that the use of AI in law upholds confidentiality, fairness, accuracy, and accountability. This means embedding safeguards, supporting training, and shaping regulation that protects the public interest.

I thank the CLA’s Legal Technology and Innovation Committee for its thought leadership, particularly in crafting the “Declaration on AI Statement”. The Declaration is a foundational statement that outlines the principles and safeguards that should underpin the use of AI in legal services, and was adopted at the 24^th Commonwealth Lawyers Conference in Malta in April 2025.

It is axiomatic that the future of legal practice is not determined by technology alone, but by legal professionals who harness it purposefully and wisely. It is our responsibility not just to respond to change, but to lead it, to shape a future where justice is more accessible, fair, and meaningful.

Steven Thiru

President

Commonwealth Lawyers Association

 29th July 2025

Steven Thiru records his appreciation to Boo Sha-Lyn and Chin Oy Sim for their assistance in preparing this article for publication.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Susskind quoting John Maynard Keynes, in Susskind, R. & Susskind, D. (2022). The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform The Work of Human Experts. Updated Edition. Oxford University Press.

[2] The examples of legal AI platforms and tools referenced are for illustrative purposes only, and their inclusion does not imply any endorsement or preference. This list is not comprehensive, and the availability and functionality of those mentioned vary across jurisdictions. Many offer overlapping or multiple functionalities.

[3] In the US market, LexisNexis and Harvey have recently announced a partnership that integrates LexisNexis’ generative AI technology, primary law content, and citations within the Harvey platform for advanced legal workflows.

[4] Kho, Feng Ming (2024). “Reimagining Access to Justice in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. The Law Review 2024, LR 532.