Making legal terms accessible for everyone

Our goal in establishing the Lawtech Sandbox was to bring transformative lawtech to market faster, by helping the pioneers reinventing the service of law.

The Pilot has been incredibly productive with multiple workstreams running in parallel over three months, with our five lawtech pioneers and a range of industry and public sector participants.

One of our pioneers, Amplified Global, is tackling a challenge that affects all of us at some stage in our lives: comprehension of legal documents and language.

Amplified Global uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to make complex information such as terms and conditions easier for consumers to understand and engage with, and to enable an assessment of the customer’s level of understanding of those terms.

Amongst other work with Amplified during the Pilot, LawtechUK supported with a series of workshops to research the responsibilities and capabilities of organisations in relation to how they engage with customers contractually, and the efficacy of the regulatory framework underpinning this area. Attendance and engagement was high, across industry, the ethics community, regulators and other public and private bodies. Amplified has produced a report of the workshop findings , providing important insights, and drawing some initial conclusions as to the way forward.

Minesh Patel, founder of Amplified Global, comments “Going into the sandbox we knew there is an issue that needs addressing – that very few people engage with terms and conditions or other complex contractual documents. We wanted to bring stakeholders together, both industry experts and regulators, to explore why that is, and what can be done to better support and engage consumers.

What emerged were some strong messages. It was clear that simplifying and standardising documents both have big roles to play. Participants agreed that AI and machine learning technologies can hugely benefit the consumer, but also that the lawtech community needs clearer guidance to ensure this happens in the right way. And finally, that collaboration is critical to enable access to high quality data able to drive innovation.

The LawtechUK sandbox has been transformative for Amplified Global, and we look forward to staying at the forefront of the ongoing conversation.”

This is an area that affects every one of us as consumers and it is an industry in itself in the legal sector, with lawyers worldwide struggling to help businesses communicate in an accessible and risk-sensitive way. The status quo is increasingly unsustainable in a society expecting greater than ever levels of ESG and corporate responsibility.

The Amplified report represents early momentum and a glimpse of the change that is needed and to come in regards how we approach customer contracting in our society, the responsibilities organisations carry and meet, the standards we set and allow, the understanding we impute to people and enable, how we can approach relationships across their entire lifecycle, and how technology can support.