Introducing: 31 Lawtech Pioneers Joining the Lawtech Sandbox

We are delighted to announce the 31 lawtech pioneers joining the Lawtech Sandbox - a programme that helps fast-track the development of game-changing lawtech.

The Lawtech Sandbox supports UK founders and legal businesses developing new products and services to transform the legal sector, for the benefit of business and society. The programme provides lawtech pioneers with the support they need to overcome challenges halting their growth and development.

To date, the Lawtech Sandbox has directly supported the development of 13 UK lawtech businesses across 2 cohorts. In a testament to the programme’s impact, past participants successfully accelerated their development timelines by as much as 18 months and increased headcount 6-fold. Products and services from past Sandbox alumni have focused on areas such as smart contract development (Legal Schema), predicting potential disputes (Deriskly) and supporting litigants in person (Valla).

Now in its third generation, the Lawtech Sandbox consists of two new programmes: Expert Mentoring and Regulatory Pathfinding. The Mentoring Programme, delivered in collaboration with Barclays Eagle Labs, offers dedicated and practical 1-to-1 support with carefully matched mentors from the LawtechUK Network. The Regulatory Pathfinding Programme helps pioneers navigate the regulatory landscape, as well as provide answers to any regulatory challenges facing their business through the Regulatory Response Unit.

The innovators accepted into our latest Lawtech Sandbox are working to transform the legal sector across a range of areas. Including making machine-readable law a reality (AORA), leveraging the power of blockchain and AI to help estate planning (LiV), and supporting SMEs resolve their disputes online (pinqDR).

The Lawtech Sandbox 3.0 Programme

This year we received a 25% increase in the number of applicants to our Lawtech Sandbox, with 51.7% of total applications being based outside of London – including companies from Scotland (Find Others), the North West (equalier), the East of England (SimSage), Northern Ireland (NolijWork) and Wales (Validient). Whilst the current Lawtech Sandbox applications have 4 times more female founders and a 55% higher representation of founders from underrepresented groups than is average in the tech sector as a whole*, more needs to be done to improve diversity across the sector.

From the applications to the Regulatory Pathfinding Programme, we saw interesting themes emerging around the application of artificial intelligence, web3, and distributed ledger technology in legal services. Whilst it falls outside the direct remit of the legal services regulation, we are seeing more and more lawtechs wanting to work closely with regulators to help improve understanding and the responsible use of technology by the professionals and firms that they regulate. In addition to this, a number of queries related to the application of legal and financial services regulation in delivering legal marketplaces when it comes to handling client money and referrals.

Jack Cane, LawtechUK Lead, said:

“At the core of these great ideas, products or services, there is a founder working tirelessly to bring it to fruition. Supporting them on their journeys is one of the most enriching elements of the Lawtech Sandbox. I am trilled to welcome and support 31 new founders, who now have the opportunity to overcome their development challenges with unparalleled regulatory insight from the Regulatory Response Unit and access to our vast LawtechUK Network.”

Alexandra Lennox, LawtechUK Director, said:

“Now in its third iteration, we’ve seen the Lawtech Sandbox adapt to the needs of the market and continue to support lawtech pioneers in new and exciting ways. We’ve found that the bringing together of entrepreneurs with industry and regulators in the Lawtech Sandbox creates an environment which accelerates innovation and fosters shared insights. I look forward to seeing how this year’s cohort helps to shape the future of legal services.”

What's next?

The mentoring sessions are well underway and the regulators are working one-on-one with the pioneers to get their queries answered. We’ll be sharing insights and learnings from this year’s Lawtech Sandbox and much more at an event on 8 November. If you are interested in joining this event online, please register your interest here.

Meet the Lawtech Sandbox Cohort:

ALPS Software Ltd – East of England

Automating licensing payments with smart contracts for the internet of things.

Founders: Frank Tietze, Damiano di Francesco-Maesa and Graham Bell

AORA – London

Making machine-readable law a commercial reality, automating the task of determining a high-quality documented legal opinion and transforming access to legal advice in highly regulated areas such as tax, immigration, and capital markets.

Founders: Bruce Mennell

Artius Global – London

Innovative regulatory technology for shareholding disclosure in capital markets; ensuring compliance and mitigating risk.

Leadership: Jacqueline Pang (CEO) and Caleb Woo (Head of Client Success)

Canveo – London

Creating, negotiating and managing contracts can be painful. Canveo is a fully digitised end-to-end platform that guides you through the processes and content.

Founder: David Buser

Cognitiv+ – London

Automatically reviews your documents and extracts the key information that you need. Easier, cheaper, and faster than manual review. It’s artificial intelligence made easy.

Founder: Vasilis Tsolis

equalier – North West

Digitising your ESG assessments - manage your ESG data gathering and assessment processes, with smart questions, on-demand reports, automated benchmarks, document share, actions and more.

Founder: Lisa McClory, Oliver Trundley & Jacob Johnson

Find Others – Scotland

Connecting people with the same issues to unite, take action, and seek justice.

Founders: Georgina Hollis and Amar Chauhan

GenieAI – London

Market accepted contracts in less than 15 minutes - legal templates for your business, with guidance from quality lawyers.

Founder: Rafie Faruq

LAWYEROID – London

Leveraging artificial intelligence to improve lawyers' decision-making.

Founder: Abdelhak Attalah

Legal Connection – London

A legal management platform to integrate directly with Third Party Managed Accounts as permitted by the SRA. Legal Connection enables remote and distributed legal teams to collaborate effectively.

Founder: Guy Stern

LegalDrop – South East

A online marketplace where SMEs and individual clients can reach out and engage with vetted lawyers that match their brief and budget.

Founder: Dror Levy

Legateca – South East

Their online marketplace helps ordinary people get access to legal support. Providing affordable legal service providers, free automatic case capture and low cost AI based recommendations.

Founder: Umair Zahid

LegaMart – London

Helping people get international legal help easily. LegaMart facilitates access to vetted and assessed international lawyers for people of all nationalities, languages, and economic backgrounds in a few easy steps.

Founder: Omid Omidvar

Legislate – South West

A contract management platform built for non-lawyers. Create and electronically sign all your agreements from one place.

Founder: Charles Brecque

LiV – London

An online platform leveraging the power of blockchain and AI to allow any person to make informed and simple decisions regarding financial & estate planning in just 3 steps.

Founder: Teresa Castilla

LiveDiligence – South West

Live access to your due diligence review, so you can track issues as they develop.

Founders: Joss Boxford and Craig Houston

NolijWork – Northern Ireland

Helping you understand how work gets done in your organisation - based on real data from your organisation.

Founder: Paul ONeill

Office & Dragons – London

Document automation without the time and costs. Eliminate repetitive document work without setup, templates or code.

Leadership: Samuel Smolkin (CEO), Matthew Philson (COO) and Wilson Shrestha (CTO).

pinqDR – London

An online dispute resolution platform built to be flexible and scalable to offer efficient online dispute resolution services for B2B disputes above £5,000.

Founders: Guy Pendell and Iain Quirk QC

ScribeStar – London

Manage the administrative, legal and regulatory processes for a diverse spectrum of securities and transactions in capital markets.

Founder: Adam Shaw

SettleIndex – London

Financial modelling and risk analysis for litigation.

Founders: Robert Hogarth and Zac Best

Shareforce Platform – South East

A legal cloud service for model documents, benefitting law, notary firms and their clients.

Leadership: Wouter Ofner (Founder & CEO), Mark Willemen (CTO) and Jasper Boersma (Advisor & CRO).

SimSage – East of England

An AI-powered search platform designed to dramatically reduce time spent searching for information – for employees within organisations and on websites for customers.

Founders: Sean Wilson and Rock de Vocht

Terrifio – London

Client viability tool for IP attorneys and law firms. Going beyond client intake and onboarding forms, by collecting the important details, and validating prospective clients before the first meeting.

Founders: James Gastle & Alex Gastle

Trama – London

Simple, fast & affordable trademark registration. Trama helps companies register, monitor, manage and enforce trademark rights in key markets around the world.

Founder: Igor Demcak

Validient – Wales

Automated AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know your customer) identity verification checks for law firms and regulated businesses.

Leadership: Ieuan Leigh (CEO), Thomas Elliott (COO), Karl Turnbull (CTO), Gareth Williams (CMO).

Lawtech 365 – Midlands

Speeding up the client onboarding process with AI-powered biometric ID verifications, anti-money laundering compliance, source of funds checks, digital bank statement analytics, faster payments and qualified e-signatures.

Founders: Rudi Kesic, Mevludin Dzihic and Azeem Rashid

XLaw – London

An AI-powered litigation ecosystem for litigation funders, law firms, legal insurers

litigants and institutional investors.

Founder: Bingbing Liu

YumiDocs – London

A powerful self-serve contract management to help you hire, sell, and grow your business.

Founder: Victor Paraschiv

Early-stage founders

Ritwik Bhattacharya, – London

Ritwik is in the early stages of developing a confidentiality rings solution that hosts relevant information and documents for disputes and investigations and allows users to interact with each other. This solution will ensure adequate security controls, significantly remove the possibility of human error and reduce the costs and logistical complexity of proceedings.

Sue Prince, University of Exeter – South West

In celebration of their Law School turning 100 years old, the University of Exeter wants to establish an incubator for lawtech startups founded by their law students. By enabling students to explore their ideas as part of their academic studies, not only would students be able to delve into new areas of law and legal regulation but also experiment with legal careers outside of traditional routes.

*The tech sector is defined based on DCMS Sector estimates definitions, here and expanded to include companies operating in hybrid sectors, for example, Healthtech, Lawtech, Sporttech, Fintech and others. Data presented here on the tech sector includes companies at all stages of growth, which are headquartered in the UK and draws from Dealroom data.