- In one claim before the High Court in June 2025, 18 of the cases cited did not exist; the court said free generative AI tools can't do reliable legal research.
- When the SRA authorised the AI-driven firm Garfield.Law in May 2025, it barred the system from proposing case law and made it wait for client approval before every step.
- Six legal activities are reserved under the Legal Services Act 2007. AI can prepare work for them, but an authorised person has to carry them out.
AI for law firms earns its keep on the unreserved, checkable work around a matter: client intake, chasing identity documents, preparing conflict checks, building chronologies, drafting first-cut letters and writing up time. It can't hold a right of audience, conduct litigation or carry out any other reserved activity, and it isn't a reliable legal researcher. The High Court said so in June 2025: freely available generative AI tools "are not capable of conducting reliable legal research". Whatever the tool, a solicitor stays answerable for the output under the SRA Code of Conduct.
This guide is for smaller firms in England and Wales. The SRA regulated 8,923 firms in August 2026, 1,321 of them sole practitioners, and few of those have anyone whose job is testing software. Accountancy practices face a different rulebook, covered in our guide for accountants.
Lawyers already use it, mostly for the riskiest job
LexisNexis surveyed 543 legal professionals for a report published in September 2026 and found 94% use AI for legal work, up from 61% in its 2025 survey. LexisNexis sells legal AI, so these are a vendor's figures. Two of its other numbers sit awkwardly side by side: 69% use it for legal research, while 83% are concerned about inaccurate or fabricated information.
Research is where a wrong answer is hardest to spot. It's also the job the courts have already ruled on.
What the High Court said in Ayinde
On 6 June 2025 a Divisional Court led by the President of the King's Bench Division dealt with two referrals together: Ayinde v London Borough of Haringey and Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank. The judicial review grounds in Ayinde relied on five non-existent cases. In Al-Haroun the court counted 45 citations put before it, and 18 of the cases cited did not exist. Several real ones were misquoted.
Paragraph 9 of the judgment is aimed at firm owners. It says "practical and effective measures must now be taken by those within the legal profession with individual leadership responsibilities (such as heads of chambers and managing partners)" so that everyone providing legal services understands and meets their obligations. In a four-partner firm, that means the partners. A written AI policy, plus a citation check a named person signs, is the least that sentence asks for.
The conditions the SRA set for an AI-driven firm
On 6 May 2025 the SRA authorised Garfield.Law, an AI-driven firm that takes businesses through the small claims process to recover unpaid debts. The safeguards it required read like a specification any firm could reuse:
- the system can't propose relevant case law, which the regulator called a high-risk area for large language models
- it isn't autonomous: it takes a step only once the client has approved it
- named regulated solicitors remain accountable for the standard of the firm's work
- processes are in place to quality-check work, keep client information confidential and guard against conflicts of interest
Those four conditions translate directly into a build. Each one becomes an approval gate: a point where the software stops and a person signs before anything reaches a client, the other side or a court.
A rules map for the jobs firms automate
The jobs small firms most often hand to AI, each set against the rule that bites first. Treat it as a starting map, not legal advice.
| Job | What the AI does | Rule that bites first | What to have in place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enquiries and intake | Takes the caller's details, books the first meeting, flags urgent deadlines for a fee earner | SRA Code paragraph 6.3 (confidentiality) and UK GDPR | Callers told it is AI; anything that sounds like a request for advice passed to a person |
| Conflict checks | Searches past matters for the client, the other side and related parties | SRA rules on conflicts of interest | A person reviews every possible match before the matter is accepted |
| ID and source-of-funds documents | Chases documents, reads them and fills the client file | Anti-money laundering duties stay with the firm | A person makes the risk assessment and approves the file |
| Chronologies and bundle summaries | Builds a dated timeline from emails and documents | SRA Code paragraph 3.2 (competent service) | Every entry linked to its source page and checked by the fee earner |
| Legal research and citations | Finds and summarises authorities | Ayinde: free generative tools are not reliable for this | A legal research database, and every authority read in full by a person |
| First-draft letters and contracts | Drafts from the firm's precedents | SRA Code paragraphs 3.2 and 3.5 (supervision) | Solicitor review before anything is sent |
| Issuing and running a claim | Prepares the steps | Conduct of litigation is reserved (Legal Services Act 2007) | An authorised person takes each step |
Chronologies depend on extraction being right, so test accuracy on your own files first; the document processing guide sets out how. For intake by phone, the UK AI receptionist guide covers telling callers and keeping recordings.
Where it cannot: the reserved line
Section 12 of the Legal Services Act 2007 reserves six activities: rights of audience, the conduct of litigation, reserved instrument activities, probate activities, notarial activities and the administration of oaths. Only an authorised or exempt person may carry them on. AI can prepare the paperwork. It can't be the one doing the activity.
Advice itself isn't reserved. A regulated firm still answers to its Code. Paragraph 3.2 requires a competent service, and paragraph 3.5 keeps a supervisor "accountable for the work carried out through them". Neither mentions AI. Neither needs to.
Confidentiality is the other hard limit. Under paragraph 6.3 a firm keeps clients' affairs confidential unless the law requires disclosure or the client consents. Pasting a client's file into a free chatbot whose terms allow it to train on what you type is hard to square with that. Use tools on a business contract that rules training out. Keep a list of the approved ones.
Witness statements may get their own rule
The Civil Justice Council consulted from February to April 2026 on AI in court documents. It proposed that legal representatives declare AI "has not been used to generate the content of trial witness statements", and that experts explain how they used it. Transcription and spell checking would need no declaration.
Its July 2026 update reported broad agreement that professional drafting needs no new AI-specific rule, with views divided on witness statements, and a final report is due later in 2026. Either way, an intake tool should keep a witness's own words separate from anything the software drafted.
Where a small firm should start
- Write a one-page AI policy: approved tools, banned uses (citations taken from a chatbot, client data in free tools), and who signs off what.
- Pick one unreserved job you can count: missed enquiries, ID documents chased by hand, or hours spent on chronologies.
- Run it in shadow mode while staff keep doing the job.
- Put a named solicitor's approval on anything going to a client, the other side or the court.
An AI audit ranks the candidate jobs by hours, and the readiness checklist covers data access and permissions. Private clinics face the same split between admin and regulated work under a different regulator, set out in our private clinics guide.
Common questions
Can a solicitor use ChatGPT for client work?
For drafting and admin, carefully, but not for legal research and not with client data in a free account. The Divisional Court said in Ayinde that freely available generative AI tools cannot do reliable legal research, and SRA Code paragraph 6.3 covers anything typed into one. Use a business plan that excludes training, and check every output.
Who is responsible when AI gets a citation wrong?
The lawyer who relied on it. In Ayinde the court also put a duty on managing partners and heads of chambers to make sure everyone providing legal services understands their obligations. The SRA Code keeps a supervisor accountable for work carried out through others, and nothing in it passes that responsibility to a software supplier.
Can AI conduct litigation in England and Wales?
No. Conduct of litigation is a reserved activity under the Legal Services Act 2007, open only to authorised or exempt persons. Garfield.Law, the AI-driven firm the SRA authorised in May 2025, recovers debts through the small claims process with named solicitors accountable and the client approving each step before the system takes it.
Do lawyers have to tell the court they used AI?
Not under a general rule yet. The Civil Justice Council has proposed a declaration for trial witness statements and an explanation from experts, with transcription and spell checking exempt, and expects to publish its final report later in 2026. Keep a record of which tools touched each document so the question is easy to answer.
What should a small law firm automate first?
Intake and document chasing. Both are unreserved, both are easy to count, and a person still makes every legal judgement. Hold back on research and anything that goes to court until the firm has a written AI policy, an approved tool list and a named solicitor signing off each output.
Start with three numbers from last month: new enquiries, how many became instructions, and the hours fee earners booked as non-chargeable admin. They show which job to automate first. Send them through the contact form (the Business automation option) with the name of your case management system; after an informal scoping chat we'll come back with a price range for the build.
Sources
Every figure in this article links back to the source below it was checked against.
- High Court (Divisional Court): Ayinde v Haringey and Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin)
- SRA: Breakdown of solicitor firms (regulated community statistics, August 2026)
- LexisNexis (vendor): Scaling up, the AI-dependent lawyer (September 2026)
- LexisNexis (vendor): UK lawyers and AI survey (September 2025)
Written for Orwell Lab’s practical guide collection. Judgments, SRA rules and statistics checked on 7 October 2026.
Discuss your own requirements ↗