Legal IT Professionals reports
A new report from Whitecap Consulting, conducted with support from key regional stakeholders, has found impressive levels of LegalTech activity, capability and employment across legal service providers, tech firms and LegalTech businesses in the Bristol & Bath region.
The report identifies a significant level of LegalTech activity across an established legal sector, including more than 750 tech and innovation roles. In addition, there is a growing cluster of over 30 LegalTechs, tech companies working in the legal sector, and LegalTech arms operating within the region’s law firms. The new report is the latest evidence to support the region’s core strength in emerging areas of technology, coming less than two weeks after it was named in the Kalifa Review as one of the top 10 FinTech clusters in the UK.
The research has been conducted in partnership with the West of England Combined Authority, Invest Bristol+Bath, Bristol Law Society, Bristol+Bath LegalTech, with support from sponsors including Amdaris, Burges Salmon, DAC Beachcroft, Datasharp Integrated Communications, Foot Anstey, PracticeEvolve, University of Law, and VWV. Nearly 50 stakeholders were interviewed as part of the research process, which was supported by an online survey and a number of events.
The key findings of the report include:
- High levels of LegalTech activity and service innovation across law firms of all sizes reflect the region’s underlying strengths in technology and law – including the presence of head office functions of 17 of the UK’s Top 200 law firms.
- Bristol and Bath has built an extensive LegalTech talent pool, with more than 750 legal technology and innovation roles identified by our research.
- There is a growing cluster of over 30 LegalTechs, tech companies working in the legal sector and LegalTech arms within the region’s law firms. The number of LegalTech businesses is significant in size compared to other regional locations – as is the case in FinTech.
- The region’s LegalTech sector could create powerful differentiation on a national and international level if embryonic collaboration in the legal sector was fully joined up with and modelled on the tech sector’s well-established regional collaborative ecosystem.
- A strong sense of societal purpose is evident within the legal sector in the region and this should drive a future strand of LegalTech development.
The report makes recommendations against each key finding, and advocates supporting the future development of the ecosystem via actions including: improving visibility and accessibility to law firms for LegalTechs and tech firms; more communication and collaboration; building cross-sector links (eg with FinTech) within and outside the region; raising awareness of the roles available in LegalTech to help attract talent to the sector; and building on the region’s strong sense of societal purpose.
