LSB publishes report on legal innovation
The Legal Services Board (LSB) has published its latest detailed picture of levels of innovation and use of technology in legal services in England and Wales.
The report, which looks at the attitudes of legal services providers, sets out the benefits from innovation and considers the perceptions of the main enablers, including the impact of regulation.
The report considers how the legal sector makes use of a variety of technologies, the extent to which innovation has altered overall levels of service and considers whether ABS, newer providers and larger providers have higher levels of service innovation
Legal Services Board Chair, Dr Helen Phillips said:
“This important piece of new research sheds fresh light on how the legal services sector is approaching the challenges posed by innovation and technological advances.
It is welcome that intensity of competition is a significantly stronger influence on service development than in the past and that the primary benefits of technology relate to improving the quality of services for consumers. It is also encouraging to see that two thirds of providers found regulation to be no constraint at all on new service development – a significant improvement on the results in 2015.
It is clear however, that overall levels of service innovation are unchanged and that there are still numerous factors preventing wider take up of technology. This includes the perceived risks involved in using unproven technology, the potential for greater ethical problems and a lack of IT expertise.
In response, we will continue our focus on technology and legal services. We are launching a project to inform approaches to the regulation of technology which, we hope, will enable the regulatory bodies to anticipate and address the real and perceived risks presented by technologies and respond to them by encouraging innovation.”
The report can be found on the LSB website at research.legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/media/Innovation-survey-2018-report-FINAL-2.pdf