Lawhive raises £9.5M for legal AI platform

Lawhive have raised £9.5M from Google Ventures following the launch of Lawrence, a Generative AI program that automates minor and repetitive legal tasks.

Lawhive is a platform for lawyers to work with their own clients or match with consumers and small businesses through its marketplace. Its AI software automates day-to-day, repetitive administrative tasks including KYC/AML, client onboarding and document collection.

An integral feature of the Lawhive platform is what the company refers to as its ‘AI Lawyer’, Lawrence, which is LLM software that was programmed in-house. Lawhive has stated that Lawrence produces better results than a paralegal after it generated correct answers to a Solicitors Qualification Exam. 

Law as a sector has been touted as ripe for disruption by Generative AI due to the amount of time that lawyers spend on administrative tasks. Studies have cast doubt over whether bots that are trained with certain exams in mind can exhibit enough flexibility to assist when evaluating legal cases.

Lawhive stated further that Lawrence’s potential uses are “as a sort of co-pilot, providing support to solicitors on monotonous or repetitive tasks”.

Pierre Proner, CEO and co-founder of Lawhive, said: “Access to the law should be a basic right, available to everyone. Unfortunately this isn’t the case. Our vision is to combine AI and best-in-class lawyers to reduce the time and cost of providing high-quality legal support, increasing access for millions of people who need it.”

He added: “This isn’t about AI replacing humans. Our AI lawyer Lawrence is doing work that human lawyers don’t want to do and are wasting their valuable time doing. AI is allowing more people to access high-quality legal help from a qualified professional at an affordable price, while also allowing some of the country’s top lawyers to work more efficiently on the parts of the law that they enjoy, and earn more money doing so.”

Episode 1 Ventures also participated in the funding round.