Winners and runners-up of the Legal Access Challenge – where are they now?
Three years on, the techpreneurs who made it to the final stages of the challenge have carried on developing their products, and, crucially, continue to make legal services more accessible and affordable.
Changing the status quo, promoting cutting-edge practices and breaking down regulatory barriers to innovation are at the heart of the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund (RPF). In a push to make the UK the world's most innovative economy, the RPF was launched back in 2018 by the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy. The RPF gave regulators and local authorities grants to speed up innovation in their respective areas.
Compared with the big strides made in sectors such as banking and finance, much of the tech innovation in the legal sector has happened in improving back-office functions in large, commercial firms rather than at the consumer-facing end. The pandemic helped speed things up, with more than half of firms saying in 2021 research by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and University of Oxford that their use of technology had increased since the start of covid. And, yet, too many people struggle to get legal support. Technology could help to make accessing legal services easier and more affordable.
But how to make legal innovation more mainstream? What solutions were there to make legal advice more affordable and accessible for the majority? These were the questions the SRA had as part of its successful bid for funding from the RPF. England and Wales’s largest legal regulator started work with innovation agency Nesta Challenges and founded the Legal Access Challenge.
The Legal Access Challenge
Running globally from 2018 to 2020, the challenge had a prize fund for those whose technological solutions could help individuals and small and medium-sized businesses to understand and resolve their legal problems.
The challenge received 117 applications from a diverse pool of organisations – from charities to businesses – covering areas of law ranging from housing to immigration.
In 2019, eight finalists were each awarded £50,000 from the prize fund to develop their ideas. And, in April 2020, two of these took home an additional £50,000 to help bring their solutions to market.
Three years later, where are the finalists now, and did the tech hit the ground?
Further success with the pioneers fund
The RPF continues to make significant investment in lawtech, with the SRA winning a second round of funding in 2021. This grant created a new network where regulators, expert research institutions and local government can work together to improve and test legal access within local communities.
And, in 2022, the RPF awarded the SRA almost £120,000 in a third round of funding. The grant will fund a project exploring ways to increase the use of technology-enabled dispute resolution. This will help more individuals and businesses resolve legal issues without the need to go to court. The project will launch in September 2023.
Notes
Legal Access Challenge finalists Formily and Organise were not available to comment. Doteveryone is no longer operating.