The SRA appears to have concluded that legal AI is best examined in the open, rather than reconstructed later from the remains of a complaint.
The regulator has joined the Advisory AI Growth Lab, a government-backed initiative intended to help developers and users test AI products within existing legal frameworks. In legal services, the timing is hardly accidental. Firms are already deploying AI across drafting, research, triage, disclosure and client intake. The debate has moved on from whether these tools belong in practice. They are already there. The question is how closely they are watched.
The SRA’s involvement reflects a particular set of risks. Legal AI does not behave like ordinary software. A drafting tool may produce text that reads well but says nothing of value. A research system can supply authorities that do not exist. An intake tool may mishandle vulnerable clients at the first point of contact. A triage system might send a matter down the wrong path before any qualified lawyer becomes involved. In legal work, these are not minor defects. They can cost time, money-and occasionally something rather more serious.
The appeal of the Growth Lab lies in its structure. It offers a forum in which products can be tested with regulatory considerations in mind, rather than introduced quietly and assessed retrospectively when something goes wrong. That shift matters. It creates space to consider supervision, audit trails and client communication before tools are widely deployed, rather than after they have already found their way into day-to-day practice.
Law firms will watch developments with some care. The commercial incentives are clear enough. Clients expect speed, lower costs and direct answers. Firms, in turn, want efficiency, consistency and less time spent on repetitive work. None of this displaces professional obligations. Duties of confidentiality, competence, independence and supervision remain intact, even if the work is assisted by something with a reassuringly modern interface.
The regulator, for its part, faces a familiar balancing exercise. Oversight that is too heavy risks slowing adoption and concentrating innovation among a small number of well-funded providers. Oversight that is too light invites the opposite problem: consumers acting, in effect, as test cases, and the profession revisiting avoidable errors with predictable regularity. The middle ground is unlikely to be glamorous but should prove more durable-clear expectations, proper testing, human oversight and an honest account of what these systems can and cannot do.
The position is particularly acute for smaller firms. Larger practices may be able to absorb the cost of internal governance, procurement processes and bespoke policies. Smaller firms are more likely to rely on off-the-shelf tools, often out of necessity rather than enthusiasm. Any regulatory approach that assumes in-house technology teams and layered oversight risks missing a significant portion of the profession.
The Growth Lab will not eliminate the risks associated with legal AI. It may, however, reduce the likelihood that obvious problems are embedded before anyone has had the opportunity to examine them properly.
AI is unlikely to replace professional judgment in law. It may, however, make weak judgment rather easier to spot.
For advisers, this is not just an industry talking point. The practical work remains grounded in the familiar: maintaining records, documenting decisions, issuing clear client warnings and ensuring that judgment is visible on the file before it is tested in dispute. When questions arise-as they tend to-the strength of that record will shape the answer. The principle is unchanged, even if the tools are not: keep the evidence, explain the risk early, and assume that any process may one day be read by someone with both the time and the inclination to scrutinise it.
Author: TOF
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