Common Questions
Straight answers about Silva, the legal services, Discovery Days, Silva AI, pricing, and what we can and cannot help with. If your question isn't here, ask us directly.
Silva is not a law firm. Silva Lex Ltd is a legal advisory and consultancy company. It gives commercial businesses practical legal support and helps law firms adopt AI, but it is not a firm of solicitors regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. For work that legally requires a regulated firm, Silva refers you on or works alongside one.
Silva does two things under one brand. The legal arm gives growing businesses in-house quality legal support without the cost of an in-house team - contracts, day-to-day advice, retainers and dispute support. The AI arm (Silva AI) helps law firms adopt artificial intelligence safely and usefully through training, discovery and custom builds.
Silva serves two audiences. The legal services are for growing commercial businesses who need reliable legal support but do not have, or do not want, a full in-house legal team. The AI services are for law firms and legal professionals who want to use AI in their practice without the hype or the risk.
Silva Lex Ltd was founded by Matthew Strain. Work is done by experienced consultants, not junior staff learning on a client's time and cost. Where specialist advocacy is needed, Silva works with specialist barristers.
Silva Lex Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15582690, with a registered office in Sunderland. Silva works with clients remotely and is digital-first, so location is not a barrier to working together.
It means you get the responsiveness and commercial focus of an in-house lawyer without the cost of employing one. Silva works as an extension of your team - accessible, proactive and familiar with your business - but on a flexible, out-sourced basis you can scale up or down.
Silva offers four main legal services for businesses:
Yes. Reviewing, drafting and negotiating commercial contracts is core to Silva's legal service. Silva is also insured to advise on contracts across jurisdictions, so it can help with international agreements as well as UK ones.
A Silva retainer is ongoing, fixed-fee legal support with priority access. Instead of paying by the hour and only calling when something breaks, you get a proactive relationship - Silva knows your business, flags issues early and is there when you need a quick answer. It is one of Silva's two priority legal products.
Silva supports businesses through commercial disputes, from the pre-action stage through proceedings to resolution. As Silva is not a regulated firm it does not conduct litigation or appear in court itself; it works alongside regulated firms and specialist barristers where those reserved activities are needed, while staying your commercial point of contact.
A Discovery Day is one focused day that takes you from uncertainty to a clear, written, actionable plan, for a fixed fee with no open-ended commitment. Silva runs two kinds: a Legal Discovery Day for businesses who want their legal risks mapped, and an AI Discovery Day for law firms who want an AI roadmap.
A Legal Discovery Day is a single day where Silva reviews your contracts and key documents, maps and prioritises your legal risks and gaps, and hands you a clear written action plan. It suits growing businesses who suspect they have legal exposure but do not know where. It is a fixed fee.
An AI Discovery Day is a single day where Silva observes and assesses a law firm's workflows, produces a costed "Menu of Opportunities" showing where AI can help, and identifies the right first build to prioritise. It is for firms who want to stop buying tools on a hunch and start with a clear, evidence-based roadmap.
A Legal Discovery Day starts from £2,250 plus VAT. An AI Discovery Day starts from £3,000 plus VAT, or from £5,000 for larger firms needing a multi-day scope. Each is a fixed fee, agreed with you before anything is booked, so there are no surprises. Larger or more complex organisations need more than a single day, which is why the published figures are a starting point rather than a ceiling.
You leave a Discovery Day with a written, actionable plan, not just a conversation. For a Legal Discovery Day that is a prioritised map of your legal risks and recommended actions. For an AI Discovery Day it is a costed Menu of Opportunities and a recommended first build.
Silva AI is Silva's artificial intelligence arm for law firms and legal professionals. There are two ways to work with it: instruct Silva like counsel and have the AI work done for you, matter by matter (On Instruction), or build AI into your firm through an AI Discovery Day, Training and Implementation. The approach is confident and technical, free of jargon and hype.
Yes. Silva AI runs two-session training for law firms - foundations first, then live demonstrations against the firm's actual work. It covers how to write strong prompts, where AI genuinely helps day to day, and where professional judgement still has to sit. It is built for partners, associates and paralegals who will use AI in practice.
On Instruction means Silva does the AI work for you: you instruct Silva like counsel, the matter runs on Silva's platform, and you receive the deliverables - a due diligence report, a red flag review - per matter, at a fixed fee. Implementation means Silva builds AI capability into your firm, set up off the shelf, in your environment, or on dedicated hardware, so your team owns it. One is work delivered; the other is capability built.
No. In Silva's model AI does the heavy lifting and an experienced consultant reviews and owns the output. The human-review layer is the point, not an add-on - it is what makes AI-assisted legal work safe to rely on. Silva builds AI around professional judgement, not instead of it.
Yes. Through Implementation, Silva builds custom AI tools and workflows for law firms - document review, case review and reporting are typical examples. Builds usually start from an AI Discovery Day so the work is targeted at the firm's real bottlenecks.
Transparency is the right position, and increasingly the required one. A formal AI protocol in your client agreements sets out how AI is used in the firm's work - AI review, human review, client approval. It manages expectations, mitigates negligence risk, and positions the firm ahead of regulatory requirements rather than behind them.
No. AI gets you to 70-80% in minutes. The last 20-30% is professional judgment. The skill is knowing which 70-80% to keep. AI handles the blank page, data extraction, the first draft. Fee-earners do the work requiring knowledge of the client, the strategy, the matter - which is most of the work worth charging for.
Firms building this in early will deliver better service at a higher effective rate. Those who do not will be competing against those who have.
Silva works on fixed, agreed fees wherever possible rather than open-ended hourly billing. You know the price before the work starts, and larger work can be staged, with payment on account agreed up front. This is a deliberate difference from the traditional law firm model, where the meter runs and the bill is a surprise.
Silva's default is a fixed fee agreed up front, not hourly billing. Hourly rates apply only where a piece of work genuinely cannot be scoped in advance - usually a dispute or a negotiation, where the other side dictates how much work there is. Where they do apply, rates run between £250 and £450 an hour plus VAT, depending on the matter, its complexity, any jurisdictional requirements and the seniority of the consultant on it. The approach is agreed with you first, so there are no surprises. How pricing works in full is set out on Silva's pricing page.
Most Silva work is priced as a fixed fee agreed before the work starts, so the cost depends on what you need. Silva's pricing page carries a guide to where common pieces of work start - terms and conditions from £1,450 plus VAT, an employment contract from £450, a red flag contract review from £195, a Legal Discovery Day from £2,250, and an EMI share option scheme from £3,850. Ongoing support runs on a fixed monthly retainer from £775 plus VAT a month, which is £9,300 plus VAT a year for an in-house legal experience. Where a piece of work genuinely cannot be scoped in advance, hourly rates run between £250 and £450 plus VAT. The published figures are indicative starting points, and your fee is confirmed with you before anything begins.
Yes. Silva treats client information as confidential and handles personal data in line with UK data protection law. How Silva collects and uses data is set out in its privacy policy.
Silva is deliberate about data when using AI. Client data is handled with the same confidentiality as any other Silva work, and an experienced consultant reviews AI output before it is relied on. Silva advises law firms on exactly this question - how to use AI without putting client data or professional duties at risk.
No. Enterprise and Team accounts explicitly do not use conversations or documents as training data. Your client matter information stays private to the organisation. This is a critical difference from free consumer tools, and it is one of the first things training covers, along with where to confirm it in account settings.
On Team and Enterprise plans, no. Projects persist until you delete them. The 30-day limit applies to individual chats outside Projects on the free tier. For any work you want to keep - a matter, a client, a research thread - put it in a Project.
No. Silva Lex Ltd is not a firm of solicitors and is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. It is a legal advisory and consultancy company. This means it is clear about the things it cannot do, and refers you to, or works alongside, a regulated firm when one is legally required.
Silva cannot carry out activities that legally require an SRA-authorised firm or other regulated provider - for example conducting litigation, appearing in court as your advocate, and certain reserved legal activities. Where you need one of these, Silva tells you plainly and refers you on or works alongside a regulated firm or barrister. Silva's "things that are never in scope" page sets this out in full.
If you need work that requires a regulated firm, Silva does not pretend otherwise. It either refers you to a suitable regulated firm or specialist barrister, or stays involved as your commercial point of contact while the regulated work is done by the right person. The aim is that you always know who is doing what.
Not for generating content. Court guidance across jurisdictions consistently prohibits AI from creating, altering, or embellishing witness evidence. Preparatory work behind sworn documents - research, chronologies, issue summaries - is generally permitted, subject to disclosure obligations.
The simplest way to start is to get in touch through the contact page, telling Silva whether you are after legal support, AI help, or are not sure yet. For many clients a Discovery Day is the natural first step, because it turns an uncertain situation into a clear plan for a fixed fee.
Start from the Discovery Days page, which splits into the legal and AI options. The Legal Discovery Day has its own booking form; for an AI Discovery Day, register through the contact page. Either way, Silva confirms scope and the fixed fee with you before anything is booked.
You can contact Silva by email at hello@silvalex.co.uk, through the contact form on the website, or via LinkedIn. The contact form lets you flag whether your enquiry is legal, AI or general, so it reaches the right place.
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Ask us directly. Tell us whether it's legal, AI or you're not sure yet, and it will reach the right person.