Is there such a thing as an AI lawyer?

What you actually find

Underneath the brand names there are three things, and they are worth separating because people buy one thinking they are getting another.

1. Document generators. You answer questions, it produces an agreement.
2. Explainers. You upload something you have been sent, it tells you what it means.
3. Triage. You describe a problem, it tells you roughly what kind of problem it is.

All three are useful. None of them is a lawyer, and the good ones do not claim to be.

What the law actually allows

Worth being precise here, because it is where most of the confusion lives.

In England and Wales certain activities are reserved under the Legal Services Act 2007 - conducting litigation, exercising a right of audience, certain conveyancing and probate work, notarial activities, administering oaths. Those require an authorised person. Software is not an authorised person and cannot become one.

Everything outside the reserved list is a different matter. Anyone can advise on a commercial contract. That is not a loophole, it is how consultancies, accountants and, frankly, Silva operate at all. We are not a law firm, and I say so plainly rather than let a title do the work.

So the honest position is this. An AI lawyer cannot do the reserved things. It can do a good deal of the rest, to a variable standard.

Where they genuinely work

1. Standard documents for a standard situation. An NDA, a simple licence, a basic policy. If your situation is genuinely ordinary, an ordinary document is fine.
2. Explaining what you have been sent. Useful, fast and cheap.
3. Triage. Working out whether you have a problem worth paying someone for.
4. The people who would otherwise do nothing at all. This is the real one. Most small businesses are not choosing between AI and a solicitor. They are choosing between AI and a handshake.

The gap you are accepting

1. No accountability. No insurance behind it, no regulator, no complaints route, nobody carrying the loss if it goes wrong.
2. No judgement about you. It does not know your appetite for risk, or the relationship you are trying to protect while you argue.
3. Confident wrongness. A person who is unsure usually says so. These do not.
4. No continuity. Nobody who remembers what you did last year, or why you decided against it.

What to look for if you do use one

Assuming you have decided your situation is the ordinary kind, some of these products are considerably better than others, and the difference is not the interface.

1. Does it tell you what it cannot do? The good ones are explicit about the limits and about when to get a person. A product implying it replaces a solicitor is telling you something about its judgement.
2. Is the document drafted for England and Wales? A surprising number are American templates with the spelling changed, which is worse than useless in a dispute.
3. Is there a human option behind it? Several of these now sit alongside a real firm or a panel, which is a genuinely sensible model.
4. Can you get your documents out? You will want them somewhere else eventually, probably in a hurry.

What happens when it goes wrong

Worth walking through, because it is the part nobody reads until they need it.

If a solicitor gets it wrong, there is a route. Professional indemnity insurance, a regulator, an ombudsman, and in the last resort a claim in negligence against somebody with cover. Slow and unsatisfying, but real.

If a document generator gets it wrong, you have a contract with a software company, and its terms will tell you the output is not legal advice and its liability is capped at whatever you paid. Which was thirty pounds.

That is not a scandal. It is priced honestly and disclosed clearly. It just means the risk did not go anywhere - it stayed with you, and the saving was the fee for someone else carrying it.

How to decide, in about a minute

1. Is the situation genuinely ordinary? Be honest. Most people think theirs is unusual, and some of them are right.
2. What is the worst outcome if the document does not work? If the answer is "we would survive it", carry on.
3. Has anyone else got lawyers involved? Asymmetry costs far more than the fee you saved.
4. If it is ordinary, low-consequence and nobody else is lawyered up, use the tool. Genuinely. I would rather you had a mediocre written agreement than none at all.

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