The bodies helping AI into legal services faster have not said whether anyone is measuring it

On 5 August the Solicitors Regulation Authority announced that applications had opened for the government's first Advisory AI Growth Lab. The description is the government's own: an initiative funded by government and designed to accelerate the development and deployment of AI products and services, by helping innovators understand existing regulatory frameworks with more confidence.

Legal services is the first sector to receive it. Applications close on 27 September. Further sectors will follow.

The SRA is not running it alone. It works alongside the Legal Services Board, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers and the Information Commissioner's Office. Sarah Rapson, the SRA's chief executive, said innovation has an important role in improving legal services for consumers and businesses, and that the aim is to help innovators understand regulatory requirements while maintaining trust and confidence.

Who was asked what

On 2 September this paper wrote to the SRA. The question was whether it holds, commissions or publishes any independent measurement of the effect of AI tools on the time taken to complete legal work, in conveyancing or any other regulated service. If not, whether any is planned, and whether the SRA considers it within its remit given the transparency duty in force since December 2018.

The same day we wrote to the Legal Services Board, asking whether it holds or commissions any independent evidence on the effect of AI adoption on the cost or speed of regulated legal services to consumers.

On 6 September we wrote to the Information Commissioner's Office, on a different matter: how the phrase meaningful human involvement, which sits at the centre of the rules on automated decisions that came into force in February, has been applied in practice.

The SRA and the LSB deadlines were 11 September. The ICO's falls today. Nothing has come back from any of them.

What each body is for

The SRA regulates solicitors and firms in England and Wales, and it is the body that required conveyancing firms to publish their prices from December 2018. It has the standing to ask what a service costs, because it already does.

The Legal Services Board oversees the regulators themselves, including the SRA, and its statutory objectives include improving access to justice and protecting consumer interests.

The Information Commissioner's Office regulates how personal data is used, including in automated decisions.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers, the fourth member of the lab, regulates conveyancers directly. We have not written to it and it is not part of this count.

The gap

None of this suggests the lab is a bad idea. Helping companies understand which rules apply to them is a reasonable thing for a regulator to do, and doing it in the open with named participants is better than doing it in private.

The gap is narrower and harder to defend. Four bodies, three of them asked, have taken on the job of helping AI products reach legal services faster. The question of whether anybody independently measures what those products do to the cost or the speed of the work has not been answered by any of them.

That is not a party matter and it does not divide along political lines. It is a question about what a regulator is for when the thing being regulated is arriving faster than the evidence about it.

The deadlines here are this paper's own, and none of these bodies is obliged to meet them. Any of them may still reply. If they do, we will print what they say in full.