New Report Reveals Significant LegalTech Cluster in Bristol & Bath

The research has been conducted in partnership with West of England Combined Authority, Invest Bristol+Bath, Bristol Law Society, Bristol+Bath LegalTech, with support from sponsors including Amdaris, Datasharp Integrated Communications, PracticeEvolve, University of Law, VWV, and other like-minded law firms such as Burges Salmon, DAC Beachcroft, and Foot Anstey. Nearly 50 stakeholders were interviewed as part of the research process, which was supported by an online survey and a number of events.

The new report is the latest evidence to support the region’s core strength in emerging areas of technology, coming less than two weeks after it was named in the Kalifa Review as one of the top 10 FinTech clusters in the UK.

What Does the Bristol & Bath LegalTech Report Reveal?

The key findings of the report include:

• High levels of LegalTech activity and service innovation across law firms of all sizes reflect the region’s underlying strengths in technology and law – including the presence of 17 Top 200 law firm head office functions.
  
  
• Bristol and Bath has built an extensive LegalTech talent pool, with more than 750 legal technology and innovation roles identified by our research.
  
  
• There is a growing cluster of over 30 LegalTechs, tech companies working in the legal sector and LegalTech arms within the region’s law firms. The number of LegalTech businesses is significant in size compared to other regional locations - as is the case in FinTech.
  
  
• The region’s LegalTech sector could create powerful differentiation on a national and international level if embryonic collaboration in the legal sector was fully joined up with and modelled on the tech sector’s well-established regional collaborative ecosystem.
  
  
• A strong sense of societal purpose is evident within the legal sector in the region and this should drive a future strand of LegalTech development.

The report makes recommendations against each key finding, and advocates supporting the future development of the ecosystem via actions including:

• improving visibility and accessibility to law firms for LegalTechs and tech firms
• more communication and collaboration
• building cross-sector links (eg with FinTech) within and outside the region
• raising awareness of the roles available in LegalTech to help attract talent to the sector
• building on the region’s strong sense of societal purpose.

Richard Coates, Managing Director of Whitecap Consulting, said:

“The analysis that underpins this report has focused on the intersection of two of the most successful sectors in the regional economy, so it is no surprise that 93% of people surveyed believed LegalTech to be a growth opportunity for Bristol & Bath.  The region is widely acknowledged to ‘punch above its weight’ in both sectors, a view that the findings of this research endorse.”

Ben Holt, President of Bristol Law Society & VWV Partner, said:

“LegalTech is a central plank for the legal future and this report is a keystone for taking us to the next step. We now need to move to that next phase and to make innovation and legal tech a long-term success story for the region. This report was commissioned to assist in giving the Bristol and Bath city region LegalTech sector a platform to demonstrate an enviable position as a world-class innovation hub. I very much look forward to seeing the next stage of that evolution.”

Chris Bull, Co-Chair of Bristol+Bath LegalTech, who co-authored the report with Whitecap, said:

“The report shines a much-needed light on the growth of a nationally and internationally significant LegalTech cluster in the West of England and it was great to see the role of our collaborative LegalTech community network, Bristol+Bath LegalTech (BBLT), cited by many contributors to this report as one of the region’s great strengths. Recommendations in the report reflect a collective desire to take these excellent foundations to the next level and for 2021 to be a major step-change in BBLT’s activity, helping the sector power back up post-pandemic”. 

We are taking big strides in the development of digital solutions. Not only are we launching new products and services, we are also collaborating with tech businesses and supporting industry research and growth.