Two reports commissioned by the Legal Services Board (LSB) examining the use of artificial intelligence in legal services have concluded it has the potential to reduce unmet legal needs, but safeguards are needed to protect consumers.
According to the report, around 32% of adults in England and Wales who experience a legal problem receive no professional support, often because of cost, complexity, or simply not knowing where to turn. AI tools offer a genuine route to more affordable, accessible legal help for people who would otherwise have none, but safeguards consumers might assume are in place – including certainty of accuracy, human oversight, data protection and the access to redress – simply don’t exist with AI tools.
“Consumers who access AI-powered support through a regulated lawyer, benefit from professional oversight and established routes to redress,” the LSB said. “People using AI tools directly may have no equivalent protection.”
The report, Existing Standards for AI-Powered Business-to-Consumer Lawtech, suggests regulation has not kept pace with innovation, noting: “The standards landscape for AI-powered B2C lawtech is characterised by breadth without depth. Guidance documents dominate, reflecting an ecosystem in which most standard-setting activity takes the form of principles, recommendations, and best practice frameworks rather than binding requirements with enforcement mechanisms.”
Regulation to date has assumed the involvement of a “human professional intermediary” (solicitor, barrister or other regulated professional) between AI and the end user. Where lawtech is delivered purely by AI this intermediary doesn’t exist, creating a “structural gap” where regulatory obligations to consumers do not apply. Examples cited in the report include tools that help people challenge parking fines, navigate housing disputes, or understand their employment rights.
As a result, much of the regulation and standards were not designed with AI in mind and do not address AI-particular risks, with the report identifying “hallucination, emergent bias arising from training data, opacity in reasoning processes, and the difficulty of attributing responsibility for automated outputs” as presenting particular issues.
The report also found that AI is weak at identifying vulnerable users, signposting users to regulated or specialist support, and providing clear routes to complain and seek redress when things go wrong.
A second LSB report, AI in Legal Services, surveyed consumers on their views of AI. It found over two thirds of respondents believed AI would make legal services easier to use and create greater accessibility. Just under two thirds said they expected greater affordability.
But there is what the LSB describes as an “expectation-reality gap” between how consumers expect AI-powered legal services to behave and how they work in practice, putting consumers at risk because the safeguards they expect are often absent. Consumers want safety and safeguarding to be a “baseline, not a premium feature” according to the research, with 89% expecting there to be a complaints process, 87% expecting tools to be kept up to date with important changes, and 81% agreeing that AI legal tools should never act automatically for a vulnerable person in a high-stakes situation.
There are five non-negotiable aspects of AI-powered lawtech consumers expect: minimum guarantee for accuracy, no consequential action without informed prior consent, a level of human oversight at all times, access to redress for any harm caused, and protection of their user safety including personal information.
The LSB has published its AI plan for 2026/2027 to set out how it will support responsible innovation while strengthening consumer protection. It highlights that AI has real potential to drive efficiencies, reduce costs, and expand access to legal services in ways that support sustainable economic growth.
Richard Orpin, chief executive of the Legal Services Board, said: “More and more people are turning to AI for help with legal problems, whether that’s a housing dispute, a problem at work, or a debt they cannot manage. For many people who cannot afford legal advice, these tools could be genuinely transformative.
“We commissioned this research because very little existed on how these tools are working for consumers. What we found is a gap between what people reasonably expect and the protections currently in place. Consumers are open to AI’s potential, but they expect basic safeguards, and right now those safeguards are largely absent.
“We are sharing these findings because they matter for the whole sector as we innovate and embrace technology. As we develop our priorities for the coming three years, we will focus our efforts where regulation can have the sharpest impact, working with regulators, government, innovators, and consumer organisations to consider what targeted and proportionate action could look like, to protect consumers and support economic growth in the sector.”
The findings from the report will inform the LSB’s contribution to the recently announced AI Growth Lab, which will help providers test products and services in a test sandbox environment and navigate existing regulatory frameworks.
