Pro bono, technology, and the pressures facing Wales’ smaller law firms
On 23 April, as part of the LSB’s outreach trip to Swansea, Chair Monisha Shah, CEO Richard Orpin and Consumer Panel Manager Heidi Evelyn met with members of the Pro Bono Committee for Wales for a wide-ranging discussion on the challenges facing legal services in the region.
Joining them were Clive Thomas, Joint Chair of the Pro Bono Committee and Managing Director at Watkins & Gunn Solicitors; Hannah Menard, Director of the Legal Advice Clinic at the University of South Wales; and Emma Waddingham, Editor of Legal News Wales and President of the Cardiff & District Law Society.
The conversation covered technology adoption, pro bono capacity, access to justice, and the relationship between smaller firms and their regulators. What emerged was a picture of a profession under real pressure – but one with no shortage of commitment.
Technology: a tale of two Waleses
The discussion opened with the thorny question of technology. Connectivity itself remains a barrier in many parts of Wales. It was noted that smaller firms lack both the budget to invest in IT and the in-house expertise to navigate the market of lawtech providers – a source of real frustration.
Some nuance was added: some businesses had turned to Starlink to fill connectivity gaps, making them better connected than many parts of England. But landlord restrictions mean even basic infrastructure improvements can be out of reach for smaller firms and consumers.
Lawtech events in Wales have tended to target lawtech startups rather than helping smaller law firms understand how to adopt technology in practice.
There was a broad sense that guidance on choosing trustworthy lawtech providers (and real-world case studies of implementation) would be far more useful than high-level encouragement to “go digital”. There was also potential for technology to help firms use first-tier complaints data more effectively as business intelligence.
One striking observation raised: clients are increasingly using AI to generate lengthy, complex questions for their lawyers. This has knock-on effects on billing and the viability of unbundled services – a practical problem that regulators will need to grapple with.
Legal education and the pipeline problem
An illuminating perspective was offered on the relationship between Welsh universities and the profession. A leading Welsh university now runs a lawtech module for all second-year law students. However, there is a disconnect between universities and local firms when it comes to collaboration on these issues. Meanwhile, it was observed that larger firms have already begun hiring legal technologists in place of junior lawyers and paralegals, signalling that the service delivery model is changing faster than some might expect.
Apprenticeships
Level 7 apprenticeships are not funded in Wales in the same way as in England — a gap that has cross-party support to close, but which has yet to be acted upon. One Welsh university has responded with programmes that allow students to work for an employer and study part-time over five years, with tuition fees paid by the firm. It has placed students with NHS Legal and Risk departments – though it was noted that not enough people know about it.
A strong case was made for these models: growing legal expertise locally is one of the best tools for retention in Wales. The rise of reverse mentoring on technology was also highlighted – law graduates may not know Excel, but they understand social media in ways that senior practitioners do not.
Pro bono: doing more with less
The picture on pro bono capacity was sobering. Clients seeking help face a six-month waiting list, and the issues they bring have grown more complex — often because people seek help later, after a situation has already deteriorated. In practice, this means that even pro bono clinics sometimes have to turn people away if their case has become too complicated to manage.
The online model has helped: it has enabled more practitioners to volunteer and made it easier to reach people. Links with a local homeless charity have also opened up new referral pathways. But the predominance of family law issues (above criminal or housing) shows how complex legal issues can be.
Pro bono help is usually one-off advice. Funded legal assistance through legal aid would be more effective, but that funding is not forthcoming.
The Legal Choices website came in for criticism – it was felt that it does not help people understand that the problems they faced were legal in nature. Triage was identified as a genuine gap. GP surgeries were raised as a potentially important access point, though this would require infrastructure and funding that currently does not exist.
Regulation and the SME experience
The group were broadly positive about the current SRA leadership, noting that trust had broken down significantly under a previous leadership. But the feeling remained that the SRA needs to be more proportionate in its approach to SMEs — particularly given that larger firms have in-house accountants and dedicated compliance resource, while smaller firms do not.
Consistency in SRA decision-making was also raised as a concern. Questions were also posed about whether the SRA has the capacity to analyse the volume of financial data it is proposing to collect – and whether collecting it without that capacity creates more problems than it solves.
On legal aid, there was agreement that additional government funding is needed – and no expectation that it will come. The proposed Interest on Lawyers’ Client Accounts (ILCA) scheme was described as very unpopular amongst the profession in Wales. Conditional fee agreements backed by ‘After the Event’ insurance remain the payment model of choice in personal injury, but they are not a solution for the full range of unmet legal need.
The LSB’s outreach trip to Swansea also included visits to advice and legal support organisations in the area. Read our blog posts from those visits for more of what we heard on the ground in South West Wales.
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