LEXcelerate: New 'technology-first' law firm launches in Sheffield
The team behind a new “technology-first” law firm in Sheffield have said they hope to do for conveyancing what Uber did for taxis.
LEXcelerate is to use AI to make drastic changes in the time taken to complete a remortgage, automating around 90 per cent of administrative tasks.
It will be led by Paul Firth, former UK managing partner of DLA Piper and a well-known figure in British commercial property law.
The firm is co-founded by Mark Hewitt, architect of the LEXcelerate’s proprietary AI platform and a 30-year veteran of legal and manufacturing technology.
Mr Hewitt said: “We have built LEXcelerate from scratch as a technology-first business.
"Traditional firms bolt technology onto paper-based processes. We redesigned the process itself. When you automate at that level, you do not just go faster. You operate differently.”
The team behind LEXcelerate have said they will initially focus on remortgages and residential conveyancing, before expanding into other high-volume legal services.
While the current legal process for remortgages typically takes between six to eight weeks, LEXcelerate will aim to complete transactions in around two weeks, reducing the manual element of a remortgage to just 15 minutes of fee-earner time.
The platform will also give clients the ability to track their transaction in real time. Clients are able to log in, see what has been completed, what remains outstanding and a projected completion timeline that updates dynamically.
Mr Firth added: “Conveyancing has become dominated by administration rather than judgement.
“Technology now allows us to automate the repetitive elements and give clients clarity, speed and certainty. That inevitably changes the structure of the workforce, but it also improves quality and consistency.”
The launch comes at a time of rapid change in the legal sector.
More than a quarter of legal professionals now report using generative AI in their daily work, according to a survey from Thomson Reuters, nearly double the proportion of the previous year.
Large firms have also reported deploying AI for document review, contract drafting and due diligence.
LEXcelerate is also backed by venture capital firm, Yorkshire AI Labs.
David Richards, founder of Yorkshire AI Labs, said: “Artificial intelligence is not nibbling at the edges of professional services. It is tearing through them. Law, accountancy, consulting, compliance – every process-driven industry is being rewritten in real time. Firms that believe this is incremental change are misreading the moment. This is structural disruption.
“Over the next decade, AI will remove entire layers of manual professional work. The question is not whether that happens. It is who builds the new model. In Sheffield, we have decided to build it.”
Mr Firth brings 35 years of experience to his new role leading LEXcelerate. As UK managing partner at DLA Piper, he helped steer the firm through global integration and structural change.
He later became national head of real estate at Irwin Mitchell, and is a Legal 500 Hall of Fame inductee.
Mr Hewitt has worked for over 30 years helping organisations adapt to using automation.
He previously led a legal software start-up from concept to more than £1m in annual recurring revenue before its acquisition by Verisk Analytics, the NASDAQ-listed data analytics group headquartered in New Jersey.