Bringing Tech to Traditional Legal Services

Stephen Ward is the co-founder and Business Development Director at the Barrister Group, one of the UK's most innovative, tech-driven barrister chambers. With over 40 years in the legal industry, he began his career at 15 and quickly rose to the position of senior clerk. In 2001, motivated by a desire to transform the traditional chambers model toward a more collaborative approach, he helped launch a new type of barristers' chambers that combines entrepreneurial spirit with technology.

How did you go from being a clerk to becoming a successful entrepreneur in legal services?

The journey is quite straightforward. I was a clerk in a traditional chamber, which is run by a committee. Many people running a traditional chamber give up their own personal time. You know, they're not being paid for it. So, I'm not being critical in the slightest. If you understand how the system works, it's quite inefficient.

However, what it does do is give people control over their destiny. If you want control over your destiny, you've got to understand what that destiny looks like. You've to understand what the vision is and why you want to achieve it. And the problem is, if you're in a chamber with 40 or 50 barristers, it's very often the case that that vision, that destiny, is not shared. So I was sitting in the chamber one night listening to a chamber committee meeting, and I just decided there must be a better way of doing this. The chambers are employing professional people to run their business, but they're not letting them run it because they won't be able to control themselves. These are not people; barristers are incredibly bright and great in court, but they tend not to be businessmen, managers, or people managers. And so you end up with everyday problems in a chamber where decisions can't get made. Decisions are slow to make. You've to keep a hold of the finances, but traditional chambers aren't minded about making a profit to reinvest in the future.

So, one of the inefficiencies in the traditional chamber is the lack of business thinking. What are some others you noticed?

So, inefficiency sounds like it's implying criticism, but it's not intended in that way. I use the terms 'inefficiency' and 'streamlining' in the context of examining a process and procedure from a business perspective. You're always trying to find the easiest path possible. In a traditional chamber, the thinking from my point of view is that the Barristers and the clerks are employed to look after the Barristers, which is very inward facing. We have a philosophy that you provide a better service for the Barristers if you're outward-facing and looking at the clients, thinking about what the client journey is. The client wants to get a good service. As a clerk, we earn our income by receiving fees and being paid by the barristers. So everybody wants the barrister to succeed, and the client wants a good service. However, it's often not looked at or, certainly, wasn't in the past. It's looked at that the barristers are the company. The company is employing the staff to look after the barristers.

All we are trying to do is use technology and modern business practices. So, it might be technology, as in software, or it might be technology, as in AI. It's all focused on the ultimate result, which is access to justice. If someone has a legal issue, we can utilize our systems, processes, services, resources, and technology to find a solution. Well, we just don't want the end client to have to worry too much about what the system or the process is. We want them to be able to ask the question and then be given a solution. That's quite hard to do when you're not efficient and not process-driven, if that makes sense.

What’s your business all about, how does it work, and how are you improving the service for end users?

If you go back to the issue that people face is it's something like 70 % of legal needs in the UK are unmet because people either perceive it to be too expensive or they don't know how to go about it because we have a system where you can go to a solicitor or you can go to a barrister for a legal service and most people don't know the difference. This is strange because if you showed somebody a photograph of a man in a suit with a briefcase or somebody stood there in a wig and gown and you asked them, you know which one's the barrister? They would be able to point that out, but they wouldn't know what the difference is or how to approach them.

We take the view that you don't need to do that, and you don't need to worry about it. And what we've done is we've grown our business by being, as far as we are concerned, very accessible. For instance, the difference between us and many chambers is that we're open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Many chambers are not particularly interested in dealing with members of the public. It's perceived as a different type of work that many barristers and chambers don't want to engage in. We don't mind who our customer is. We ensure that we don't create any barriers whatsoever to accessing our service. If someone has a legal need, we will triage to determine whether they are a member of the public or a legal professional. Legal professionals can be other lawyers, in-house lawyers in law firms, or representatives from insurance companies or corporations, among others. But at the end of the day, we don't put up barriers to stop people from asking us questions. And then we've grown the business. We're now 300 people in the business. That's 250 barristers, lawyers, and 50 members of staff looking after them.

It's literally open 24/7. We listen to what people want, and we try to find a solution. We simply think differently about access to justice. If someone comes to us and they're not really our customer, many chambers or law firms will try to essentially put the customer off, create a barrier, or tell them that they can't help them. While we do our best to find a solution, whatever that may be. We've got to keep growing, and we've got to keep investing so that we can do more of this, which is really where we want to go.

You mentioned that you use technologies. What exactly are they, and how do they set you apart from other chambers?

If it's a professional client, such as a solicitor or an in-house lawyer, the biggest gain they're getting from using our services is that the technology allows us to be far more streamlined in process matters. We currently handle approximately 2,000 final court cases each month, and it takes us approximately 10 minutes to process a request for a barrister for a case. If you're looking for a barrister, there's a certain set of criteria. You want to know that they're available. You want to know the price. You want to know they have the expertise. You want to know what happens next. And suppose you can keep it that simple for professional users of our service, which is about 2,000 per month. In that case, the average saving in time, bearing in mind lawyers' time, is the most expensive thing. If we were to ask a large law firm or a large user, such as British Gas or EasyJet, how many cases do you instruct barristers to handle per year? And they say this many thousand, and you say, what if you save 20 minutes per instruction? They bite your hand off. That's where we provide the efficiency.

When it's a member of the public, it's sort of almost the opposite. The members of the public need more time investment from the staff, and they need to be able to communicate effectively and understand the information provided. We use technology to sift through the information they provide to find the solution. For instance, if a member of the public calls our helpline, all information is entered into the system while they're talking. Calls are recorded. We can pick up on keywords. The system is building a picture on the screen in front of the operator already to tell them what sort of person we need. The answer to the entire problem appears on the screen before the operator, even before they've finished the call. So you're moving the whole process on very smoothly. There is a huge opportunity to use more AI with members of the public rather than professional users, purely because of the slowness of adoption.

If data-driven solutions seem so straightforward, why do you think most chambers aren't investing in tech the way you are?

Two very straightforward reasons. Going back to the structure of traditional chambers. All of the technology we are investing in is for the future. We've recently invested over three million. If you ask traditional chambers, what are you investing in and why? They'll say they invest in their premises, in their staff, I'm sure. But from what I gather, and obviously, I can't speak for every chamber, but there's no drive to want to do it. It always comes down to why somebody would want to do this. We are doing this because we want to invest in our future. We take a commercial approach to it. If we invest in our systems, we can achieve more with the same resources, and therefore, we become more profitable. However, that's not a conversation that would sit comfortably with many chambers, as it's not what they're designed for.

What are some of the biggest lessons you've learned on your entrepreneurial journey that others could take inspiration from?

The first thing is to be honest, upfront, and transparent about everything. I get into trouble for being so honest and transparent because people say you shouldn't be sharing that information. What are they going to do with it? They're not going to compete with us, are they? They've already made it clear they're not going to. I've had a business coach for many years, and I've been taught to share problems straight away. I think it takes a particularly brave, confident person to come and say this is the problem we need to solve, but I don't know the answer. And I wouldn't say I'm naturally those. So you have to learn just to be truthful to yourself and face up to the problems that you find along the way. One of the other key things I think is critical when it comes to software is understanding when you've got it wrong because there's no point in pursuing a path that's not effective. It's really crucial to understand where you're going. Measure everything as you said earlier; what data points have you got? Be honest, be open, and have a really good moral compass. Always treat people well, and if you say you're going to do something, do it. And if you can't do it, explain why. A lot of people are going to come with you on your journey, and they're putting their careers on the line as well. You know, just treat that with respect and be honest with people.

Have these handpicked highlights sparked your curiosity? You won't want to miss the full conversation with Stephen Ward on our YouTube channel or your favorite platform. The episode dropped on December 3th, 2024.