AI companies developing tools for legal services now have a government-sanctioned route to test them under real conditions without needing to change any laws first. The Legal Services Board is one of the regulators that will staff it.
The AI Growth Lab, announced at the government's AI Adoption Summit during London Tech Week on 8 June, opens a supervised testing environment where AI companies can bring products to market with direct regulatory guidance. Participation does not constitute approval or authorisation — it is a structured way to understand how existing rules apply before a commercial launch. Applications for LawTech companies, legal services providers and conveyancing firms open later this summer.
The Legal Services Board (LSB), England and Wales's oversight regulator for legal services, joins the Lab alongside other regulators including the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the Council for Licensed Conveyancers and the Information Commissioner's Office. The practical questions these regulators will help firms navigate include client confidentiality, data protection, explainability and the safe deployment of AI in client-facing settings.
Two case studies illustrate the kind of work the Lab is designed to support. The first is Garfield.Law, an AI-first firm already authorised by the SRA to help small businesses recover unpaid debts through the small claims court using AI, under the supervision of a regulated solicitor. The second is a conveyancing firm developing an AI tool to analyse property sales packs and flag issues for human conveyancers to review — it wants to use the sandbox to demonstrate that the tool's outputs are reliable and explainable.
The Lab sits inside a broader government strategy to make the UK the fastest AI adopter in the G7, following the Chancellor's growth plan set out in March 2026, which identified AI adoption as one of three economic growth priorities. The LSB's involvement extends its earlier work: in April 2024 it issued guidance pushing legal regulators to actively encourage innovation, and it published a pro-innovation AI framework for the sector in the same period.
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