How The Largest Specialist Litigation Firm In The South East Is Maximising the Use Of AI Without Losing What Makes A Great Solicitor

AI is reshaping knowledge-based professional services faster than most firms have a strategy for. 

Legal services are not immune and in my experience are slower than most to be prepared to try, and to fail but to learn from that failure.

Research published by LexisNexis in September 2025 found that two-thirds of UK lawyers were using generative AI for work, up from 46% in January of the same year. Yet despite that headline figure, only 17% of those firms report that AI is genuinely embedded into their strategy and operations.

There is so much to do in this fast paced environment of change, but I’m proud that at Helix Law, we’re certainly in the 17%.

We’ve been building, developing, and investing in automation and technology for some time (years). Not because it’s fashionable, and not reactively. We have taken this approach because we identified long ago that technology can help us wih improving our quality, consistency and efficiency across the firm as a team. 

Those three goals haven’t changed, and the tools we use to pursue them keep improving, so we keep adapting and changing- trying, failing and learning.

Most law firms are currently approaching AI as something to either monitor, or to buy. They watch, they wait, and they commission reports about what their competitors are doing. Many are rightly concerned about the risks- hallucinations, use by junior colleagues unable to spot errors. The recent self reporting of Pinsent Masons to the SRA highlights that these risks are valid and are important to address; they exist. But they aren’t insurmountable. 

I believe AI does not replace experienced litigators but has the potential to sharpen them; to sharpen us. I’m excited about how we’re working to incorporate AI into our everyday operations, about how we’ve spent the boring time structuring our data and our workflows; the core graft thats not being acknowledged or discussed (much) publicly, but which is key. Here’s what we’ve done so far, why we think it matters, and what I believe AI will never be able to do. 

Three Examples of AI At Helix Law

Our use of AI is fairly complex but can be illustrated within three distinct and deliberate applications. Each one was built to solve a specific problem. None of them are decorative.

1. Data To The N’th Degree: Sentiment Analysis and Call Routing

Every enquiry that comes into Helix Law matters. The right enquiry needs to reach the right team quickly and without friction. 

In practice, that sounds simple. 

But for a firm handling hundreds of matters, managing enquiries requires something more reliable than human judgement alone. 

We use AI to scan and assess the sentiment of calls, identifying how positive or negative an interaction is. We started with AI also flagging where human routing decisions to a certain team needed to be reviewed; we now rely on the AI analysis over the human input. This gives us a layer of quality assurance over the intake process that would be impossible to replicate manually at scale. For example it can be complex even for a junior solicitor to quickly identify whether an enquiry should be allocated to our property litigation team, or to our construction team- trained AI cuts through this.

The crux of this is understanding the importance of, recording and then applying analysis, to data. Real data, from real interactions, that shows us patterns over time. That data shows things like:

• Where enquiries are being misrouted. 
• Where sentiment is consistently lower. 
• Where the client experience can be improved. 

We compile all the findings, and then we act on the data we’ve gathered.

2. Processing Power Within Workflows: AI-Assisted Document Generation

Litigation and the work of solicitors require documents, including standard documents, to be generated. These include outbound items such as initial emails and client care letters. Each must be accurate, appropriate to the specific use case, and consistent with the firm’s standards.

We’ve built AI into our workflows to a point where we are able to scrape and generate documents based on emails and calls we’ve had prior to our instruction, drawing on historic data to generate and propose draft documents. This is not AI acting as a Q&A service (we do this too as below) but rather using proper machine learning to produce ‘almost finished’ documents. It’s AI providing a well-constructed starting point that an experienced litigator then reviews and checks, amends and refines, and owns.

The result is that our solicitors spend less time on the mechanical work of assembling a document and more time on the substance of it. The quality floor rises and the time cost falls. 

3. Using AI for Q&A Against Case Law

Law is not static. Case law develops. Laws change. Statutory interpretation shifts. What was settled two years ago may have been refined or challenged since.

Our teams also use various ‘off the shelf’ AI products as both checking resources and legal research tools- we’re subscribed to both Harvey and LexisAI and have used both for years. These can be invaluable in interrogating documents, checking an understanding or draft against own experience and knowledge. These can be used as tool in a similar way to asking “is there anything here I have not considered here?” rather than a tool for replacing huma consideration itself, entirely.

This distinction matters. AI does not know a client. It does not know the commercial context of a dispute, the risk appetite of the people and companies on either side, the history of a relationship that a settlement might need to preserve or how a judge might read the situation and conduct of the parties. What it does do, is reduce the risk of a gap in the legal analysis. That’s genuinely useful.

Why Technology Investment Matters In Litigation Specifically

In litigation there are often competing commercial interests that go beyond the factual matrix and the applicable law. But there is also a huge information and data problem. It is not unusual for millions of records to be generated in relatively limited straightforward electronic disclosure exercises. Large volumes of data, information, documents, correspondence and records over multiple devices and formats are not unusual, all of which needs to be harvested, reviewed, assessed for relevance, legal and commercial impact on likely outcomes. And all in the context of a keen eye to cost; benefit. 

Historically the ability to process this level of data was the preserve of BigLaw firms employing teams of people across floors of buildings. That is no longer the case. 

Well-deployed technology now means we can compete (and out compete) creating real, measurable value. Not as a novelty, but as core infrastructure on how we operate.

Efficiency That Changes the Costs Dynamic Entirely

With AI and technology handling processing-heavy parts of legal work, experienced solicitors spend more time on the things only experienced solicitors can do: assessing the merits and commercial position, forming strategy, reading a situation, applying judgement, considering and applying pressure in the right place at the right time to achieve the best possible outcomes.

This is not abstract. It translates directly into cost; benefit for clients, and for our part an ability to back our own people, processes, systems and technology so that we’re only paid if we’re right. Of course we cant always work in this way, but we’re happy to consider doing so. 

This completely shifts the litigation dynamic in that our interests and a clients interests are wholly aligned.

Clio’s 2025 Legal Trends Report found that 54% of UK firms anticipate an increase in fixed-fee adoption, driven in part by AI’s ability to streamline workflows and make case timelines more predictable. When the administrative weight of a matter reduces, so does the uncertainty in pricing it. We go further in looking at alternative funding via CFA and DBAs wherever we possibly can, and where it stacks up for a client and for us. 

Consistency That Mitigates the Risk Of Human Variance

In a busy litigation practice, consistency is not a given. This is an issue that firms of all sizes can suffer from. One solicitors approach and quality can vary widely even though operating under the same brand. People change, days shift, and pressure builds. The quality of output can often vary in ways that are hard to detect and harder to correct.

Technology doesn’t have bad days. Properly implemented, it ensures that the same checks are run every time, that the same standards apply to every document, the same workflows are run, that no step in a process is skipped because someone was under pressure. 

What AI Cannot Do and Why That Matters

We’re direct about this because the legal industry has a tendency to either overclaim what AI can do, or to dismiss it entirely. Neither position serves clients well.

AI does not read a room. 

It does not pick up on the shift in tone when a counterparty moves from posturing to genuine settlement readiness. It does not understand why a particular client needs a result in six weeks rather than six months. It does not know when to push and when to wait.

Strategic judgement in litigation is a human skill. Knowing which hill to fight on, how to create and deploy leverage, when to position aggressively and when to offer a calculated concession. That’s built from years of doing this, repeatedly, at the sharp end of real disputes.

AI amplifies that capability but cannot replace it (yet).

There’s also the question of professional responsibility. Every document, every piece of advice, every strategic decision carries the name and judgement of a qualified solicitor. At Helix Law, that will not change. It cannot change. Technology is part of how we work. It’s not a substitute for who we are.

This Is A Direction, Not A Destination

We’re clear-eyed about where we are in this process. What we’ve built works but is not complete. It’s already making us faster, more consistent, and better at what we do, but we aren’t done.

Technology is evolving at record pace. We know from Microsoft, Anthropic and Clio feedback that we are pushing boundaries. What’s possible today is a fraction of what will be possible in two years, perhaps even 1 year’s time. We’re committed and excited to keep pace, not by adopting every new tool that becomes available, but by continuing to ask the same three questions we started with. 

Does this make us more efficient in what we do? 

Does it bring consistency to our work? 

Does it improve the quality on how we operate?

If the answer is yes, we build it in.

We also look at developments with an eye to the future. More on that in another blog.

For the solicitors and barristers who refer clients to us, in instructing Helix you’re instructing a firm that’s actively investing in trying to be better at what we do and how we operate, constantly. That is not a marketing line but rather a description for how we operate. I’m genuinely excited about the opportunities this entails, and how we can harness this moving forwards for the benefit of clients, as a team of people, and as a business. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AI-generated legal work reliable?

This is a really complex question. In many ways yes, it can be. If used on a Q & A basis and given enough (too much) rope, AI will go off piste. We’ve seen it add items into chronologies that are completely hallucinated and fictitious; not good. But when prompts and chains and workflows are broken up and logic and fields are added, and it is not merely left to ‘have a go’ it is possible to create bumpers that keep AI in a narrow lane. When then reviewed we find legal work can be reliably used. There is also a use case for using AI to check whether anything is missing or there are any recommendations. This is not infallible but acts as another pair of eyes that has value. Ultimately freeing experienced solicitors to focus on strategy and judgement via time saving is key. Every document and every piece of advice should be reviewed and owned by a qualified solicitor. 

Does using AI mean I get less personal attention from my solicitor?

The opposite. By reducing the time spent on processing-heavy work, AI frees solicitors to focus on the substance of a matter like the strategy, judgement calls, and conversations that actually move a case forward or communicate the current position and/or next steps.

How does Helix Law protect client confidentiality when using AI tools?

Client confidentiality is a professional and regulatory obligation, not a box-ticking exercise. We take the selection, implementation, and governance of any technology very seriously and do not use tools that would compromise the confidentiality of client information. The software we use ringfences data on a ZDR basis. 

The Firms That Will Serve Clients Best Are Already Investing

The firms that serve clients best over the next decade are not the ones still deciding how they feel about AI. They’re the ones that have been building deliberately, learning from real data, and iterating.

At Helix Law, we continue to do this work. Not because technology is interesting for its own sake, but because our clients deserve a firm that’s faster, more consistent, delivers better quality output today, and which is prepared to take and share risk and reward, backing their, our, own advice.

If you’re facing or are aware of a commercial, property, or construction dispute, our specialist litigation team would love the opportunity to provide clear and practical advice tailored to your circumstances. We act nationally and would love to help you.

This article is general guidance only. Individual situations require individual advice.