A former UK managing partner at DLA Piper has been appointed to head a new Sheffield-based law firm, Lexcelerate. Launched by Yorkshire AI Labs, the firm intends to apply automation to the conveyancing sector. Paul Firth, who previously served as the national head of real estate at Irwin Mitchell and as chief executive of Creative Sheffield, will lead the business.
The firm was co-founded by Mark Hewitt, who developed the company’s proprietary technology platform. The business aims to reduce the manual work involved in a remortgage to 15 minutes of fee earner time, with a goal of completing transactions in approximately two weeks. Currently, the legal process for remortgages typically takes between six and eight weeks.
The platform is designed to automate roughly 90 per cent of administrative tasks and provide clients with the ability to track their transactions. This launch occurs as more than 25 per cent of legal professionals report using generative artificial intelligence in their daily work. While large firms are using the technology for document review and due diligence, regulators and judges have issued guidance regarding the responsible use of such tools.
Lexcelerate argues that legal expertise should be directed toward areas that add value rather than being consumed by repetitive processes. Paul Firth stated: “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.”
Mark Hewitt previously led a legal software startup, Rebmark, to more than £1,000,000 in annual recurring revenue before it was acquired by Verisk Analytics. The software from that venture is now used to manage more than £7.4 billion of catastrophic injury claims reserves. Mark 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 firm is part of the Yorkshire AI Labs portfolio, which also includes businesses such as FourJaw and IntelliAM. David Richards MBE, 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.”
Image source: LinkedIn
