The ground has moved fast this year. The SRA published a Misuse of AI warning notice in August 2026. The Law Society issued conveyancing-specific AI guidance in April, and is consulting on the first Conveyancing Protocol update since 2019 with AI-generated enquiries in scope.
42 reports of potential AI misuse reached the SRA in the year to July 2026. Investigations are ongoing. [3]
The standards already apply. What changes is whether your agents are built with them in mind, or retrofitted under pressure. Ours are built to be ready, on infrastructure your COLP can defend. Every regulator listed here already holds your firm to account. Introducing an agent doesn't change who's answerable, or to whom.
The SRA's reported concerns fall into three areas: confidentiality, how work is evidenced, and supervision. We design for all three before an agent runs.
Confidentiality and privilege. Agents run inside an isolated Azure tenancy. Client content does not train external models. No consumer AI tools touch privileged material. The Upper Tribunal confirmed in 2026 that uploading documents to public AI tools waives legal professional privilege. [4] We assume that ruling is permanent and build accordingly.
Audit trail and accountability. Every input and output is logged. Every agent decision is reconstructable. If a client, a CQS assessor, your PII broker, or a regulator asks how an output was produced, you can show them.
Human oversight at judgement points. Articles 22A to 22D of the UK GDPR, in force since February 2026, set the rules for decisions taken about people by automated means, including the right to human intervention. Title defect assessment, exchange authority, and the release of completion funds stay with your conveyancers, every time. Sign-off points are designed into the workflow, not bolted on afterwards.
- SRA · Solicitors Regulation Authority
- CLC · Council for Licensed Conveyancers
- Law Society · Conveyancing Protocol and CQS
- ICO · Information Commissioner's Office
- HMLR · HM Land Registry
- LSB · Legal Services Board