- Wyser, Juralio and Office & Dragons among six businesses to receive funding as part of a £550 million scheme by UKRI to drive innovation during the Covid-19 pandemic
- UKRI’s Sustainable Innovation Fund targeted organisations requiring investment to keep R&D on-track during ongoing uncertainty
- To keep up to date with the latest funding opportunities sign up to the AI for Services Network.
UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) has announced its latest round of funding for projects through Innovate UK’s Sustainable Innovation Fund, with six organizations receiving funding to develop and accelerate commercialization of their LegalTech products and services during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As part of a £550 million package of measures to support the response of SMEs to the pandemic, UKRI is supporting businesses that require funding to keep ideas alive during a climate of uncertainty. The projects which were independently assessed for innovativeness, sustainability and their impact on Covid-19 recovery, either to the business or more broadly were:
Wyser Ltd
Using AI, Wyser is developing an innovative disputes triage tool which will improve efficiency, reduce case backlogs and improve engagement between legal bodies and their customers.
Resolv Dispute Management Ltd
RESOLV is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform that provides seamless and remote access to Online Dispute Resolution services to lawyers, mediators and law firms. The service facilitates end-to-end mediation sessions via video meetings which are encrypted and transcribed using AI.
Uhura Solutions Ltd
Uhura Solutions key focus is on the development and commercialization of AI software that is able to review agreements and provide automatic identification of high-risk clauses in a body of contracts. This project is focused on “teaching” the software to recognize a far broader range of agreement clauses and improve its AI engine.
Monaco Solicitors Ltd
Virtual Lawyer uses cutting edge natural language generation methods, with algorithms trained on a wealth of real case data to produce advice letters to the employee setting out their rights. The online service provides employment law representation to people whose employment rights have been infringed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Office & Dragons Ltd
This project aims to develop a machine learning-based platform that could efficiently help legal professionals elaborate contracts. In addition to the creation of jobs during the current economic crisis, this technology has the potential to generate a year-5 post-project revenue of £27M.
Juralio Ltd
This is a lawtech experimental development project to prototype and pilot a highly scalable legal dispute management and collaboration platform which will be attractive to neutral decision makers as well as to disputants, lawyers and their clients.
UKRI has seen an increased level of interest from legal tech organisations since the launch of its Next generation Services programme in 2019, that set out to support the responsible development and adoption of AI and data technologies in accountancy, insurance and legal services.
Stephen Browning, Challenge Director of Next Generation Services at Innovation UK, comments: “Innovate UK is actively working in the Legal Tech area with the Next Generation Service programme being the clearest example of this. Legal Tech companies seeking funding for research and development projects can apply to Smart Grants and sign up to AI for Services to learn of other opportunities as they develop.”
Although the Sustainable Innovation Fund has now closed, organisations can still apply to the Smart Grants Programme. Smart Grants are available to any UK-registered organisation on a two-month rolling cycle.
The next application submission deadline for Smart Grants is 11:00am on 25th November, with the subsequent competition deadline requiring applications by 20th January 2021.
Projects with a duration of 6 – 18 months must have total eligible costs between £25,000 and £500,000 and projects of 19 – 36 months having total eligible project costs between £25,000 and £2,000,000. All projects must be a collaboration of multiple parties.
To keep up to date with the latest funding opportunities sign up to the AI for Services Network.
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For further information contact: ukri@cowpr.com
About UK Research and Innovation (UKRI):
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is the largest public funder of research and innovation in the UK, with a budget of over £8bn. It is composed of seven disciplinary research councils, Innovate UK and Research England.
We operate across the whole country and work with our many partners in higher education, research organisations businesses, government, and charities.
Our vision is for an outstanding research and innovation system in the UK that gives everyone the opportunity to contribute and to benefit, enriching lives locally, nationally and internationally.
Our mission is to convene, catalyse and invest in close collaboration with others to build a thriving, inclusive research and innovation system that connects discovery to prosperity and public good.
UKRI continues to support the research and innovation community to navigate the transitions associated with the exit of the UK from the EU. To keep up to date please visit our dedicated pages. https://www.ukri.org/research/international/ukri-eu-exit/
