Conveyancing technology firm wins grant to develop AI tools

Collaborative Conveyancing has won an Innovate UK grant in partnership with the Hartree Centre research facility and completed a fundraising round to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.

The investment will allow the technology company to further develop its systems so AI can be used to respond to administrative enquiries that can often delay the conveyancing process.

Chris Harris, one of the founders of Collaborative Conveyancing, said: “There has been significant commentary and discussion about the increase in conveyancing enquiries and the bottleneck in the home buying process causing substantial stress and pain. 

“The press is full of developments in AI. So, we are bringing all the best of AI and language processing to help alleviate the problem. After a year’s hard work, we are so proud that our early work is recognised by Innovate UK as having the potential to make a substantial difference. 

“Our solution focuses on supporting conveyancers when dealing with the overload they face whilst remaining at the heart of the process, so they can do the job they were trained for.”

The brand has also been working with conveyancing group Simplify through Lawyer Checker and other projects to provide feedback, example enquiry data and support for its grant applications.

David Grossman, chief executive of Simplify, added: “Simplify is delighted to have contributed to the progress of this exciting project and to have supported the successful grant application. We look forward to working with the Collaborative Conveyancing team as they develop their innovative solution to improving the process of dealing with enquiries.”

Dr Rob Firth, Senior AI Research Scientist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre, said: “I’m excited to be working again with the team in scaling up and pushing the performance of the AI components through this work. 

“The field of natural language processing is moving very fast, and we have only begun to discover what these technologies can do.”