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Who should be responsible for AI in a small law firm?
Name one person as owner of AI in the firm, keep regulatory accountability with the compliance officer, and leave each fee earner responsible for the work that goes out under their name.
Alesis · · 5 min read
One named person should own AI in the firm: usually a partner or the practice manager, with the authority to approve a tool, set the rules for its use and stop use if something goes wrong. That is different from regulatory accountability, which sits with the compliance officer for legal practice, and different again from responsibility for the work itself, which stays with the fee earner whose name is on the letter. Firms get into trouble when they assume one of those three is covered because another one is.
Three different jobs, not one
It helps to separate them out loud, because in a firm of four to fifty fee earners the same two or three people often end up carrying all of them.
Ownership is operational. Someone decides which tools the firm uses, negotiates and reads the contract, arranges the accounts, keeps the record of who has access, runs the training and answers the question "can I use this for X?" when it comes up on a Tuesday afternoon.
Accountability is regulatory. The Solicitors Regulation Authority expects a firm to have effective systems and controls, and to be able to explain them. If AI use created a confidentiality breach or a misleading document went to a client, the compliance officer for legal practice is the person who has to be able to describe what the firm's arrangements were and why they were reasonable.
Responsibility for output is individual and non-delegable. Whoever signs, sends or advises owns the content. No amount of policy or tool selection shifts that. Anyone who thinks "the firm approved the software" is an answer to a complaint has misunderstood the position.
Who to pick as owner
There is no single right answer, but there are patterns that work.
- A fee earning partner or senior associate who actually uses the tools. The advantage is credibility. Colleagues take rules seriously from someone who does the same work. The risk is time: this person is billing, and the AI role will lose every fight with a court deadline unless it is given protected time.
- The practice manager or operations manager. Strong on contracts, suppliers, accounts, access control and record keeping. Needs a fee earner alongside them for questions of legal judgement, such as whether a draft produced with AI assistance is fit to go out.
- A pairing. A practice manager for the operational half and a fee earner for the professional half, meeting briefly and regularly. This is often the most realistic arrangement in a firm of this size.
What rarely works is leaving it with whoever is most enthusiastic about technology but has no authority. Enthusiasm is useful. It is not the same as being able to tell a partner to stop doing something.
What the owner actually does
Keep the job description short enough that a busy person can hold it in their head.
- Maintains the list of approved tools. What is permitted, for what kind of work, and what is not permitted at all.
- Controls access. Who has an account, who has left, who has been added. This should be reviewed on the same rhythm as any other system access review.
- Reads and keeps the supplier terms. Where information is held and processed, whether it is used to train anything, what happens on termination, what the security arrangements are. These are questions the Information Commissioner's Office would expect a controller to have asked.
- Runs induction and refreshers. New joiners get the rules on day one, not by osmosis.
- Handles incidents. When something goes wrong, the owner is the person who is told, who decides whether it is a notifiable breach, and who involves the compliance officer.
- Reviews spend and use. What is being used, by whom, and whether it is worth continuing.
Write that down. Two sides of paper is plenty. It becomes evidence that the firm thought about this in an organised way.
What not to put on the owner
Do not make the AI owner the person who checks other people's AI output. That is supervision, and it belongs to whoever supervises that fee earner on that matter. A central checker becomes a bottleneck, then a rubber stamp, then a liability.
Do not expect the owner to understand how the technology works internally. That is not the relevant expertise. The relevant expertise is knowing what questions to ask a supplier, what the firm's obligations are and when to say no.
Do not leave the role unfunded. If it is a genuine role, it needs an hour or two a week that is not chargeable, and everyone should know that. Otherwise the policy exists and nothing behind it does.
Where Alesis fits
Alesis is an AI assistant for UK law firms, made by L25 Limited, used through the web browser with one conversation for a matter. It prepares drafts for a qualified person to review and sign off, and it does not file, serve or email anything, so responsibility for what goes out stays where it belongs. Inside a firm, people see only the matters they are on, and seniority alone grants no view, which makes access straightforward for whoever owns the arrangement. It is funded by credit rather than a subscription, so nothing recurs and there are no feature tiers to manage.
