AI Governance & COLP Support.
Practical controls, workflow audits, and operational supervision frameworks designed specifically for Managing Partners and COLPs in UK conveyancing firms.
Supervised Legal Workflows
Adopting generative AI within a regulated environment is not an IT challenge; it is a fundamental supervisory requirement. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) holds partners and COLPs personally accountable for unmonitored tech outcomes. If your software hallucinates or leaks unredacted records, you are responsible.
We help conveyancing firms align their tools with core SRA expectations. We design robust supervision layers that ensure qualified human conveyancers review and sign off all AI-generated title summaries and client correspondence before dispatch, fiercely protecting legal professional privilege.
Key SRA Governance Areas
- Client Confidentiality (Code of Conduct, para 6.3): Implementing firewall restrictions to block public consumer AI tools (shadow IT) and securing closed-loop Data Processing Agreements (DPAs).
- Active Supervision (Code of Conduct, para 3.5): Restricting AI usage to deterministically managed, assistive contexts with mandatory human sign-off on all title reviews.
- Active Disclosure Readiness: Constructing the documented governance evidence file your PI broker will ask for at renewal.
Property Transaction Guardrails
The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) has published eleven AI and Technology Principles covering risk of harm, security, data use and privacy, impact assessment, capability and explainability. They are non-mandatory, and the CLC says so. What is mandatory is the CLC Code of Conduct and UK GDPR. Because property transactions involve high volumes of personally identifiable information, unmanaged AI data streams expose your firm to data protection breaches under rules that already bind you, and to reputational risk with lending panel managers.
We work with CLC-regulated firms to implement secure, onshore data routing. We ensure that any automated document triaging or client intake parsing operates exclusively on UK-hosted, GDPR-compliant infrastructure, backed by contractual zero data retention (ZDR) terms for foundational model training.
The FCA Is Becoming Your AML Supervisor
HM Treasury published its consultation response on 18 June 2026. The Financial Conduct Authority will become the single professional services supervisor for AML and counter-terrorist financing across legal, accountancy and trust and company services, by 2029. That replaces the professional-body-led model for that specific purpose. It is a multi-year transition, not an overnight switch, but the direction is set and existing investigations transfer with it.
Two changes matter directly to your MLRO. A new FCA register of professional services firms, which you must be on to carry out regulated activity. And the FCA's requirement to "assess the integrity, competence and compliance history of firms and their beneficial owners, officers and managers", extended to legal services. Much of that mirrors what the SRA already asks. The compliance-history element is the part that goes further than a criminal-record check.
Why This Matters Now, Not Later
If your MLRO's AML screening decisions, including any AI-assisted ones, aren't separately logged and signed off today, that's a gap worth closing before the FCA register exists, not after. We build a named, dedicated MLRO sign-off track into every installation, logged apart from general conveyancer supervision.
Immediate Governance Checklist
Whether your practice is SRA or CLC-regulated, you should implement these four control measures immediately to prevent regulatory exposure:
- Run an Anonymous AI Audit: Survey conveyancers to discover what unapproved public AI tools are being used on corporate networks. You cannot govern what you cannot see.
- Publish a Written AI Policy: Standardise clear operational rules forbidding the input of client personal data (PII) into public LLMs.
- Coordinate with Your Broker: Engage your PI broker before renewal to present your documented supervision controls, defending your indemnity risk profile.
- Enforce Case Management (CMS) Boundaries: Ensure that any AI add-ons within your case management system conform to UK GDPR data sovereignty rules.