LegalTechTalk Uncovered 2025 - Amir Ali OBE - E11

0:00Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast Legal Tech Talk Uncovered Mini Series 2025 sponsored by Clio. We're back with our red mic for a behind the scenes series all about legal innovation at Europe's largest legal tech event. So we're granted access to meet some of the greatest speakers, sponsors, brands in the whole legal tech world. We've got 300 speakers with over 70 sessions with over 4 ,000 attendees from all across the globe hitting us here over the next two days at Legal Tech Talk live in London. From AI to access to justice to smart compliance, you name it, we're covering it all. This isn't just another conversation or another conference.

0:41It's a blueprint for community and transformation. So buckle up. We're speaking with some incredible people about policy change, change makers, legal innovation and so much more. Over and out. Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast live here at Legal Tech Talk. And I am joined by name, title and organisation.

1:04Amir Ali OBE:Amir Ali, I'm founder and CEO of Remote Court Users. You absolutely are OBE, no less. And yeah, dear friend, we've been trying many years to actually make this happen. It's been a long time coming. It's been a long time coming. We keep missing each other at various events. Yeah, I thought I was busy, then I met you. You're exceptionally busy. So let's get into it. What's one problem in one sentence you're trying to solve in the world of legal? The SME community in this country, the business community, the backbone of the economy in this country isn't serviced as well as it could be when it comes to debt recovery, dispute resolution, litigation.

1:43Amir Ali OBE:the legal profession are very good at servicing the business community in all aspects of what they do in all areas of what they do but when a business is owed money for services that they've rendered the system is slow it's clunky and that's what I'm going to try and resolve yeah okay you're obviously a techie legal bit of everything um what's one assumption because we're here at Europe's largest legal tech conference, people have about legal technology that they still get wrong? The fact that they think there is a solution out there that a human can deal with quickly and cheaply and fairly, but it doesn't work like that.

2:24Amir Ali OBE:The legal profession is, it's run by humans. It's risk averse. They don't like change and they have a monopoly. And I'm sorry. I mean, I can say that as a recovering lawyer, I did that for 21 years before I lost the will to live with administering the law. I wanted to enforce it. So I went in a different direction and joined the high court enforcement sector for about 13 years. But then I fell into chairing. I was on the board for the CCUA, the Civil Court Users Association, for 11 years. And that's the largest lobbying organization in the country for civil lawyers. So we were lobbying for a better court service with government directly.

3:06Amir Ali OBE:So I went into an interesting but different direction. Yeah. And tell us more about the work you're doing at the moment, because it is really meaningful and impactful. So remote court users has been a number of years in the making, I'd say about 35 years in the making, really got going. The thought process got going within the pandemic years. The idea, and we've only just launched remote court users earlier on this year. Remote court users is going to be focused purely outward facing to the SME community in this country, every sector. And it's about reimagining debt recovery completely. Now, the service offering to the SME community is actually quite large, although there is a core element, a core business offering, core service offering, which is transferring a county court judgment to the high court and going to then enforce that in the high court.

4:08Now, currently, there are 120 odd thousand applications a year that go to court.

4:14Amir Ali OBE:Wow. That's not a lot where the county court judgment can then be transferred to the high court. And then you can get a high court enforcement officer involved. There is a court fee to pay for each of those applications. So circa the Ministry of Justice and HMCTS get around£8 million a year from that one application. Absolutely fine. Remote court users has identified over a number of years that there are a further 650 ,000 applications a year that meet the criteria that could be fed into the system. And primarily all of that work is coming from the SME community because they're creating the proceedings, they're getting the judgments.

5:02Amir Ali OBE:But because they don't know that this system exists, they're just not serviced at all. And what I'm trying to do is get the message out there to say, we're here, we're here to help, and actually we'll do it for free. But what that means on the flip side is I then sat down with government and say, do you realize you could increase your fee income from this one application from 8 million to 54 million? Help me do it. So one of the things we are doing with the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty's Courts and Tribunal Service, the court service, is to try and digitize that because the only way we can deal with this is to digitize it.

5:42Yeah.

5:43Amir Ali OBE:So that's at the front end. But the vision, ambition and direction of travel for remote court users is actually quite simple. It will be a non-for-profit. It is a non-for-profit. 10 % of the profits will be paid to the staff. 20 % will be retained because I want it to be the only organization to do this one thing and one thing well. i.e. transfer county court judgments to the high court and then use the high court's service offering to go and collect that money. But 70 percent, and this is where it gets interesting, 70 percent of the profits of that company will be paid into a B Corp certified foundation.

6:27Amir Ali OBE:The foundation will be led by three ex-Supreme Court judges. They've all signed on board already. In fact, it was for we lost Lord Igor, judge, quite recently because he passed away. But there are three that have signed on board to run it. And there'll be a plethora of trustees. All of them come from the bench and they will help me write the rules and regulations. So the greatest legal minds in this country will help me write the rules and regulations for it. And it'll have one job and one job only. And that is to offer legal advice to everybody in society that can't afford it. So Legal Aid, but Legal Aid 2.0, our version of Legal Aid.

7:06Amir Ali OBE:The name of the foundation is, and we've already secured the name and the domain names, will be the Legal Aid Foundation. Yep. And that's what we're doing. The way that I've spoken to government and positioned it, and this is the way I can only explain it to you, Robert, is whether you have two pounds in your pocket or whether you have two million pounds in your pocket, it makes no difference. If you have an acute medical condition in this country, you can walk into any accident and emergency department of any hospital and you get looked after for free. You're in the system, looked after for free because it's free at the point of contact.

7:42Amir Ali OBE:It's called the NHS. And my vision and ambition for the Legal Aid Foundation is for it to be the NHS for the law. Love that. And I think that's why we're so keen to get you on to promote what you're doing, because we always talk about tech for good. and what a great way to help. And what a legacy for you as well on top of everything else that you've achieved. Before I let you go briefly, we've gestured about OBE, but you've done some really meaningful work. I just want to tell our listeners, it's not every day we get somebody with an OBE on the show about the work you did to get that. Again, I fell into it.

8:16Amir Ali OBE:It was by accident, not by design. I was lucky enough to be asked to join the largest lobbying organisation in the country for lawyers, civil lawyers. And our mission then under my watch and now was to elevate the court service to give their customers a better experience, which they need to do. And that was the mission. I was on the board for 11 years, six as a vice chair and five as chair. and when I stepped down from that, they were very kind to me. I was offered the OBE. My citation is for services to court users and the law. Yeah, and it's amazing. And yeah, huge, huge congratulations. Okay, before I let you go, you're here, they're everywhere.

9:12You go to lots of conferences, but what's been your standout moment this year of Legal Tech Talk 2025?

9:17Amir Ali OBE:There are just so many people from around the world here. It is unbelievable. On the very first day, I sat in the front row to listen to the very first keynote speech for the day. I sat next to a gentleman who happened to be from the Ministry of Justice from Saudi Arabia. Wow. And you think, where could you actually go to do that? And it happens by accident, not by design. The one thing I have learned, though, is always be in the room. Go to these things because you never know who you're going to sit next to. you never know where that conversation is going to go. Yeah. Always believe in that. Be open-minded, curious, active to meeting people.

9:59Amit, I'm so glad we've been able to make this happen. If people want to know more about you or indeed the great work you're doing, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to share any websites, social media handles.

10:09Amir Ali OBE:Remotecourtusers.com. Everything is on there, both the service offering for remote court users, but also this vision and ambition for what comes next, which is what I'm actually excited about, which is the foundation, the Legal Aid Foundation. And here's to that. And we fully support that here at the Legally Speaking Podcast. So it just leaves me to say thanks so much for joining me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Enjoy the rest of Legal Tech Talk. But from now, from all of us, over and out. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world-leading content and collaboration hub, The Legally Speaking Club, over on Discord.

10:42Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com, for the link to join our community there. Over and out.