A British startup founded by serial entrepreneurs has raised £2 million in seed funding to establish what it calls the UK’s first AI-native regulatory law firm.
Keith expects to be licensed by the Licensed Conveyancers Council, rather than the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and plans to launch residential conveyancing as his first practice area in Q3 2026.
The funding round was led by Backed VC, with participation from Breega and angel investors. Both ventures have previously invested in legal technology, with Backed backing legal technology platform Legl, while Breega was a Series A investor in identity verification company Thirdfort in 2022.
commercial proposal
The company’s core technology consists of a network of specialized AI agents that handle document review, drafting, client communication, and workflow management. Human oversight is provided at regulatory checkpoints, and output is reviewed and approved by qualified conveyance personnel.
According to co-founder Andy Shovel, those who earn money at Keith will initially have to manage 500 files at once. This is approximately five times the typical caseload of a traditional company.
“Technology has disrupted the relationship between taking on more work and having to hire staff to handle it,” Schovel told Legal Futures.
Keith predicts that 80% of traditional legal work could be automated under this model. Critical functions, including fund transfers, will initially remain controlled by humans, but the company acknowledges that regulators may require additional oversight points beyond operational necessity.
market situation
The UK transport market offers significant opportunities for technology-led disruption.
- Over 530,000 real estate transactions Collapses often occur every year due to delays and opacity in the process
- average transaction time 37% increase from 2019 to reach 4.1 months by 2025
- Fall-through rate Almost doubled from 16% (2022) to 29.8% (2024)
- direct cost Total value of failed deals reached £1.01bn in 2024
- of UK legal market Although it is worth around £54 billion in annual revenue, transport remains largely untransformed by technology.
Keith claims transaction times are reduced by 70%, even accounting for delays by the other party.
regulatory strategy
The choice of CLC over SRA regulation is intentional. Schovel described CLC as “a better option for the disruptive, cutting-edge technologies that we want to deploy.”
The CLC regulatory framework allows licensed carriers to represent both parties to a transaction, subject to strict conditions such as written consent and representation by various authorized individuals within the company. This flexibility is not available with standard SRA rules.
The Law Commission’s latest report on regulatory standards gave CLC the highest overall rating among frontline regulators. The CLC was also the first designated licensing authority for alternative business structures in England and Wales.
Keith intends to seek SRA regulation as he expands into other practice areas.
Client-facing technology
The company’s client interface is centered around a 24/7 AI service agent that can be accessed via phone or WhatsApp. The company describes the agent as “nearly indistinguishable from a human operator,” able to answer questions, provide real-time trade updates, and take immediate actions.
Administrative tasks that consume significant time on conveyors, such as educating clients about processes, tracking trading partners, and day-to-day communications, are handled by AI agents operating within Shovel’s signature “strict parameters” that flag issues for human review.
founding team
The founding team brings an unconventional background to legal services.
Andy Shabell and Pete Sherman Previously, he founded THIS, a market-leading plant-based food brand. Both exited the business about a year ago.
sam tuckerHe leads product development and previously founded Common Surface, a hybrid scheduling platform.
eddie goldsmith Serves as a strategic advisor and non-executive director. Goldsmith is a former chairman of the British Transport Association and founded a prominent transport company in the 1990s, providing regulatory and industry expertise.
Shovel’s motivations are personal. He tried to buy a home about a year ago, but told Legal Futures the experience was “devastating” and “a tremendous shock,” including sleepless nights, an unresponsive lawyer and a problematic seller.
“I was shocked at how clunky the process was and how it didn’t incorporate any helpful technology,” he said.
technology stack
In an interview with Artificial Lawyer, the company said that while it used OpenAI models in early development, Keith recently moved to Anthropic’s Opus and Sonnet models for improved performance.
The platform centralizes interactions with external services (search providers, land registries, HMRC) via APIs, eliminating the multiple portals that currently navigate.
Industry background
Keith joins the increasingly active market for AI-native legal services. Recent developments include:
- garfield: SRA approves first AI law firm focused on small debt recovery in May 2025
- law fairy: Approved in February 2026 regarding “determinism only” legal judgment regarding legal standard matters
- low hive: Recently raised $60 million and opened a New York office with a combination of AI and human lawyers across consumer law
The transport sector itself faces structural pressures. By January 2026, there will only be 3,425 conveyancers registered with HM Land Registry, down from more than 4,000 in 2022. The number of solicitors in the residential conveyance industry has also fallen, with only 10,724 solicitors in England and Wales as of January 2026.
What this means for practice
For conveyancing practitioners, Keith’s emergence signals some progress.
- Competitive pressure on fees:The company plans to price at the “lower end of the market.”
- Expectations for technology: 24/7 availability and real-time updates can become client expectations
- Regulatory evolution: CLC’s openness to technology-driven models could influence broader regulatory approaches
- Caseload benchmark: If Keith’s 500-file prediction proves viable, current capacity assumptions will be challenged.
The government’s October 2025 Home Buying Reform Consultation aims to shorten typical transaction timelines by four weeks, providing a policy tailwind for technology-led approaches.
Keith represents a test case for whether delivering AI-first legal services can simultaneously achieve regulatory approval, customer adoption, and sustainable economics.
