AI drafting a solicitor can put their name to
Firms had already tried general-purpose AI and stopped. The output read well and could not be checked, which in conveyancing is the only thing that counts.
Context
Touchstone is a drafting platform for UK property lawyers: the deeds, leases, transfers and tax returns that move a property from one owner to the next. The firms it serves had already experimented with general-purpose AI writing tools and quietly abandoned them.
The problem
How do you let a solicitor use AI on work they will sign their name to? Three things stood in the way. First, a suggestion with no source has to be checked from scratch, which costs more time than drafting by hand would have. Second, a draft passes through several hands before completion, and nobody could see what changed between versions or why a clause was worded the way it was. Third, the same standard clauses were being rewritten on every matter, because the firm had nowhere to keep its own approved wording.
What we did
We made showing the source a condition of making a suggestion: nothing reaches a draft without the legislation, case or public record behind it and the date it was checked. Then we built the workspace around the document rather than around a chat window. A matter holds its sources, its variables, its versions and its history together, so "why does this clause say that" is answered on the page instead of by asking whoever drafted it. Firms keep their own approved wording in a library and their own drafting rules in rulebooks, so the system follows house style rather than inventing one.
What we built
A drafting workspace where a matter, its sources and its history live together.
Drafts with their sources attached
Produces a first draft from the details of the matter, drawing on legislation, case law, company records and public notices, and shows which of them it relied on for what.
Review of a draft you already have
Upload an existing document and get suggestions against current law, each tied to its source, so a review is something a solicitor can audit rather than take on trust.
Every source in one panel
Uploaded documents and external references sit together against the matter, so the material a draft depends on is visible rather than scattered across inboxes.
The firm’s own wording and rules
A template library holds approved standard clauses, and rulebooks capture the firm’s drafting preferences, so output matches house style instead of starting from a blank page each time.
Full version history and audit trail
Every version is kept and nothing is overwritten. Going back to an earlier draft carries it forward as a new version, so how a document reached its final wording stays on the record.
Control over who sees what
Owner, editor, reviewer and viewer permissions set per document rather than per firm, so a sensitive matter stays with the people working on it.
Results
A solicitor can check an AI suggestion in seconds rather than minutes, because the answer to "where did this come from" is already on the screen. The history of a document explains itself without a handover conversation, and standard wording is reused rather than rewritten.
More work
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