Trowers Tech News - June 2025

Welcome to the latest edition of Trowers Tech News.

This month, we explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the legal landscape - from its use in litigation to the detection and enforcement of intellectual property infringement. The legal profession is entering a new phase of AI adoption, where tools once seen as experimental are now being - cautiously - integrated into core legal processes.

The recent publication of the ILTA ‘GenAI Guide’ and the AI Judicial Guidance 2025 signals a growing acceptance of generative AI in legal disclosure, provided it is used with care and accountability. Meanwhile, AI is proving invaluable in the fight against IP infringement, enabling faster detection and response to online violations. In dispute resolution, AI is being used to streamline workflows and enhance legal analysis—though always under the watchful eye of human judgement.

Against this backdrop, we highlight key developments and guidance shaping the future of legal tech in a litigation context.

Top tech trends: litigation and IP infringement

Alex Sharples, Partner, Dispute Resolution

AI in Dispute Resolution: Progress with Prudence

As dispute resolution lawyers at Trowers & Hamlins we are steadily integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into our workflows, combining cautious optimism over these technological advancements with the discipline expected of legal practice. The goal is not to replace human judgement, but to augment it - leveraging AI where it can add efficiency without compromising ethical or procedural standards.

AI has become increasingly embedded in the broader legal landscape, and dispute resolution is seeing its own wave of adoption. From document review and grammar checks to drafting assistance and legal research, the tools are being tested, increasingly in live environments. However, integration of AI in what we do must remain incremental, reflecting the sector’s sensitivity to due process, risk and client confidentiality.

Read the full article and learn how Trowers is embracing AI in dispute resolution whilst balancing innovation with legal rigour.

Alex Sharples, Partner, Dispute Resolution and Charlotte Tucker, Trainee Solicitor

Generative AI in Legal Disclosure: A New Era of Acceptance?

AI is transforming how legal professionals handle disclosure obligations in litigation. Traditionally, disclosure involved manually reviewing large bundles of documents and correspondence, a time-consuming and costly task. The use of technology-assisted review (TAR) to improve efficiency in disclosure, such as predictive coding identifying relevant documents and flagging privileged information, was judicially approved in Pyrrho Investments Ltd v MWB Property Ltd [2016] EWHC 256 (Ch), marking a turning point in legal tech adoption. Following Pyrrho, the use of AI tools in disclosure has expanded beyond TAR to the potential integration of Generative AI (GenAI). 

On 6 May 2025, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) published a 'GenAI Guide' (the ILTA GenAI Guide) to provide legal guidance on the use of GenAI in disclosure. The ILTA GenAI Guide aims to provide clarity on GenAI in accordance with Practice Direction 57AD. According to the AI Judicial Guidance 2025, GenAI is defined as "a form of AI which generates new content, which can include text, images, sounds and computer code. Some generative AI tools are designed to take actions". The ILTA GenAI Guide provides a non-exhaustive list of potential uses of GenAI from a disclosure perspective, including enhancing predictive coding by prioritising documents in terms of importance, or providing context to a document to support a human reviewer. Notably, the ILTA GenAI Guide does not identify any specific activities for which GenAI use is prohibited. However, it consistently emphasises the importance of a collaborative human-AI approach and unwavering accountability and responsibility on the party using the tool.

What's clear is that recent guidance, such as the ILTA GenAI Guide and the AI Judicial Guidance 2025, stress absolute caution when adopting GenAI tools for use in legal practice and, specifically, in disclosure.  For example, the AI Judicial Guidance 2025 states that "provided these guidelines are appropriately followed, there is no reason why GenAI could not be a potentially useful secondary tool.".

Moving forward, it will be interesting to see whether any authority is given in relation to the use of GenAI beyond mere guidance. In particular, it will be interesting to see whether GenAI will follow a similar trajectory to Predictive Coding / TAR and gain judicial approval and normalcy, as in Pyrrho. 

Joe Armstrong, Associate, Intellectual Property

AI and IP infringement

AI is increasingly reshaping how IP infringements are identified and managed, offering new tools and means by which rights holders can deal with issues such as counterfeiting, unauthorised use of content, and trade mark infringement. The sheer volume of material online and the ease at which rights holders' content can be copied, products can be counterfeited, or a brand can be reproduced, have meant that traditional enforcement methods are sometimes too slow or labour-intensive to effectively manage IP infringements.

Time is of the essence when dealing with IP infringements. Often by the time an infringement has been identified, assessed, and passed to a company's legal advisors, material damage has already been done. When this concerns a company's key product or brand, this damage can be irreparable.

One way in which AI's capabilities are being used to improve efficiency is in the detection of IP infringements. Image recognition, natural language processing, and machine learning are used by AI tools to scour the web for counterfeit products and infringing content. These tools then analyse huge volumes of content to identify infringing material and rank it in order of perceived risk, all in a matter of seconds. This allows companies to respond quickly to the most pressing infringements.

Furthermore, serial infringers can be tracked and blacklisted, and takedown notices can be generated and sent at the push of a button, accelerating the removal process. Some tools use data from court decisions around the world to summarise the strength of the rights holder's case in relevant jurisdictions, which would otherwise necessitate additional time and cost being spent engaging local counsel. In the patent sphere, AI tools can map patent landscapes, identify potential infringement risks and evaluate the strength of existing IP portfolios. All of this allows enforcement at both a scale and efficiency not seen before.

However, as has become a rather hackneyed observation, AI is not without its limitations. It can "hallucinate" false or misleading results and oversimplify issues which require more careful consideration. In terms of IP infringement, AI often misunderstands more complex nuances of the law, for example, involving fair use in copyright. It also lacks awareness of commercial considerations, such as the negative publicity that can result from obstinately pursuing unwitting individual infringers where a friendlier, more explanatory tone might be more suitable.

Professional human judgement remains key to ensuring the most effective IP enforcement strategy, and the use of AI must always be balanced to ensure the best outcome.