Personal injury
New digital service to bridge the justice gap
Slater and Gordon's new digital product, micase RTA has been unveiled. This technology which will revolutionise legal services and bridge the justice gap left by the whiplash reforms.
31 May 2021
A new digital product designed to revolutionise the way people access legal services was today unveiled by one of the UK’s leading legal businesses.
Slater and Gordon’s miplatform is designed to give customers the use of a suite of legal services in a single fully-featured digital product – the first of its kind for the UK legal sector.
Slater and Gordon will add other services, such as family law and other legal services to miplatform in the coming months - becoming an indispensable one-stop legal resource.
The first product to be available is micase Road Traffic Accident - built to help customers suffering minor injury in road collision to pursue a case – will be launched to the public on Monday to coincide with the implementation of major legal reforms.
The Civil Liability Act 2018 introduces an entirely new portal for processing lower-value road traffic accident personal injury claims and provides a mandated tariff for compensation.
But it has been beset by delays, dogged by concerns it is not user-friendly for customers and does not cover many injury scenarios.
Slater and Gordon designed micase RTA from the ground up to meet the needs of customers and provide important advice not available or difficult to access in the Litigant in Person portal.
Micase RTA deploys cutting edge technology and automation to guide claimants from beginning to end of their claim, providing legal expertise, medical assessment and other services where wanted. During the development phase, micase RTA received feedback and input from more than 18,000 users.
Slater and Gordon’s Chief Executive Officer, David Whitmore, said: “Our miplatform will revolutionise the consumer legal industry. It’s designed to use advanced technology to bridge the gap many people find is between them and achieving justice.
“Often customers fear getting legal support is too expensive, complex or inconvenient. By combining technology with our experts, we’re providing a solution - putting customers in charge of their case.
“Our first product will make it easier for people to pursue an injury claim following a road accident, but the platform enables us to build and integrate more services on top of it.
“It will grow and evolve to meet the changing needs of our customers. As we add more features and services to miplatform it will become an indispensable service for navigating all of life’s big events – from buying or selling a home, getting divorced, arranging a will.
“We’re sure the convenience, intuitive layout and user-friendly design, will change the way people access legal services, similarly to how amazon changed online shopping, Netflix the entertainment industry, Uber how we travel.”
Matt Jarvis, Slater and Gordon’s Managing Director of Personal Injury, added: “The process of making an injury claim following a minor road accident used to be a complex and frustrating for customers – involving lots of different organisations, from insurers, lawyers, medics, car rental companies.
“While the Government’s whiplash reforms will change the process, and introduces a new portal, it won’t result in better outcome for customers. Something more radical is needed. So we’ve created an entirely new product for the market which delivers a fantastic customer journey, vastly improved efficiencies and reduced costs. The secret to achieving this was designing a bespoke platform which integrates seamlessly with partners and insurers – enabling the sharing of critical information securely and efficiently.
“This results in an intuitive and fulfilling customer experience and delivers a market-leading and unique product.”
Jon Grainger, Slater and Gordon's Chief Information Officer, who led the team behind miplatform, said: “miplatform is the technology enabling our strategy to create an expanding suite of digital consumer legal products that will provide consumers with a secure window into the legal services they need.
“This is the next phase of automation – using micro AI – the ability to make small decisions quickly, leaving the big decisions to our customers and fee earners.
“Our data and applied AI strategy is critical to this and is the output from a data programme we started in 2019. We will also be working with regulators and professional bodies to ensure our technology is at the forefront of wider development in the UK legal sector.”