Britain’s first fully AI-driven law firm is preparing to widen its net. Garfield AI, the litigation platform already used by sole traders, medical consultants and a growing number of law firms to recover unpaid debts, is reported to be planning a significant expansion into the accountancy sector, offering practices a way to chase overdue invoices on behalf of their own clients.
Who is behind Garfield AI
Garfield AI was founded by Philip Young, a former City litigation partner, alongside Daniel Long, a quantum physicist who left his PhD to help build the venture. The idea reportedly grew out of Young’s own experience watching his brother-in-law, a plumber, struggle with the time and expense involved in pursuing customers who simply refused to pay. That frustration pointed to a much bigger problem: UK small and medium-sized enterprises are thought to lose somewhere between £6 billion and £20 billion a year to invoices that are never settled, largely because the legal cost of pursuing the debt outweighs the amount owed.
Garfield welcomed its first users in March 2025 and received authorisation from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) that May, making it the first purely AI-driven legal practice to be formally regulated in England and Wales. Under the Legal Services Act, a regulated firm must have at least one solicitor accountable for its output, and that responsibility falls to Young, who has said he personally reviews the system’s work during this early phase of the business.
How the service works
Garfield is built to guide small claims of up to £10,000 through the small claims court process in England and Wales without the need for a traditional solicitor at every stage. Users upload raw material relating to a debt, such as invoices, contracts and prior correspondence, or connect the platform directly to accounting software including Xero, Sage and QuickBooks so that outstanding invoices are identified automatically. The system extracts the relevant facts, checks Companies House records to gauge whether the debtor is actually able to pay, and drafts documents that comply with the Civil Procedure Rules governing small claims.
The process typically begins with what the company calls a polite chaser letter, priced at around £2, designed simply to nudge the debtor into paying without escalation. If that fails, Garfield can generate a formal letter before action, costing roughly £7.50, which sets out the debt in the terms required by the County Court’s pre-action protocol. Should the matter still not resolve, the platform can prepare and file a claim form and the particulars of claim, and continue to support the case through to trial if the debtor puts up a defence. Clients retain control throughout, approving each step before it is taken, while Garfield’s fees are designed to stay within the amounts recoverable from a losing party under the court costs rules.
Why accountancy firms are next
According to Philip Young, accountancy firms have already begun using Garfield, and he has spoken of plans to open the service up to considerably more of them from September, once it can offer some of the additional features they have specifically asked for. Speaking to Legal Futures, Young described the mix of non-lawyer users on the platform, who account for roughly three-fifths of its client base, as ranging from sole traders to sizeable companies, with accountants and medical consultants among the more notable groups. He noted that doctors tend to take a particularly gentle approach with patients who owe money, always sending a chaser before anything more formal, while businesses are often more willing to move straight to legal action.
The logic of bringing accountancy firms on board is straightforward. Accountants already sit close to their clients’ financial data and are frequently the first to notice invoices that have gone unpaid for months. A white-labelled version of Garfield would let a firm offer debt recovery as an added service, generating a new revenue line without having to build or staff a legal function of their own. It mirrors the approach Garfield has already taken with high-street law firms, more than a dozen of which are reportedly now using the platform, many without an existing debt recovery practice of their own.
There is also a wider regulatory backdrop pushing firms towards tools like Garfield. A recent High Court ruling, Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys, found that unqualified staff such as paralegals cannot conduct litigation simply because a solicitor is supervising them. Young has suggested this judgment is prompting law firms to look at AI as a substitute for unregulated staff carrying out this kind of work, a dynamic that could apply equally to accountancy practices weighing up how to handle client debt recovery in-house.
Early results and reception
Garfield has pointed to early cases as evidence the model works in practice. In one example, a transport consultancy recovered around £7,000 in outstanding invoices after a letter before action was sent through the platform, at a cost of just £7.50 in fees. The firm’s finance director described the experience as effective and said it had taken only minutes of their time. Young has also highlighted a case that went all the way to trial and was won, which the company presents as proof that its AI-driven approach can withstand full judicial scrutiny, not merely settle straightforward disputes before they escalate.
Young has said he was pleasantly surprised by how open the legal profession has been to the platform, despite lawyers having a reputation for caution around rapid change. Whether accountancy firms prove equally receptive when the expanded service arrives is likely to become clearer over the coming months, as Garfield works through the additional features practices have requested before opening its doors more widely to the sector.