An AI Law Firm Just Won at Trial. Finding and Serving Is Still a Human Job.

An AI Law Firm Just Won at Trial. Finding and Serving Is Still a Human Job.

In May 2026, a freelance HR consultant recovered £7,000 in unpaid fees after a three-hour contested trial at Wandsworth County Court, with the defendant’s counterclaim dismissed. What made the result notable was who had prepared the case. Almost all of the legal work was handled not by a solicitor but by Garfield AI, the first AI-powered law firm to be authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The claimant paid roughly £400 in fees. The other side instructed both a solicitor and a barrister.

It is a genuine milestone for access to justice, and a clear signal of where low-value debt recovery is heading: cheaper, faster and increasingly automated. But it also throws the rest of the job into sharper relief. Software can draft a letter before claim and assemble a trial bundle. It cannot knock on a door. Before any claim is issued, and long after judgment is given, someone still has to find the debtor, serve them properly, and confirm they can actually pay.

What the AI actually did

The claimant did almost everything bar the advocacy through the platform. It produced the letter before claim, drafted the particulars of claim, analysed and answered the defendant’s counterclaim, completed the directions questionnaire, prepared four witness statements and built the trial bundle. Only when the case reached court did a human take over, with a junior barrister instructed shortly before the hearing to handle the advocacy. The firm’s own description is that it prepares a case right up to the courtroom door, at which point the barrister does what barristers do.

This is exactly the kind of work automation is good at: structured, document-heavy and rules-based. It is worth being clear about what it did not involve, though. The advocacy was human. And the physical-world tasks of locating and serving the defendant never arose here, because the defendant was fully engaged, instructing solicitors and bringing a counterclaim. Plenty of debtors are not so easy to pin down.

The bottleneck moves to the real world

Low-value debts have always posed the same problem: the cost of chasing them often exceeds the sum owed, so the money gets written off. The scale is significant. UK businesses are owed an estimated £26 billion in unpaid invoices at any one time, and around 38 small firms close every day because they are not paid, according to the Small Business Commissioner. Tools that strip the cost out of preparing a claim change that calculation, which is why more of these debts will now be pursued. Garfield alone reports more than 600 claims started and over £500,000 recovered or resolved for users.

But issuing a claim is only the beginning, and three real-world dependencies remain. First, you have to know where the debtor is: a letter before claim or a claim form sent to a former address achieves nothing. Second, the documents have to be served correctly, and a debtor who evades service can stall the entire claim until service is sorted out. Third, a judgment is only as good as your ability to enforce it. If the debtor has moved on, gone to ground, or has no traceable assets or income, the award is worthless. As cheap automation pushes more judgments through the courts, enforcement becomes the real constraint, and none of it is something a model can do.

Where Tremark fits

For solicitors and insolvency practitioners handling debt recovery at volume, the value increasingly sits at the two ends of the process: before a claim is issued, and after judgment is obtained.

Pre-action tracing confirms a debtor’s current address, so correspondence and proceedings reach the right place, and helps establish whether they have the means to pay before money is spent on a claim. There is little point securing a judgment against someone with nothing to recover.

Reliable process serving delivers documents in line with the court rules, with several attempts at the address and a witness statement or certificate of service. Where a defendant dodges service, that documented record of attempts is exactly what supports an application for alternative service and keeps the claim moving.

And when a judgment needs enforcing, the same skills locate the debtor and their assets or income so the award can actually be collected.

The takeaway

Automation is a real advance for access to justice, and platforms like Garfield will make far more low-value claims worth pursuing. But it raises the value of the physical-world work rather than lowering it. A claim that cannot be served, or a judgment against someone who cannot be found or cannot pay, helps no one. The strongest approach pairs fast, automated case preparation with dependable tracing, service and enforcement on the ground, so that a winnable claim actually turns into money in the client’s account.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does automated debt recovery remove the need for a process server?

No. Software can prepare and issue a claim, but the documents still have to be served in line with the court rules, and a debtor who evades service can hold up the whole claim. A professional process server provides reliable service and a witness statement of attempts, which also supports an application for alternative service where a defendant cannot be served the usual way.

Why trace a debtor before issuing a claim?

Because a claim is only worth pursuing if the debtor can be found and can pay. A pre-action trace confirms the current address, so the letter before claim and any proceedings reach the right person, and helps assess their means. That avoids spending money on a judgment that turns out to be impossible to enforce.