Garfield AI, the UK’s first AI law firm, just won a court case without a single human lawyer doing the prep work.

The case was a £7,000 small claims dispute at Wandsworth County Court in May. Freelance HR consultant Tamires Camal Taquidir used Garfield’s platform to pursue unpaid fees from a hospitality business after attempts to resolve the matter fell through. The defendant fired back with a counterclaim and instructed both a solicitor and a barrister.

Garfield is built for small debt recovery, guiding users through the small claims process in England and Wales. Its technology handled everything before the hearing: pre-action letters, court filings, document disclosure, four witness statements and trial bundles. The firm briefed junior barrister Dominic Li of One Essex Court shortly before the three-hour trial. The court found for Taquidir, awarded the full £7,000 and dismissed the counterclaim.

Taquidir paid around £400 in Garfield fees for the whole thing.

Barrister Dominic Li said the AI-drafted documents were “more than sufficient for the purposes of this trial.”

Garfield gained SRA authorisation in May 2025 as the UK’s first fully AI-driven law firm. One notable guardrail: the platform won’t propose case law, flagged as a high-risk area for large language models. The SRA also confirmed that named, regulated solicitors remain ultimately accountable for everything the system produces. Garfield has now processed more than 600 claims and recovered over £500,000 for clients, with claims ranging from £30 to £10,000.

Philip Young, a former London litigator and Garfield’s co-founder, called it “the first trial ever won by an AI lawyer against human opposition, anywhere, ever,” and “the dawn of a new age of access to justice.” Co-founder Daniel Long added the outcome showed “regulated AI-powered legal services can help real people recover real money through the courts.”

There’s still reason to be sceptical. Pinsent Masons was recently reprimanded by a London court for AI-drafted letters that twice misquoted insolvency legislation. Sullivan & Cromwell had to disclose AI hallucinations in a US bankruptcy court filing.

But Garfield’s model factors in that risk. AI does the grunt work. A qualified human stands up in court. And when the SRA approved the firm last year, chief executive Paul Philip was direct: regulators “cannot afford to pull up the drawbridge on innovations that could have big public benefits.”

And Taquidir is the proof of concept. She paid £400, recovered £7,000 and beat a fully-lawyered opponent on the other side.

Source: Garfield