AI-First ‘Keith’ Bags £2m For Property Work

There is another NewMod, AI-first ‘law firm’ in town. In this case it’s called Keith and will focus on residential property sales in the UK, (AKA conveyancing). It has just raised £2m.

AL asked its co-founder Andy Shovel – who previously launched a vegan sausage company – all about it, (see below). It’s understood that Keith won’t be regulated by the SRA, but instead the plan is to be regulated by the official body for conveyancers in the UK, the CLC.

Also a co-founder is Pete Sharman, who previously created the plant-based food brand THIS, with Shovel. Then there is Sam Tucker who is Keith’s third founder; previously he started hybrid scheduling platform Common Surface and now oversees product at Keith. Eddie Goldsmith, former Chairman of the UK Conveyancing Association and founder of a market-leading conveyancing firm in the 90s, is a strategic advisor and non-exec Director, they added.

AL Interview with Andy Shovel

Can you please set out what it will offer in terms of conveyancing?

Keith will be a law firm offering all the same conveyancing services you’d expect from any other – handling both purchases and sales of residential property. However, behind the scenes we’ll be running the process very differently: AI automatically reviews correspondence and documents and every action is managed through pre-defined workflows. For clients, rather than lengthy email chains and time spent on hold waiting to speak to a conveyancer, they’ll be able to instantly speak to Keith via email, text or phone, track real-time progress on their transaction, see exactly what they need to do next, and complete tasks like signing documents or uploading information directly through our online platform – all available 24/7, not just during office hours.

What will the AI do, what will lawyers do?

AI handles the heavy lifting across the transaction: reviewing title documents, analysing property search results, processing incoming correspondence, and drafting responses. It flags issues, extracts key information, and makes recommendations – but a qualified conveyancer always reviews and approves before anything goes to the client or the other side. The result isn’t fewer lawyers, it’s dramatically more efficient ones – focused on judgment calls and client care rather than admin. Clients will also be able to speak to Keith, our AI agent, who can securely provide details about their transaction and answer conveyancing questions.

Which LLMs are you using?

Initially we were mostly using models provided by OpenAI; however, in recent months we have found Anthropic’s Opus + Sonnet models to perform better.

How will it be managed?

The AI will be managed our team of lawyers, and with strict guardrails in place to make sure that it only completes in-scope work, and has a low threshold for human referral, when there is any doubt.

What will you charge?

This is still TBC but we plan to come in around the lower end of the market.

Given that one of the biggest challenges with house sales is the human factor and the Land Registry data, how will Keith speed things up?

Currently conveyancers are often overwhelmed and it can take days for simple tasks to reach the top of their to do list. Keith will be able to immediately action tasks, requests or enquiries – and because AI can review documents and process information in seconds rather than hours, the work itself gets done faster and more accurately too. Secondly, it’s often unclear who needs to act and what is holding up the process. At Keith, we’ll make it clear who needs to act when and be able to handhold through every step of the process. Clients get a much better experience – guided step by step through what they need to do, with forms pre-filled from information we already hold so they’re never duplicating work. Today, conveyancers juggle multiple different portals and systems for each external service. At Keith, everything is centralised in one platform. We’ll interact with most external services such as Search Providers, Land Registry and HMRC via API. Also, you’ll be able to call and speak to Keith 24 hours a day. Keith is a much more sophisticated client service agent than 99% of people will have ever experienced.

And, has the £2m already been invested into your new company?

Yes we closed the funding round earlier this year. We’re pleased to be working with several leading European VCs: Backed, Breega and Notion.

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So, there you go. There is no stopping NewMods / AI-first firms now. As predicted by AL at the end of 2025, there will be more and more of them this year, in the UK, in the US, and elsewhere. AI has simply made their arrival totally logical and the best way for many work streams to be handled.

More here about Keith.

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