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In partnership · Prepared for Clyde & Co
The conflict-check bottleneck — and how we clear it
Clyde & Co's high-volume casualty practice generates conflict-check demand at a scale manual clearance cannot meet. The parties that must be conflict-checked are the insured — overwhelmingly individuals, some organisations — and the incumbent system cannot resolve them as entities. It matches on names. The result is a flood of false conflict hits, reported in the tens of thousands, worked by a team of four at a pace that puts quality at risk.
The problem today
10,000s
false-positive hits
- Name-matching, not entity resolution
- A team of 4, clearing manually
- Pace outstrips achievable quality
The pilot target
85%
false-positive reduction (pilot)
- Auto-clear the low-risk majority
- Humans review genuine hits only
- Every decision explainable to source
Illustrative pilot target — to confirm on Clyde data.
The production trajectory
~99%
toward straight-through processing
- Resolve-in-place — data never moves
- Runs on Intapp, Elite 3E & MAR
- Foundation for firm-wide onboarding
Production trajectory, not a pilot commitment.
What we are proposing
An 8-week, success-based pilot focused on conflict-of-interest checks, run entirely within Clyde's on-premise environment. LegalFab resolves the entities behind new-business casualty conflict checks in place — across Intapp and Elite 3E, integrated to the MAR publisher that already parses inbound cover requests — and auto-clears the low-conflict-risk majority, routing only genuine conflict hits to a human with a full, explainable rationale. Harbor runs the incumbent process in parallel to benchmark the result. KYC-style screening is included only as a proof of technology for a future engagement.
Why it matters now
The pilot solves an operational pain today, but it also proves the technology for a broader onboarding and KYC engagement across the firm. That timing is deliberate: supervision of AML in the legal sector is transferring to the FCA — a more intrusive, data-driven regulator. The firms that will absorb that shift comfortably are the ones that can already evidence real-time, resolved, auditable client and matter risk. This pilot is the first step toward exactly that capability.
Executive summary
Draft
× In partnership · Prepared for Clyde & Co
A new regulator, a new evidential bar
The changing shape of legal compliance — and why conflict checks sit at the centre of it
For a generation, anti-money-laundering supervision of law firms has sat with the profession's own regulators — the SRA and the Law Society among more than twenty sectoral bodies. That is now ending. In October 2025 the Government named the Financial Conduct Authority as the single professional-services supervisor for AML and counter-terrorism financing, and the enabling clauses entered Parliament in the Financial Services and Markets Bill in May 2026, with HM Treasury's implementation roadmap following in June.
The change is not merely administrative. The FCA supervises in a different register from the SRA's guidance-led tradition: sharper scrutiny, broader powers, and a data-driven lens. Where the SRA's fines were capped at £25,000, the FCA has levied penalties into the tens of millions. Firms deemed high-risk can expect particularly close attention.
For a firm like Clyde & Co, the operative phrase in the Treasury's own material is that success under the new regime will depend on the ability to maintain a real-time understanding of client and matter risk. That is an evidential standard, not a policy one. It rewards firms that can show — on demand, with lineage — who a party is, how they resolve against existing clients and matters, and why a decision was reached.
This is precisely what a resolved entity graph produces, and precisely what name-matching cannot. A conflict-checking capability that resolves entities in place, clears the low-risk majority automatically, and explains every hit to its source is not only an efficiency gain today — it is the infrastructure a data-driven regulator will expect to see.
From
Guidance-led supervision
SRA / Law Society · sector-specific · fines capped at £25k · principles and policies.
To
Data-led supervision
FCA single supervisor · intrusive, evidence-driven · multi-million-pound powers · systems and controls tested against reality.
What it rewards
Real-time, resolved, auditable risk
Firms that can evidence client and matter risk on demand — with provenance — absorb the shift comfortably.
Sources: HM Treasury / FCA announcement, Oct 2025; Financial Services and Markets Bill, May 2026; HM Treasury consultation response, Jun 2026; Law Society briefings. Transition is subject to enabling legislation and a detailed delivery plan; timing depends on parliamentary time.
Context
Draft
