Shoosmiths and Avail: from manual review to 83,000 AI-analysed title registers
Steven Fahmy, senior customer success manager at Avail, discusses how Shoosmiths drove efficiency, productivity and time savings when integrating AI-powered title analysis into real estate workflows and how this can be applied to mid-sized firms
Early recognition of emerging technology can create lasting advantage, but the lessons don’t only apply to the largest law firms.
Shoosmiths identified the potential of AI-driven title analysis early and embedded it across its real estate workflows.
While Shoosmiths operates at scale, the challenges explored in this case study will feel familiar to many real estate teams in mid-sized firms with real estate work operationally consistent across firms of different sizes. Whether reviewing 20 titles or 2,000, the core tasks (title review, risk identification and transaction scoping) remain largely the same. For firms with leaner teams, these pressures are often felt more acutely, making efficiency gains even more valuable.
As a result, larger firms like Shoosmiths can act as a useful benchmark, offering practical insight into how leading real estate teams are approaching efficiency, scalability and risk management in practice.
The challenge
Prior to adopting Avail, title review across Shoosmiths’ real estate matters required the sequential analysis of individual title registers and plans across property portfolios. For large portfolio transactions this meant reviewing hundreds, sometimes thousands, of title documents, creating several operational challenges:
• Longer turnaround times on complex transactions
• Risks across multiple titles identified later in the transaction timeline
• Difficulty accurately scoping and pricing portfolio work
• Significant associate time spent on repetitive and low-value review
These challenges scale down as well as up. At lower volumes, the same inefficiencies exist, but without the buffer of large teams, having an immediate impact on delivery and profitability.
The solution
Shoosmiths adopted Avail in 2021, becoming an early adopter of AI-driven title analysis within the UK real estate legal sector before the subsequent generative AI boom.
Avail applies traditional machine learning AI to title registers and filed copy documents to extract key information and identify potential risks.
Key factors in Shoosmiths’ decision included:
• Highly accurate extraction of title entries and risk indicators using Avail’s pre-trained AI
• A real-estate-focused interface designed for property lawyers
• Rapid adoption through single sign-on (SSO) integration
• Structured reporting outputs aligned to different transaction stages
Shoosmiths adopted Avail’s unlimited analysis model, enabling the firm to analyse title documents at scale and embed the platform across all of its real estate workflows. Whether analysing tens or thousands of titles, the ability to standardise review and surface risks early allows teams to focus fee earner time on higher-value analysis rather than initial identification.
Shoosmiths’ commitment vindicated over the long-term. Following initial rollout in late 2021, when only 151 titles were analysed during the early implementation phase, they have rapidly scaled usage by almost 2000% year on year as the platform has become embedded across their real estate workflows.
The data highlights a shift from isolated experimentation with legal technology towards systematic, portfolio-scale analysis embedded into day-to-day real estate transactions with the platform now used across the firm’s real estate sub-practice areas, including transactions, real estate finance, development work and property disputes.
Automating key stages of title review allows Shoosmiths lawyers to identify risks across large portfolios significantly earlier in the transaction lifecycle. The firm has generated time savings of more than £8,300,000 on a conservative approximation of 20 minutes per title within large scale title review and an hourly rate of £300 per hour.
To date, Shoosmiths has analysed more than 83,000 titles using the platform, reflecting successful embedment across the firm’s real estate workflows. While the absolute figure reflects the firm’s scale, the proportional benefit applies equally to smaller firms. Saving 20 minutes per title has a meaningful impact regardless of firm size, particularly where fee earner time is constrained and needs to be prioritised carefully.
A partnership shaping product development
The Shoosmiths-Avail relationship has also contributed directly to product development.
The firm worked with Avail and a Scottish senior professional support lawyer (PSL) to refine its Scottish title sheet analysis, ensuring the platform supports transactions across the firm’s UK-wide practice.
The firm was also one of several key clients consulted on the development of Avail Notice, our break notice generation tool, highlighting that, for some firms, the optimal approach in the ‘build versus buy’ debate is a hybrid model, collaborating closely with a domain specialist vendor. Input from a key Shoosmiths property disputes partner helped align the tool’s workflows with real-world drafting practices.
Further collaboration led to enhancements in Avail’s interactive mapping tools. After Shoosmiths requested the ability to overlay development pipeline plans onto an ordnance survey map, Avail created a custom overlay feature which has since been incorporated into the platform’s redesigned mapping interface.
Finally, the firm has also worked with Avail on its tools that generate first-draft real estate transactional documents – with customised reporting outputs that mirror Shoosmiths’ internal report-on-title structure, allowing lawyers to move directly from automated analysis into the firm’s house-style reporting format.
On our ongoing partnership, a key real estate innovation adviser from Shoosmiths says: “The Avail team have been fantastic collaborators, bringing innovative solutions to our Real Estate lawyers and supporting us in delivering exceptional client outcomes.”
Looking ahead
For Shoosmiths, Avail now forms a core part of its real estate due diligence workflow.
The collaboration demonstrates how structured AI analysis and close product collaboration between law firms and legal technology providers can reshape how large-scale real estate transactions are reviewed and reported, regardless of firm size.
