We're not a law firm. We're how you find one.
FirstLegal.ai is an ICO-registered matching platform connecting UK adults with vetted family, employment and immigration law firms. We do not give legal advice — the firms we match you to do that. We are free for individuals; firms pay us to be in our network.
Built around a question most law firms cannot afford to answer.
When you need a lawyer, the hard part is not paying for one — it is finding the right one. Across the UK there are over ten thousand law firms, most of them too small to outrank the big consumer brands on Google. The firms with the budget for paid search are not always the ones with the right specialism for your matter; the firms with the right specialism are often invisible.
FirstLegal.ai exists to fix that mismatch. We do the marketing at scale; small firms pay us a subscription to be in our network; we triage individual matters with AI and match each enquiry to one firm in the right area. You get a specialist quickly. The firm gets a client without spending two thousand pounds a month on Google Ads. We make a small margin on the matching layer.
Three areas. Deeply specialised.
We focus on the three areas where most UK adults need legal help — and where a fast, specialist match makes the biggest difference to the outcome. We may add others as we grow, but only when we can match the same depth of vetting and triage.
Family Law
Divorce and dissolution, financial settlements, child arrangements, and prenuptial agreements. Family matters are personal and often urgent — the wrong firm costs you time you don't have and money you shouldn't spend. We match you with a vetted family-law specialist in your area, typically within 24 hours.
Family law helpEmployment Law
Unfair dismissal, settlement agreements, workplace discrimination, and tribunal claims. Employment law runs on strict clocks — tribunal time limits are tight, so speed of match matters. We connect you with an employment specialist fast, so the deadline is theirs to manage, not yours to miss.
Employment law helpImmigration Law
Spouse and work visas, settlement (ILR), citizenship, and asylum claims and appeals. Immigration deadlines are unforgiving and refusals are costly — the right specialist at the right moment can be the difference between an approval and an appeal.
Immigration advice is a regulated activity in the UK — it may only be given by an SRA-regulated solicitor or an adviser registered with the Immigration Advice Authority (IAA). Every immigration firm in our network is SRA-regulated.
Immigration law helpWe do not handle personal injury or criminal defence. Those areas have specialist regulators and dynamics that do not fit our matching model.
We turn down more firms than we accept.
Every firm in our network must meet five standards before they receive a single matched enquiry:
- Currently authorised by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, in good standing
- No adverse SRA findings in the last two years
- At least twelve months of practice in the matched area
- Commitment to respond to matched enquiries within twenty-four hours
- Published fixed-fee options for at least one common matter type in their area
If a firm slips below standard — unresponsive, complaint patterns, SRA finding — we remove them. Our reputation is the only product we have.
Transparent. The firm pays, you do not.
Firms in our network pay us a fixed monthly subscription (currently £149 per month) and a small per-engagement fee (currently £75) when an enquiry we sent them becomes a paying client. We do not take a percentage of fees, we do not mark up the firm's charges to you, and we do not sell your data.
Firms are required by SRA Code of Conduct paragraph 5.1 to disclose their membership of our network in their client care letter. You will see this in writing before you commit to anything. Our membership terms also prohibit firms from passing the per-engagement fee through to you as an additional line item — it comes out of their existing fee.
What we are, and what we are not.
We are: a UK limited company registered with the Information Commissioner's Office as a data controller. We comply with UK GDPR and PECR. We hold Cyber Essentials certification and use UK-resident hosting with AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit. We do not train AI models on your personal data.
We are not: a law firm. We are not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority — the individual firms in our network are. We do not give legal advice. We do not represent you in any matter. The lawyer-client relationship is between you and the firm you instruct.
If you have a concern about our matching service, contact us at info@firstlegal.ai. If you have a concern about a firm we matched you with, contact the firm directly or, if not resolved, the Solicitors Regulation Authority at sra.org.uk.