Published: February 17, 2026 at 8:53 am
A former UK managing partner at DLA Piper is to lead LEXcelerate – a new Sheffield-based AI law firm.
LEXcelerate has been launched by Yorkshire AI Labs and aims to do for conveyancing what Uber did for taxis.
The firm will be led by Paul Firth, a highly respected figure in British commercial property law who also served as national head of real estate at Irwin Mitchell, tripling the size of the practice in four years. Firth is also a former CEO and chair of Creative Sheffield.
LEXcelerate is co-founded by Mark Hewitt, the architect of the firm’s proprietary AI platform and a 30-year veteran of legal and manufacturing technology.