Octopus acquires legal team to boost bereavement services with AI

Octopus Legacy, a bereavement service owned by Octopus Group, has acquired a private client team from a large UK-based law firm as part of a push to speed up its services using AI. 

The company’s legal arm, Octopus Legal Services, has taken on a team of 50 legal professionals from NewLaw Solicitors in “a significant expansion into the full set of legal issues families face after a death” and will be rolling out AI for the team to use for admin tasks.

“At the heart of the expansion is a deliberate use of artificial intelligence to fix the parts of the system that slow everything down,” Octopus Legacy said. 

The company added that “rather than following the wave of businesses replacing client-facing teams with chatbots”, they are hiring the team to use AI to “unlock more human-to-human support, shorten timelines and provide a more joined-up experience for families.” 

Octopus Legacy, which joined Octopus Group in 2022, offers probate services which help families manage the legal processes after a loved one dies. 

The company said it expects the AI and legal team rollout to “increase its probate work tenfold within 12 months”, grow the headcount in its legal arm by a third, and “significantly increase Octopus Legacy’s share of the probate and estate administration market.”

Octopus Legacy chief executive Sam Grice said that using AI will allow the company to “take responsibility for the whole experience, not pass people between services but own it from start to finish.” 

“It [the AI] takes on the admin that slows everything down, so our team can spend more time with families, and every family can deal directly with a person at the point of death,” Grice said. 

“At Octopus Energy, we saw what happens when a service is rebuilt around the customer rather than the system. The bereavement sector is at that same moment now, where a more joined-up model can replace one that no longer works,” Grice said. 

The Octopus kingdom

Octopus Group also owns Octopus Energy, which sits at the centre of the kingdom and was co-founded by chief executive Simon Rogerson in 2000. 

The group offers a menu of services alongside the energy provider, including a major investment fund management service, a divorce platform, a financial planning service, and an education and care provider.