Ulster University partners StructureFlow on legal tech
Wed, 20th May 2026 (Today)
Ulster University has entered into a research and educational collaboration with legal technology company StructureFlow. The work will be led by the university's Centre for Legal Technology.
The collaboration will bring StructureFlow's platform into teaching, research and applied legal innovation as the university explores how visual modelling and AI-related legal skills could shape legal education and professional practice.
Under the arrangement, students will use the platform to work through complex legal, regulatory and organisational information. This will include tasks such as breaking down legislation, mapping legal relationships, presenting complex arguments and understanding how changes in one part of a structure affect the wider picture.
The initiative forms part of a broader effort at Ulster to reshape legal education around the growing use of AI in the profession. Legal technology tools are already changing how lawyers conduct research, review documents and produce legal analysis, but students and practitioners also need ways to organise and explain increasingly complex information.
The Centre for Legal Technology plans to examine how the platform can support students in advocacy, presentations, legal clinic work and industry-linked projects. It also intends to assess how students use the software and what effect it has on efficiency, understanding, communication and professional skills development.
Dr John McCord said the project is intended to help students analyse and communicate complex legal information more clearly.
"StructureFlow gives students a powerful way to cut through complex and often fragmented information, analyse their legal arguments, and present them in a way that can be understood, challenged and verified.
That matters because law is built on trust, and trust depends on being able to provide clear advice while showing how conclusions have been reached. This partnership will help our students build the practical proficiency and confidence they need for the future of legal work," said Dr John McCord, senior lecturer and research lead for the Centre for Legal Technology at Ulster University.
The agreement reflects a wider push by universities to work more closely with specialist technology providers as professional training adapts to rapid changes in digital tools. In legal education, that has increasingly focused on how students should learn to assess, structure and communicate information generated or supported by AI systems.
Professor Liam Maguire linked the initiative to that broader shift.
"Partnerships between higher education and industry are increasingly important in helping universities respond to the pace of technological change across professional sectors. By working collaboratively with innovative organisations, we can ensure our research, teaching and student experience remain closely connected to emerging challenges and opportunities. Initiatives such as this support the development of future talent while also helping drive responsible innovation across the wider legal and technology ecosystem," said Professor Liam Maguire, pro vice-chancellor for research at Ulster University.
For StructureFlow, the partnership provides an academic setting in which to examine how future lawyers handle complexity beyond basic document review or legal research. The company's software is designed to represent legal and business structures visually, allowing users to map relationships and dependencies.
Tim Follett, the company's chief executive and founder, said the challenge facing new entrants to the profession increasingly lies in making sense of interconnected obligations and risks.
"The Centre for Legal Technology at Ulster University is taking exactly the kind of forward-looking approach legal education needs. As legal, business and regulatory environments become more interconnected, the challenge for future lawyers is not simply more information, but compounding complexity: understanding how different obligations, structures, relationships and risks interact," said Tim Follett, chief executive and founder of StructureFlow.
He said AI tools still require human interpretation and explanation in legal work.
"AI platforms are becoming incredibly powerful, but their outputs still need to be interpreted, tested, structured and explained. StructureFlow helps students and practitioners move from information to understanding by making complex legal and structural relationships visible. We are excited to work with Ulster University to help prepare the next generation of lawyers for a profession where legal knowledge, technological fluency and visual reasoning will all be essential," Follett said.
Ulster said the research-led model is central to the mission of its Centre for Legal Technology, which aims to help develop professionals who can guide the responsible adoption of legal technology in law firms, in-house legal teams, public bodies and other organisations.