Orbital, the AI platform for real estate work, has launched new capabilities that support Scottish commercial real estate. Through a structured pilot with multinational law firm Pinsent Masons, Scottish real estate professionals and lawyers can now use Orbital on matters governed by Scots Law for the first time.
Through this launch, real estate professionals operating across the UK – from law firms and real estate businesses to corporate occupiers and lenders – can now undertake legal analysis across jurisdictions all within one unified way of working. This is a significant moment for Scottish commercial real estate professionals, who face challenges from the dearth of product specificity in more generalist real estate legaltech solutions that only cater for English and Welsh legal practice.
Nearly £2bn of commercial real estate changed hands in Scotland last year, all of it under Scots law. Orbital has launched 22 Scottish workflows covering Scottish title sheets, Sasine deeds, searches, leases, PSG offers, and drafting of PSG Certificates of Title for solicitor review. These new workflows provide the contextual understanding of Scottish real estate that users in Scotland require, building upon Orbital’s dedication to AI made for the complexity of the world’s largest asset class.
This work was led by Orbital’s specialist Scots Law Real Estate Team within its Legal Engineering division, bringing together deep expertise in Scottish legal practice with experience translating real estate law into technology that works in practice.
The launch was shaped through close collaboration with Pinsent Masons, the lead user in the product pilot, whose feedback and support informed its development. Led by Pinsent Masons’ Property Innovation & Change Team, the firm lent its practice expertise and knowledge throughout the process, featuring input from its professional development lawyers and transactional lawyers. Testers included lawyers who already use Orbital for English and Welsh work and also advise on Scottish transactions, who compared outputs across the two jurisdictions, alongside lawyers who work solely on Scottish real estate.
Sinead Hastings, Property Innovation & Change Team Lead and Legal Director, Pinsent Masons, comments: “We have advocated for Scottish functionality since we first adopted Orbital. Our pilot team put considerable time into structured testing and feedback, and seeing that reflected in what has been launched is exactly the kind of collaboration we want with the technology we use. The Orbital team also worked closely alongside us to devise and deliver a well-executed plan for the Scottish rollout, providing responsive and practical support throughout the process. The result is the successful deployment of a tool that is increasingly tailored to the realities of Scottish property practice, accelerating our lawyers’ due diligence and reporting work whilst maintaining the commercial expertise, quality and consistency our clients expect.”
Ruairidh McKillop, Legal Engineer, Orbital comments: “Scottish property work has its own logic, and an English report cannot simply be patched into it. From rei interitus to the way Sasine titles and real burdens are treated, the underlying legal framework changes how the work needs to be done. We built the Scottish reports around that reality, then tested them with Scottish lawyers on real matters. That is the only way to get this right, and it reflects a conviction at the heart of Orbital: real estate needs technology built around the asset and the way the work is actually done.”
Orbital plans to extend its Scottish product capabilities further in the near future, targeting lease reporting variants for specific sectors including retail and food and drink; a full report on title for Scotland covering searches, enquiries and Land and Buildings Transaction Tax alongside the title work; Scottish reference material in the query function; and drafting, beginning with lease documents.