We’ve all seen the movie.
The dubious witness gets away with it until the cunning lawyer destroys his evidence on the witness stand, thanks to long nights of preparation for this very moment.
There are tears of joy and a judge banging with a gavel (only in American courts, of course). The postscript tells us that the affair made the world a better place.
Not so fast.
Every day there are legal battles that the little man or woman loses. And very often they lose because they can’t afford to fight against a wealthier opponent.
This is where artificial intelligence, the most discussed topic in the last two years, could transform justice and equity in society.
The legal world is excited about the effects of AI on the law.
Systems are designed not only to do basic work, like drafting contracts, but also to analyze thousands of pages of evidence in the most complex cases.
And this revolution is not just happening in the skyscrapers of global law firms, but quietly in places like the Westway Trust’s Cost of Living Crisis Clinic in London.
This London-based advice clinic helps clients in one of England’s poorest areas deal with a range of complex disputes – from compensation appeals to landlord disputes.
A client tells the BBC how she was left homeless because the landlord canceled her tenancy.
“I’m a professional and I’m not used to finding myself in this kind of situation,” she says.
“It’s distressing, unsettling and being homeless, even at my age, is quite difficult.”
There is legal aid for the poorest in society, but it is means-tested and extremely limited. Many people give up their fight against something they instinctively know is an injustice.
So what does this have to do with artificial intelligence? Going to court can be extremely expensive. The goal of any sane person is to get a solution well before that point. And this requires expert advice.
Adam Samji is a Paralegal Advisor at Westway. It helps prepare a case by investigating whether a client has reason to fight against, for example, a dishonest landlord or the government’s rejection of a benefits application.
A benefits eligibility assessment can be up to 60 pages long. Each individual case may require hours of careful analysis of the personal situation.
The Westway now uses AI tools to sift through these types of documents and access key facts and legal questions that could make or break a case.
“We spend a few minutes browsing [the documents] and redact the customer’s personal information,” says Mr. Samji.
“We upload it to an AI model and it will give us all this information. It will usually get it back in about 10 to 15 minutes.
“This will save us from having to do it ourselves for hours. We will be able to use our time effectively, as paralegal volunteers, to better serve our clients.”
The revolution is taking place
It’s a revolution. AI is beginning to address what many see as a lack of fairness in the justice system.
Sir Geoffrey Vos, the Master of the Rolls, is the head of civil justice in England and Wales. He is leading the judiciary’s thinking on how far AI could go and has written the UK’s first guidelines on how it should be used in courts.
“When people have grievances that they cannot resolve, it creates a huge economic loss for our society,” says Sir Geoffrey.
“They’re worried about the claim. They’re not as productive in their jobs. We in the court system really want to find ways to solve people’s problems more quickly and inexpensively.
“Artificial intelligence will ultimately be one of these tools.”
So how far could this AI revolution go?
Stephen Dowling is a lawyer who also runs Trialview, one of several companies competing for a share of the legal AI market. predicted by global research group Gartner explode in the next two years.
Its tool aims to analyze a transcript of what witnesses say in court in real time and compare it with other evidence in the case. If it detects something that seems inconsistent or wrong, the tool flags it. This is traditionally the job of the lawyer.
But for every lead attorney in court, especially in complex hearings, such as those involving commercial fraud, there can be an extensive support team behind the scenes.
“The technologies we are looking at will allow one or two lawyers to do the work of 10 or 20,” predicts Mr. Dowling.
“This will significantly change access to justice and significantly reduce legal costs.
“Ultimately, people need human judges to hear what they are saying and to connect emotionally to what is involved. But all of this can be assisted and augmented by the use of artificial intelligence.”
The human factor
And it is this human factor that the legal world is now grappling with, as the potential downsides are obvious.
In 2023, a New York court fined lawyers who submitted false arguments derived from questions they asked in ChatGPT.
The EU recently introduced rules to try to ensure the accuracy of AI, meaning its results must be verified by real people. This is a practical risk of which the Westway Trust team is well aware.
“Right now, about one in 30 times it’s not accurate,” says John Mahoney, an attorney for the organization.
“So we need to check all the work we produce using AI that relates to the formulation of legal opinions.”
Was this human control written into Sir Geoffrey’s rules?
“Ultimately, the rule of law requires that individuals have access to an independent judge to decide their case,” says the top judge.
“If you are using a technological tool, the parties need to know that.
“Judges are assisted by technological tools. We have been for years. You are obviously talking about robot judges. But I think we are far from that.”
His advice emphasizes that not only should lawyers remain accountable for the evidence they present in court, but judges should also be wary of biased results from AI tools trained on partial data.
When we asked ChatGPT legal questions to see how he would respond, he gave some pretty straightforward advice regarding both terminating a contract and resolving a legal dispute with a former partner over ownership of the pans of kitchen.
He refused to tell our fictional bank robber how he could beat the charge:
As amusing as it may sound, Sir Geoffrey warns against the public seeking advice from generic AI tools that have not been trained on professional legal databases.
“It will not distinguish between English law, Australian law, Singapore law and probably American law,” he warns.
But he adds: “I am convinced that technology will not stand still.
“The rule of law depends on the ability to get results from an independent judiciary. And it is very difficult for the small number of judges to achieve that in this country when there are 60 million people without use technological tools wisely.”
