His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service is actively reviewing and adopting artificial intelligence (AI) in its effort to moderns the courts and tribunals service said Gary O’Reilly, Chief Technology Officer in a blog on the HMCTS website.
The service has started to pilot AI for transcription and summarisation, support the anonymisation of judgements and documents, and within the search functions of the case management systems to ‘help legal professionals find information more effectively.’
In the blog O’Reilly explained how HMCTS was not looking to implement AI for ‘its own sake’ but rather as a ‘practical tool to address specific challenges and improve services.’ He said he recognised there was a need for implementation to be ‘responsible’ and outlined how the approach the agency was taking was ‘grounded in clear principles’; using AI where is can demonstrably add value and support human judgment.
Legal services is currently grappling with how AI will be implemented. A recent report from LexisNexis suggested around 40% of law firms say they are ‘experimenting’ with AI; although a similar number say their organisation is ‘interested’ but don’t invest; are ‘fearful or resistant to AI, or simply don’t talk about it. Much of this adoption appears to be lawyers doing it off their own back as the same report suggested that while nearly two thirds of lawyers are now using artificial intelligence to support the in their roles, only 17% of lawyers saying their firm has a ‘fully embedded’ AI strategy and operation.
There is though an understanding that the failure to engage with AI could damage future job prospects with 39% of lawyers suggesting a lack of understanding of AI could negatively impact their future career. AI may not take the jobs of lawyers, but the lawyer’s who harness AI more effectively will prevail amongst those who do not.
Caution is urged though as access to AI tools becomes easier, there are associated risks of over reliance. Two recent cases saw lawyers referred to their regulatory bodies for the inclusion of non-existent citations and quotations in their submissions to the court. In one case, the claimant’s barrister had cited five made-up cases and mis-stated the effect of a section in the Housing Act, using American spelling and ‘formulaic’ prose. In the second case, the claimant had carried out his own research using AI and passed it over to his solicitor who failed to notice that 18 out of the 45 citations didn’t exist, and others didn’t contain the quotations claimed or have any relevance to the subject matter. The court comments it was the responsibility of managing partners and heads of chambers to demonstrate that ‘practical and effective measures’ have been taken to ensure every person providing legal services complies with legal and professional obligations, and should ‘expect the court to inquire whether those leadership properties have been fulfilled’ when it comes to the use of AI tool.
HMCTS say their own approach to AI is cautious, with rigorous testing evaluation of AI tools adding they are committed to sharing the learnings of the journey, working with legal professionals, advocacy groups and other justice organisations to ensure our AI initiatives support the broader justice system, and establishing sector-wide standards and best practices for AI in justice settings.
