Routine judicial decision-making “will be informed or directed by machines", Master of the Rolls says

In a speech at the Judicial Institute for Scotland last week (30 April), Sir Geoffrey Vos said it is "now inevitable that basic economics will dictate that routine judicial decision-making will be informed or directed by machines", adding: "There will be dedicated programmes that will be able to decide many routine cases as reliably as human judges.

"They will, in the first instance, be used only with the agreement of the parties, but that acceptance will rapidly become automatic, as the parties to disputes realise that it is far quicker and far cheaper to allow a machine to decide run-of-the-mill legal questions."

He said this view had been bolstered by a recent report from Le Club des Juristes, which recommended that the use of algorithmic systems, including AI, should be considered in compensation litigation, such as personal injury compensation.

Sir Geoffrey said it is incumbent upon this generation of judges and lawyers to "do the hard work necessary to lay the foundations for justice systems of the future that will use technology to a far greater extent than ever before".

He also said that the current generation of legal professionals will be tasked with the important task of providing justice to generations of people and businesses, "whose lives will have been transformed in all their aspects by the adoption of artificial intelligence".

Commenting on how the sector should adapt to the rise of AI, he said the justice system must embrace technological change and shape how AI is used within justice systems alongside the generations who are most familiar with it.

He also stressed the importance of communicating to younger generations, "because there is a danger that the distinctive importance of justice systems and justice itself, as compared to the other arms of state, is not readily understood by those who obtain all their information online or on social media".

"If the importance of justice and the rule of law is not properly understood, there is an enhanced risk that inappropriate uses of AI will pass unnoticed under the radar without proper scrutiny," he added.

Elsewhere, the Master of the Rolls noted that the technology had advanced considerably beyond its initial problems - including hallucinations - which initially triggered scepticism about its impact on the sector.

On this point he said: "For the first year or even two years after GPT3 was launched, the sceptics were in the ascendancy. AI would never be useful or, more commonly, it would never overcome its tendency to hallucinate case names or facts.

"In fact, these things have already largely been falsified and everyone now knows that AI will indeed be valuable, useful, indeed invaluable, in almost every single human endeavour and professional activity.

"It is as important in engineering as it is in architecture, and in accountancy as in the law."

Concluding, Sir Geoffrey said lawyers and judges across Europe and beyond "have yet, I think, to come completely to terms with the effect that AI will actually have on the way we deliver justice.

"Many would like to believe that it will not affect anything judges do very much at all. Many want to believe that justice is so special and that lawyers and judges are indispensable and immune from the ravages of the AI revolution."

He added: "As I have explained, I am sure it is true to say that justice and justice systems are special, and that humans will continue to have need of human judicial decision-making. Nonetheless, the lawyers and judges of today must embrace technology to deliver justice in a more streamlined way. That delivery must take account of the shorter attention spans and quite different expectations of our current younger generations and of those to come.

"Justice and the rule of law will remain critical in the machine age. But the practices and processes of the 19th century will need to be rapidly adapted to provide relevant digital justice systems fit for the 21st century."

Adam Carey