Can an AI system help a litigant to win their case in court? It’s a question that will be put to the test at the SXSW Sydney event in October using the tech of startup NexLaw and lawyers from Lander & Rogers.
Courtney Blackman (pictured above), head of partnerships and director of the LawTech Hub at Lander & Rogers, told this site: ‘There will be a live mock trial and we’re going to see how a human lawyer measures up to AI in real time with two defendants selected randomly from the audience to be represented by the lawyer and by the AI, respectively.’
The law firm stressed that unlike some tests of ‘AI vs lawyers’ in the past, they are open-minded about the result and see this primarily as an experiment to see what can be achieved.
Blackman told Artificial Lawyer: ‘We’re doing a very simple matter: driving while using a mobile phone, and are very open to either the lawyer or the AI platform winning!’
She added: ‘This experiment will provide a glimpse into the future of legal practice, namely, can people represent themselves in a courtroom setting with an AI assistant?’
The tech company in question, NexLaw, was launched last year and is led by Francis Lui and Bernie Law. Its focus is quite broad – as with many legal tech companies in the current ‘convergence’ era – but has plenty of skills related to disputes.
For example, the company’s ‘Legal AI Trial Copilot’ may well be of use here. They claim it ‘excels in case preparation by swiftly conducting in-depth legal research and crafting tailored trial strategies, backed by comprehensive legal analysis reports customized to your specific case’.
In terms of how the experiment will play out:
- Jeanette Merjane, a Lander & Rogers senior associate and innovation manager, will go head- to-head with an AI in the SXSW Sydney ‘courtroom’, to see if she can out-skill technology, representing a randomly selected audience member.
- A second randomly selected audience member will ‘represent’ themselves, using a specialised legal AI tool called NexLaw, which is not available to the general public. The defendant using NexLaw will be supported by Kenneth Leung, technology lawyer and AI expert at Lander & Rogers.
- The audience will vote on the outcome and Professor David Lindsay from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) will preside over the courtroom, serving as the judge in the mock trial.
Commenting on the experiment, Merjane said: ‘The legal profession is evolving, and it’s crucial for us to explore how technologies like AI can complement our work. While AI has made significant strides, there’s still a lot to learn about its capabilities and limitations in a courtroom setting. This mock trial is a unique opportunity to showcase the strengths and limitations of both human and artificial intelligence in a legal context. I’m looking forward to the challenge.’
What Does This Mean?
Ever since legal AI arrived on the scene there have been ‘AI vs lawyer’ tests. Sometimes they were clunky marketing efforts, others were very useful and really got the debate going in a positive way.
And of course, more recently there was the moment in early 2023 when DoNotPay founder Joshua Browder raised the idea of a litigant using AI in the courtroom, without the need for a lawyer – with even a plan to do just that announced to the media. That led to a massive pushback from some quarters of the legal profession, who were worried about the unauthorised practice of law – as well as some practical feedback, such as US courts don’t normally allow mobile phones to be used by participants in a trial, so how would the AI be able to take part?
In fact Lander & Rogers even refers to that cancelled event.
So, what does this all mean? Is it a marketing boondoggle or a valid experiment? This site would say that the Sydney experiment is indeed valid. After all, what is the point in developing all these legal AI tools if they’re not ever to be used in court?
Now, there may well be ethical and regulatory barriers to doing this – depending on where you live. But, the central idea: that AI may well be useful to litigants, especially those who don’t have a lawyer, perhaps because they cannot afford one, is a solid one.
Why shouldn’t a member of one’s society, who cannot afford a lawyer, be provided with support via technology?
Aside from protectionism the only real issue is with accuracy and correctness. I.e. would the AI make errors and lead the litigant into jeopardy by getting them to say the wrong thing, or cite cases that don’t exist, or generally behave in a way that the court would not accept?
One could thus argue that the real issue is really around whether the AI is actually helping or not. Moreover, when it comes to using AI during a hearing, there would be no reason why such an approach could not be used by the lawyers as well.
Would not this help the lawyers to win their case? Why would having AI in the court room remove the need for lawyers? Those who can afford lawyers want their representatives to win. While those who cannot afford a lawyer and want to use AI instead are not taking work away from the profession, as the ‘client’ would not be using them at all – as they cannot afford to. In short, no-one actually loses here…..unless the AI is not very good at what it’s meant to do, which is the real issue here.
Any road. This site’s guess will be that genAI, no matter how advanced at present, is ‘not there yet’ when it comes to this kind of use case in a live trial. But, it will probably help even if it may not be flexible enough to really be ‘a lawyer in your earpiece’ quite yet.
Either way, a really interesting experiment and one that as AI gets better will become increasingly valid. Kudos to Lander & Rogers and NexLaw for doing this.
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The mock trial at SXSW Sydney will take place on 15 October 2024 from 3.00pm – 4.00pm at the UTS Collaborative Theatre