I’d rather be composing a column to cheer you up in such dismal times – about the judge who wore an Elvis wig in court and played Elvis music when entering the court, or how Kim Kardashian is disappointed in psychics who wrongly predicted that she would pass the California bar exam.
But these are serious times, and even if it is not for the Law Society Gazette to give views on the Ukraine peace talks, there have been other important developments of interest for solicitors – not on the level of war and peace, of course.
Last week, for instance, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology launched an open call for evidence on an AI Growth Lab. Ominously, this announces that preliminary analysis of case studies in legal services and the planning system indicates that, by lifting unnecessary legal barriers to AI in these and other applications, the Lab could unlock billions of pounds in economic value by 2035. Since it wants the UK to stay in the vanguard of international best practice in regulatory innovation, it proposes issue specific sandboxes where regulatory modification may be needed. Lawyers beware!
The UK Ministry of Justice has previously published its AI action plan for justice (over the summer).
But I want to talk about the EU’s new digital justice strategy, which was also published at the end of last week. Yes, I know we are no longer part of the EU, but there are things to learn from what others do – and our regulatory and legislative bosses don’t often look beyond our shores.
First, there is lots of money dedicated to justice digitalisation at EU and national level. It is proposed that the new Justice Programme should triple its budget (‘proposed’ because the details are still being hammered out), mainly to be spent on digitalisation. There is also funding proposed for national justice systems.
As an example of EU money for a national initiative, the Czech Republic is cited. In 2024, there were on average 12,300 Czech hearings conducted via videoconferencing. The roll-out of equipment and related software in courtrooms cost approximately EUR 8 million (with some support from EU funding). Videoconferencing now saves the Czech judicial authorities more than EUR 2.2 million annually in transport and security escort costs, witness compensation and travel reimbursements for witnesses, with such savings obviously set to continue into the indefinite future.
Money will also be spent on an EU IT toolbox, which will gather in one place digital tools which have been successfully used in another Member State, to avoid duplication.
One such tool is the German OLGA. OLGA is an AI assistant which helps judges process appeals in mass proceedings, following the Dieselgate case. OLGA examines first-instance judgments and extracts parameters such as vehicle and engine type, exhaust standard and reasons for recall. Based on these parameters, the tool automatically groups together similar cases and fills in individual templates designed by the judges. The use of OLGA enables intelligent case scheduling with, for example, the same plaintiff representatives. The tool relieves judges of highly repetitive tasks. The system does not interfere with decision-making, for which judges remain responsible.
There is also easy online access planned for lawyers and other justice professionals to all legislation and case-law, with legal tech companies having smooth access to sufficient anonymised judicial data to develop and train AI tools.
And then lastly for our purposes, and maybe most importantly of all, there is more money – there is already some currently – for training lawyers on digitalisation of justice. The new strategy has a whole document dedicated to this training. Ministry of Justice, take note: in some places, there is funding for lawyers to be trained on digitalisation.
Along with mention of the usual need for comprehensive training for all lawyers in digital skills and the use of AI tools, there are other useful training pointers:
- for every new legal act which has a digital component – for instance, in our case if new rules on aspects of conveyancing or will-making include digital requirements – the authorities responsible for the changes should accompany them with training modules for lawyers on the digital aspect;
- training for lawyers should prepare them to play a proactive role in the design, development, and deployment of digital products and services related to their work, to ensure that the tools are genuinely useful to daily tasks; and
- every training programme on substantive law should include a module on aspects related to its digitalisation.
One psychic consulted on why Kim Kardashian’s psychics had wrongly predicted her passing the bar exam said it was a matter of timing: she would eventually pass, and then the psychics would be proved right.
Similarly, in due course, all justice will be digitalised and we will all be properly trained. But when, and with what resources?
Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society
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