Judges have found AI-assistant submissions from litigants in person ‘more helpful’ than submissions drafted without AI support, the lady chief justice revealed during her annual evidence session before the Constitution Committee today.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill added: ‘AI, we are seeing, can really help litigants in person have access to justice because they can get support in drafting their submissions.
‘We as judges are trained to look out for fake hallucinations, fake cases and the like, but many judges are saying to me that they find AI-assisted submissions from litigants in person more helpful, easier to digest, than submissions that are drafted without the support of AI.’ While the lack of legal aid can hit efficiency and slow things down, ’there are mitigating steps that can be taken’, she said.
She praised the legal profession for supporting litigants in person. She added: ‘I also think actually if you go up and down the courts and if you have the chance to go and sit with a district judge in court, you cannot but be impressed by how able they are at dealing with litigants in person and helping them through the process.’
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In her opening remarks to the committee, in which she highlighted yesterday's London Legal Walk which raised ‘almost £1m for legal advice charities’, Carr noted the need to ‘improve understanding of what the rule of law means’ and the importance of the ‘sub judice rule’.
She said: ‘We know that the sub judice rule is a critical safeguard both to judicial independence and parliamentary privilege. We, the independent judiciary, play our part by not commenting on policy matters, by developing the common law and applying it in a way that is respectful of the separation of powers and, as I said in my evidence to [the Commons] Procedure Committee, it is a two-way street.
‘Parliament in turn needs to respect the work of the judges and the courts and to respect that fundamental principle of comity,' she said. ‘I understand all too well that respect begins with understanding, and here some of the work that we can do together comes into play. I recognise that there is still an enormous amount of work to do in terms of improving parliamentary understanding and a wider public understanding…about many things including the work of the judiciary.
‘I’ve increased the number of parliamentary liaison judges very recently. I’m going to make it a sub-committee of the Judges’ Council to really increase the focus of the work that we do in this area…it’s a really important priority for me at the moment.’
Later, when asked about the relations between the government, parliament and the judiciary, the lady chief justice added: ‘It is a shared responsibility to improve this understanding.
‘I think in the context of some recent legislation there was an amendment tabled in relation to judicial training. Well, that demonstrated to me that there was an absolute lack of familiarity with, I think, section 7 of the Constitutional Reform Act, under which judicial training is exclusively a matter for me.’
She added: ‘MPs do an incredibly difficult job, they are incredibly busy, they have got huge demands on their time, how do I engage interest and improve that understanding in a way that is helpful to them and helpful to the rule of law across the board?
‘It is a challenge, I’m acutely aware of it. I’m sure these four [parliamentary liaison judges] will come up with some good ideas [on how to engage with government].’
Speaking on the courts backlog, Carr said the criminal courts and tribunal system were two areas ‘where we are still running up the down escalator‘, with both areas facing ‘pretty extraordinary acute pressures’.
Judicial security has been a priority for Carr, she told the committee it was ‘not a negotiable issue’ but she was ‘more confident than I was a year or two about where we are on judicial security’.
‘But can I say it doesn’t worry me every day? No, I can’t, and I think we need to be on constant alert, and we need to continue the work with our judges and with those who are there to protect us to make sure that we are properly looked after.’
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