With all this talk of AI and Obiter’s current obsession with any film, book or show involving artificial intelligence (recommendations on a postcard please), it felt timely to be reminded that no matter how smart the tech is, sometimes it simply does not work. Take a judge’s note on a Commercial Court ruling this week. Apparently the ‘court equipment failed to record the judgment hearing’ which meant that, though the judgment was given orally, no transcript could be created; so, a judgment had to be handed down remotely a little under a month later. It finishes: ‘It is approved as an accurate record of the substance of the judgment given on 19 March 2024.’

Fellow shorthand users and court transcribers can take a moment to feel a little smug that we are still doing it ‘old-school style’.

A court reporter writes in a notebook

Source: iStock

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