Use of AI within the new digital justice systems being created in England and Wales likely to result in it taking some decisions, says Master of the Rolls

Doubting that there will be an effective pause in the research and development of generative AI, Sir Geoffrey Vos says that the legal community will need to develop mechanisms to deal with it within the legal system

The use of AI within the new digital justice systems being created in England and Wales is likely to see it being used to take some decisions, the Master of the Rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos has said.

In a speech to the Law Society of Scotland's Law and Technology Conference yesterday, Sir Geoffrey set out to explore the effect that generative AI is already having, and is likely to have, on legal services and on dispute resolution methods, including the courts.

Accepting that there will never be sufficient international cooperation for there to be an effective pause in the research and development of generative AI, Sir Geoffrey says that the legal community will need to develop mechanisms to deal with it within the legal system.

However, while Sir Geoffrey says that the use of AI may even hopefully be turned to the advantage of access to justice and effective and economical legal advice and dispute resolution, he cautions that –

'… the limiting factor may be the court or tribunal adjudicating on the dispute. One can envisage a rule or a professional code of conduct regulating whether and in what circumstances and for what purposes lawyers can: (i) use large language models to assist in their preparation of court documents, and (ii) be properly held responsible for their use in such circumstances. Those will be things that the existing rules committees, regulators, and the new Online Procedure Rules Committee (announced in England and Wales this week) will need to be considering as a matter of urgency.'

While Sir Geoffrey also asks whether there ought there to be more effort made to align the use of generative AI with human priorities, moralities and values, he says –

'… that would be costly and time-consuming – at the moment, perhaps, more energy is being expended on making ChatGPT's and other AI's work products look and feel as if it emanates from humans as opposed to making them absolutely accurate and aligned with human morality.'

Nevertheless, Sir Geoffrey says that –

'If GPT-4 (and its subsequent iterations) is going to realise its full potential for lawyers in providing accurate legal advice, accurate predictions of legal outcomes and accurate assistance with dispute resolution processes, it is going to have to be trained to understand the principles upon which lawyers, courts and judges operate.'

Finally, Sir Geoffrey considers whether judicial decisions will in the future be taken by machines rather than judges, highlighting that –

'As many of you will know, we are introducing in England and Wales a digital justice system that will allow citizens and businesses to go online to be directed to the most appropriate online pre-action portal or dispute resolution forum. That digital justice system will ultimately culminate at the end of what I regard as a 'funnel' in the online court process that is already being developed for pretty well all civil, family and tribunal disputes.'

Concluding that AI will be used within the new digital justice system, Sir Geoffrey says –

'It stands to reason that it should be used to enable everyone to be fully informed of the process that is being undertaken. It can also be used to help people read and understand complex sets of rules and instructions, by limiting the material from which the answers to questions can be taken.

I believe that it may also, at some stage, be used to take some (at first, very minor) decisions. The controls that will be required are (a) for the parties to know what decisions are taken by judges and what by machines, and (b) for there always to be the option of an appeal to a human judge.'

The Master of the Rolls speech to the Law Society of Scotland's Law and Technology Conference is available from judiciary.uk