Constructive Relations of Artificial Intelligence and Law

The world is transforming with the advancement of technology. Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, is one such hot discipline that is merging itself with various fields as becoming part of everyday life. The recent development of AI tools such as ChatGPT, Jasper, WordTune etc. have made our lives easier. It is speculated that without a basic understanding of the functioning of AI, it will diminish the working opportunities for humans. Thus, everyone needs to possess a slight understanding of AI. The field of law will not be an exception, nevertheless.

This article will help you to understand how AI is being used in the professional field of law whether in framing arguments by lawyers in courts, teaching pedagogy in law school, enhancing legislation Process, judgement prediction, researching methodology and creation of jobs.

 What Is Artificial Intelligence and How it Works?

AI is a field of science that performs different tasks like how the human mind performs. By applying its own algorithm likewise, human intelligence applies its reasoning.

It can be used to predict outcomes based on our input, and patterns beneficial for us, segregate data around the internet and an analysis of data with different methods as human intelligence does.

AI first gathers the data that we have imputed or data that has already been computed by it. Then, we must specify the AI tool for the output we want from our data. Then, the machine performs the function on the basis of an algorithm implemented in AI with its knowledge it processes the data and finally provides output. For example -Recently, voice assistants such as Google Assistant on android phones, Siri on IOS and Alexa by Amazon worked on the model of AI.

 What Is Law?

Law is a system of rules or guidelines, required to be followed by people to keep a balanced environment and stabilisation in society. The law is a dynamic subject. The transformation of technology for centuries has not kept the dimensions of the field of law limited rather it has adjusted itself with the former.

Law as a discipline has traces since ancient times. With the change in society, the law has also evolved with time Aiming to Maintain peace, and harmony and regulate the conduct of human beings. Such a judicial system can trace back its origin to ancient Greek society so as in ancient China there was a code of conduct which was followed till the 19th century. The Purpose was to always Restrain people from crossing the boundary of limits which can create havoc in society.

 Correlation Between AI and Law

Law and AI have a very close relationship as in today’s world it can provide an effective solution to paperwork and management in the legal profession. Worldly, the legal profession has started seeing rapid growth and technological upgradation. Courts also use AI to make legal decisions. Courts in the United States use sophisticated algorithms to arrest defendants. For example, “Public Safety Assessment Tool Used in 21 US Jurisdictions to Determine Risks to Defendants.”[1]. 

The frontiers of I have also started to be used in other fields of study Such as in Medical Science it has been used to analyse relationship between clinical date and patient outcomes, In Accounting it has been used to reconcile financial activities quickly and proficiently. AI Can be a boost source of transforming the field of law. Similarly, it is anticipated that the functions of lawyers would change rather than vanish and become more increasing technological interaction. As a result, there is general agreement that human direction paired with the technological acumen ofAI could result in very good outcomes in the legal sector exercise [2].

 Benefits of AI in the field of Law

The benefits of AI in the field of law are: –

1.      Framing arguments – In courts, the lawyers do the argument that will help their client to win their case. With the help of AI, it can help lawyers to frame their arguments by predicting the rationality of opposition lawyers to fight a case. It can study the patterns of lawyers from analysing their precedent cases and can give an outcome which can certainly provide an edge over others.Furthermore, legal AIallows lawyers to perform more work, with less effort, and more money.AI tools like Quick Check can analyse draft arguments and suggest corrections or identify overlooked legal precedents.

2.      Pedagogy –  Law school plays a crucial role in formation of a student to become a lawyer .It can be said that the roots or crux or base in the form of personality , knowledge, is developed in Law School of students which will determine their future in legal profession.The AI can benefit the teachers or faculty staff by analysing the future of different branches like IPR, business law, Criminal Law, contract Law etc. in the respective territory which can be city , state or a country. Also, the teaching methods can be more student oriented. This allows them to teach a specific branch which will have a high demand in the near future and helps to motivate the students to grasp theory thoroughly.Thus, it can act as a guidance to the law student for selecting their area of specialisation.

3.      Research Methodology -AI has also created a way to access everything you need, legal information from around the world. Because with the help of AI, lawyers today can do most of their work and legal research online. Therefore, lawyers today do most of their legal work from information providers, e.g.  Lexis, or publicly available resources such as SCC Online (India), Justia (US) or CanLII (Canada) or general search engines like google. Updated sources of law such as the judiciary opinions, judgments, laws, regulations are everything Available online and accessible from anywhere on the web in the world. 

This greatly influenced the development of cross-border legal studies and legal research [3]. As a result, LexisNexis continued to operate improved legal research resulting in more user-friendly approach mechanisms, extensive databases, and innovative electronic research methods [4]. For example, currently LexisNexis has 15,000 databases and more than 9 million subscribers worldwide and Westlaw is number one online legal research service in the US, UK, and Australia over 40,000 legal information databases [5].

4.      Judgement Prediction -Legal matters typically consist of hundreds of court decisions (prior cases), making it insurmountable for lawyers to analyse all such past decisions. In this regard, AI tools help overcome the challenge by providing a more objective prediction of the likely outcome of a particular case.For example, look at existing studies that used AI to predict up to 70% success rate of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in 2016[6]. In addition, AI has been used to predict a Supreme Court Ruling in the USA, which accurately predicted over 70% of decisions [7].

5.      Enhance Legislation Process – AI can provide decision support to lawmakers by analysing various factors and predicting the possible outcomes of different policy options. This can help improve decision-making accuracy and minimise the risk of unintended consequences.AI tools can help lawmakers’ draught responses for legislators, improve the quality of their research, learn about any Bill, create briefs, and provide knowledge on specific House rules, legislative writing, amendments, interventions, and other topics. Legislative procedures may be streamlined and made more effective as a result.

Recently, The American House of Representatives has implemented an AI tool to automate the comparison of differences between bills, amendments, and existing legislation [8].

6.      Creation of Jobs – It is hypothesised that, in the future, AI would lead to the formation of new positions for Lawyers in addition to requiring them to take on new duties within the field of legal practices.Forms of employment for Lawyers include Legal Knowledge Engineer,Legal process analysts, legal technologists, and so forth.

 Conclusion

In this article, the main contention was to highlight the benefits of AI in the field of law or the positive impacts of AI in law. By helping the lawyers to minimise their workload for framing arguments to the creation of jobs for the future aspiring law students, AI was a major driving force.The impact of AI in predicting the judgements and enhancing legislative process by its tremendous computational and analytical capability of a vast amount of data and uses brute force to process it, will become apparent in the future.The impact of AI on legal research will go much beyond simple automation just a few decades ago, it was a thing that lawyers could only do in a brick-and-mortar library. Today, thanks to the development of Weak AI, much of the work that makes up legal research is being done using AI tools with minimal human involvement. This has led to tremendous efficiency (time, energy, and resources) in doing legal research and legal work. Thus, it stands as a great reminder to all the people associated with the field of law how to familiarise themselves with AI and make the best use out of it.

 Bibliography

1.      https://www.arnoldventures.org/newsroom/more-than-20-cities-and-states-adopt-risk-assessment-tool-to-help-judges-decide-which-defendants-to-detain-prior-to-trial

2.      Eric, B., & Andrew, M. (2014). The Second Machine Age. W. Norton & Company Inc.

3.      Benjamin, A., Anthony, N., & Albert, Y. (2017). How AI Will Affect the Practice of Law. 1-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3066816

4.      Frank, Y., Liu, J. F., Dittakavi, N. R., & Tsegaye, B. (2008). Pennsylvania Legal Research Handbook. ALM Media, LLC.

5.      Hannah, A. (2016). AI is the Future of Law – And Lawyers Know It. Dataconomy, 1-7.

6.      Aletras, N., Tsarapatsanis, D., & Preoţiuc, P. (2016). Predicting judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights: a Natural Language Processing perspective. Peer Journal of Computer Science, 2, 93-94. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.93.

7.      Katz, D. M., Bommarito, M. J., & Blackman, J. (2017). A General Approach for Predicting the Behaviour of the Supreme Court of the United States. PLoS ONE, 12 (4), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174698.

8.      https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-editorials/revolutionizing-legislation-throughai#:~:text=Assist%20in%20 Decision%2DMaking%3A,the%20risk%20 of%20 unintended%20 consequences.

9.      Whittlestone, J., Nyrup, R., & Alexandrova, A. (2019). Ethical and societal implications of algorithms, data, and AI: a roadmap for research. Nuffield Foundation.

This article has been contributed by Ali Johar, a student at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.