By Lucy Caulkett-
Lawyers will need to provide legal advice online in many cases to move on with technology and the times, a senior High Court judge has said.
Chancellor of the High Court, Sir Geoffrey Vos made his statement at a session on the tech revolution in law co-moderated by Law Society president Christina Blacklaws. Vos stated that young people want legal advice quickly, and should be able to get it by using their mobile phones. Young people would shun lawyers who fail to provide it, he warned.
‘If we work with the technology revolution rather than against it, we can improve the quality of service and reduce the costs of legal advice,’ said Sir Geoffrey Vos. ‘There are risks, but we can minimize their adverse effects. Young people will no longer accept that legal advice is one of the only things they cannot obtain instantly or the next day with a few taps on their smartphone
Vos addressed concerns surrounding legal technology and artificial intelligence, providing a rebuttal for each of them in turn. ‘Much if not most’ legal advice will come to be delivered online, he said, in areas including property, divorce and straightforward commercial deals. But there will still be a place for face-to-face interaction with the client, in areas such as custody of children, complex business transactions and the defense of serious criminal charges.
‘We can use technology to cut out manual processes without reducing the quality of advice. But clients will need mechanisms that show if the advice has come from a human lawyer or is machine-assisted,’ he said.
Vos went on to dismiss fears that technology will ‘over commercialize’ the profession by making lawyers inadequately client-centred. Rather, technology will cut hours worked by human lawyers but that will enable them able to focus on higher-value work. Suggestions that machines could render judges redundant were also dismissed by the senior judge. He added. ‘Online courts are essential if we are to deliver justice. The delays and expense of existing systems are inexcusable while online solutions are achievable.’
The judicial process will increasingly be informed by machine data, but individuals and businesses will not be confident about decisions made by machines alone, Vos stressed. ‘We must use machines to produce background information for the judge or decision-maker, which should lead to more not less justice.’
TECHNOLOGY
He concluded: ‘The legal profession, the justice system and software experts need to work together to cater for a modern generation with a new technological capability. Bluntly, I don’t regard the tech revolution as a threat either to the core values of civil society, or to our legal professions.
’New generations in society will rightly criticize us if we fail to make good use of the advances in AI to improve their lives. Legal advice will not look the same in 20 years, but citizens and businesses will still be in need of assistance and it is your duty to give it to them.
‘Finally, let’s make sure we train our lawyers appropriately for the digital age. Educational structures and courses designed for the 19th and 20th centuries will not enable our lawyers and judges of the future to capitalize on the benefits of technology for clients and consumers.
INNOVATION
The Solicitor Regulation Authority (SRA) today told The Eye Of Media.Com that they are in the process of jointly delivering a pioneering open innovation competition to stimulate the use of advanced data-driven technologies to tackle the access to justice challenge. They said the initiative would be supported by The Regulators’ Pioneer Fund operated by The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
”Investment in AI-powered services is accelerating, both within law firms and in the high growth legal tech sector. These developments could help tackle the longstanding problem of limited access to justice, but in practice investment is overwhelmingly focused on commercial law use cases where returns are perceived to be most promising”, they said.
An SRA spokesperson said the joint initiative will seek to ”redress the balance, through a range of mechanisms including identifying the barriers that could widen access to justice, including accelerating advances in specific access to justice situations that demonstrate the potential for progress’
