Imagine the situation where your neighbour keeps parking in front of your drive or the fence between your properties is falling down. You take some photos of the situation and within a few clicks, you get an answer that gives you your legal rights and what to do next. Daydreaming? Maybe not.
In a previous post I had to read up on the law relating to renting. It was like wading through treacle and even if I had spent a solid month reading the documents I would have still been drowning. But with the hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI) I was struck by a thought - why can’t it answer some of my questions. So I gave it a go. Starting with a simple question: my landlord is trying to evict me what should I do? Although it politely reminded me it wasn’t a lawyer, the best it came back with was the process that I should follow. I tried another, maybe a more contentious question: if I travel to the UK as an unaccompanied child from Syria will I be allowed into the UK? I had reached its limit and it reminded me that it didn’t have access to real time information or current immigration policy. The answers were of no help but as the technology develops will the day come when it is as slick Perry Mason?
AI has been lurking in the corridors of academia for some time but in recent years, with the reduction in computing and data storage costs, it is everywhere. There is a lot of complex technology behind AI but the basic idea is straight forward. The system is learns from looking through as much data as possible on a subject. When a question is asked then it searches through what it has learned and gives an answer that is close enough to plausable. The big step forward came with systems such as ChatGPT when a user can ‘chat’ to the system as if it were their best mate.
So how could an AI Lawyer be built? First we need data and in the UK there are mega tonnes of legal documents. Basically the UK is composed of two types of law: Statue Law which is what the politicians discuss and eventually vote for in Parliament, and Case Law is where a Judge interprets the application of the statute law. The earliest bill that is still enforced is from 1267 from the reign of King Henry III and is a collection of laws that addressed various issues relating to property rights. Today, Parliament can pass up to 50 new laws in a year. For Case Law there is even more produced each year. So there is enough data to build an AI Legal system.
What are the advantages of such a system? Obviously the type of question raised at the beginning of this post could be answered by pulling together the appropriate pieces of statute law and case law and suggest a process to resolving the problem. Imagine a screen popping up at court and winning a case. Now that would make the news! Another advantage of such a system would be that new laws going through Parliament could be checked against possible situations. For example the situation with the unaccompanied child described above could be checked against the proposed law to make sure that the outcome would meet the values that we hold as a country are being met. Finally, the system could be used to rationalise the current laws by removing duplication and checking against inconsistencies, which I’m sure must exist, and therefore simplifying our legal system.
Of course there will be criticism of an AI Lawyer, in particular how accurate it would be - will it make mistakes? But the answer to this challenge would be to compare it to a human lawyer who I’m sure make mistakes. Anyway, the AI Lawyer could be asked to produce the laws that it used to arrive at the actions it recommended so that it could be checked.
AI is fast becoming a reality. It will will start to replace many of the activities that are carried out by specialists or experts and make it accessible to the majority of people. The legal profession have got wind of the impact of AI and are quickly trying to use it to help them. However, this could be a rearguard action because AI has the potential to replace many of them. But more important is for people to have access to the laws that are being made on their behalf by politicians. The rule of law is fundamental in an advancing democracy. An AI Lawyer would place the law within a few key strokes of everybody which must be a good thing for how we live.