AI and blockchain could transform the courtroom – Cointelegraph Magazine

Earlier this year, Joshua Browder, CEO of AI startup DoNotPay, attempted to bring a robot lawyer into a California courtroom, despite almost certainly knowing that it was illegal in almost all 50 states to bring automated assistance like this into a courtroom.

DoNotPay bills itself as the “world’s first robot lawyer” whose goal is to “level the playing field and make legal information and self-help accessible to everyone.” It helps to serve society’s lower-income segment to lower medical bills, appeal bank fees, and dispute credit reports. It claims to have helped more than 160,000 people successfully contest parking tickets in London and New York.

It was denied entry to the California courthouse, however, because “under current rules in every state except Utah, nobody except a bar-licensed lawyer is allowed to give any kind of legal help,” Gillian Hadfield, professor of law and director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto, tells Magazine.

Still, in the age of ChatGPT and other stunning artificial intelligence devices, Browder’s attempt could be a foretaste of the future.

“The DoNotPay effort is a sign of what is to come,” Andrew Perlman, dean and professor of law at Suffolk University Law School, tells Magazine. “Certain legal services, including many routine legal matters, can and will be delivered through automated tools. In fact, it is already happening at the consumer level in numerous ways, such as via LegalZoom.”

Such help is urgently needed in the view of many. In the U.S., low-income Americans “do not receive any or enough legal help for 92% of their civil legal problems,” according to a Legal Services Corporation study (2022). Almost half surveyed don’t seek help because of high legal costs, and more than half (53%) “doubt their ability to find a lawyer they could afford if they needed one,” according to the LSC survey.

“This access-to-justice gap is a serious problem, and automated tools can be an important part of the solution,” comments Perlman. 

Can AI democratize legal services?

It may only be a matter of time before AI reaches the courtroom. If so, it could help to wring human bias out of the legal system. “In a legal setting, AI will usher in a new, fairer form of digital justice whereby human emotion, bias and error will become a thing of the past,” says British AI expert Terence Mauri, author and founder of the Hack Future Lab. 

Will it advance the day when legal services are truly democratized? “Absolutely,” says Hadfield. “This is the most exciting thing about AI now.” Not only can it reduce the cost of legal services in the corporate sector — “and I think that’s coming — “but the huge payoff will be in addressing the complete crisis we face in access to justice.”

But more work may still be needed before AI becomes common in the courthouse. The law does not have much tolerance for technical errors. The stakes are simply too high. “I’ve used ChatGPT, and it often summarizes the law correctly. But sometimes, it makes mistakes,” John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University told USA Today. “And (that’s) not a surprise. It’ll get better. But at the moment, I think going into the courtroom was something of a bridge too far.”

Hadfield herself has been working in Utah and elsewhere to establish regimes for licensing providers other than lawyers to provide some legal services. Consumer access to legal services is necessary for the interests of fairness and is increasingly doable, given the rapid evolution of technology. As Hadfield explains to Magazine:

“I don’t think a fully unregulated/unvetted DoNotPay should be out there, but there should be an easy way to license it against the standard: ‘Does this make the user better off than they are now?’”

Most people engaging with the law today — including the people DoNotPay is aiming to help — “get zero legal assistance, so that bar may not be high,” adds Hadfield. 

A global need

AI’s promise of delivering accessible, reasonably priced legal services could soon gain traction beyond the United States, too. Indeed, AI-driven solutions may be even more welcome in the developing world. A Boston Consulting Group study on “The Use of AI in Government,” for example, found that people in less developed economies “where perceived levels of corruption are higher also tended to be more supportive of the use of AI.” Those surveyed in India, China and Indonesia indicated the strongest support for government applications of AI, while those in Switzerland, Estonia and Austria offered the weakest support.

“Basic services such as drafting wills or simple contracts, or challenging government decisions, should not…