Carr: AI use needs careful oversight by legal regulators
The Lady Chief Justice last night called for more action to protect judges from “threats and intimidation” both online and in real life.
She also urged lawyers to be “ever vigilant and robust” in their approach to the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
In her speech to the Lord Mayor of London’s annual Judges Dinner at Mansion House, Baroness Carr outlined her concerns about judicial security.
“Judges across many courts and tribunals have been subject to increasing and increasingly unacceptable sensationalist and inaccurate abuse. They – and sometimes their families – have been subject to grave threats and intimidation both inside and outside the courtroom, both online and in the physical world.
“I have spoken on several occasions this year about the importance of judicial resilience, in its many guises. But an expectation of resilience does not extend to toleration of such behaviour.
“Judicial security training is helping. But more needs to be done to deal with what are not only attacks on individual judges, but attacks on our democratic process.”
Baroness Carr said security was a starting point, but more needed to be done “to effect a cultural shift away from such abuse and back towards the more reasoned scrutiny and debate that is a sign of a healthy and robust democratic society, back to the scrutiny and debate regarding the issues that is to be welcomed, and indeed invited”.
On AI, she mentioned instances in the last year of litigants-in-person citing fake judgments ‘hallucinated’ by AI in tribunals, while “we have recently seen cases arise where lawyers have even done so in our courts”.
She went on: “I am confident that with time, training and cautious incrementalism, the use of AI by lawyers and by judges will be as beneficial as it is inevitable.
“That does not mean, however, that we can or will be complacent. The legal profession needs to be ever vigilant and robust in its approach to the use of AI.
“That means careful oversight by legal services regulators and more training and support for lawyers, particularly trainees and those in the early years of their careers, to enable them to use AI circumspectly and usefully.”
The judge expressed confidence that AI would come to be used “appropriately as a tool to assist lawyers and judges to promote fairer, more efficient and effective access to the law and justice”.
She added: “As I have heard it said, I want AI to do my laundry, so that I can do art.”
In his remarks, Lord Mayor Alastair King described how exporting UK legal expertise provided vital support for developing economies and strengthened the country’s international influence.
He pointed to the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts, which brings together commercial courts from around the world and is supported financially by the City Corporation, along with the Astana International Financial Centre Court in Kazakhstan.
This pioneering English common law court is staffed by former senior UK judges and barristers – Baroness Carr’s predecessor, Lord Burnett, serves as its chief justice – and aims to enhance legal certainty and business confidence in Central Asia.
“Indeed, at a time when foreign aid and development budgets feel the pinch, the law offers a bridge through initiatives like the Astana International Financial Centre,” he said, “by fostering stronger, more resilient and less-corruption prone economies, boosting international trade, raising per capita GDP and advancing the United Kingdom’s soft power.”
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