[1]Sharp: Courts grappling with false legal material
A senior judge has warned that Big Tech has the power to ‘compromise judicial independence’ if the courts become dependent on a small number of AI systems.
Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench Division, highlighted the dangers of allowing AI to become too embedded in the justice system during a speech at the Inner Temple this week.
In an address on judicial independence, Dame Victoria said there are many “interesting issues or risks on the horizon” – including trying to make the judiciary work when it was “significantly under resourced”.
Crown Court open caseloads had doubled between 2019 and 2025 and waiting times in jury cases remained at an “unacceptable level”, which undermined justice.
But she said the greatest threat was AI.
Dame Victoria said: “Humans tend to defer to systems that appear technical, neutral and authoritative. In the judicial context, that tendency would be especially dangerous.
“Judicial independence requires not only freedom from direct pressure, but freedom from hidden dependencies that shape the answer before the judge has fully reasoned her way towards it.”
The judge pointed out that AI was not neutral, and the information it produced was influenced by many factors, ranging from the datasets used and the material included or excluded, to the “commercial incentives” of tech companies.
“A model trained on historic legal material may reproduce historic inequities. A model optimised for speed and settlement may undervalue the need for a public hearing. A model procured by the executive may, without impropriety, reflect executive priorities.
“This leads to what may be called system capture. If courts become dependent on a small number of proprietary systems, updated invisibly and controlled externally, the practical independence of judicial reasoning may be compromised.
“The danger is not a dramatic coup by machine. It is of a gradual drift: standardised prompts, standardised summaries, standardised risk scores, and eventually standardised dispositions.
“A court system may appear formally independent while its informational architecture has been captured by technology it cannot inspect, challenge or control.”
AI had a clear role in supporting the judiciary; “the danger arises when AI is presented not as support for justice, but as a substitute for the public investment justice requires”.
Faced with backlogs, a technological answer “may be tempting because it promises visible throughput without for example, the cost of judges, courtrooms, staff, legal aid and physical infrastructure”.
Dame Victoria went on: “But a justice system cannot be judged only by the number of cases it processes. The question is: processed how, by whom, according to what criteria, and with what opportunity for the parties to be heard?
“If AI is to be used to divert cases, rank urgency, propose settlement, identify ‘low complexity’ claims, or recommend paper disposal, the criteria it uses to do so matter profoundly.
“Judicial independence includes deciding cases according to law, rather than executive performance metrics. They matter but they are not the only thing that matters.”
Dame Victoria, who is retiring in October, shared her concerns about how individual lawyers may use, or rely on, AI in the future.
“Modern large language models do not reason as lawyers or judges reason… A judge who treats AI as a source of ‘judicial reasoning’ rather than a useful tool risks outsourcing part of the judicial function.”
And her concerns extend beyond lawyers and judges, to how litigants, witnesses and others used AI in the courts.
Dame Victoria welcomed how AI could improve access to justice by helping people understand their legal rights, draft documents and follow court procedures.
This has led to a “boom” in applications from litigants in person, and “less-than-well-qualified legal advisors”, which in turn was creating additional work for judges.
“Each application requires careful judicial appraisal, and many I am afraid are rather less than legally sound. All of this puts a strain on a system that is already under-resourced.”
AI has also left the courts grappling with the growing problem of “false legal material” – even “more troubling” than hallucinations were the evidential risks, she went on.
“Deepfakes – synthetic or altered audio, images or video – can place a person somewhere they never were, make them appear to say something they never said, or fabricate an event that never occurred.”
“Fabrication that once required specialist skill may now be available to an ordinary litigant with a smartphone. A forged email chain, a synthetic voicemail, a manipulated CCTV clip, a fake social media exchange, or a false expert-looking report may be produced quickly and cheaply.”
The judiciary has issued guidance on AI, and safeguards are being put in place, such as the algorithmic transparency recording standard, used by government departments and public bodies
Dame Victoria also pointed towards the EU AI Act, which treats AI systems used by the judiciary to research or interpret facts and law as “high-risk systems” that need safeguards and human oversight.
Looking ahead, without fear or favour, Dame Sharp said: “More will be needed. The world, and not merely the judicial world is playing catch up with an accelerating technology.”