The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had (and will continue to have) a profound impact on our lives, particularly in the way we use information. Obviously, AI can and does have many practical benefits ranging from helping to conjure a new recipe or providing book or film recommendations – even going as far as transcribing subtitles for film, television and stage productions. It really is a brave new world we are living in and this cutting-edge technology will undoubtedly continue to change our lives.
The legal profession is no different, and as practitioners in family court proceedings, we are more and more seeing unrepresented parties (also known as Litigants in Person) use AI to help guide them through complex court proceedings.
The point of this article is not to debate whether AI is a good or bad thing for our society, but to provide some warnings for those seeking to represent themselves in family proceedings about the type of problems legal practitioners have been facing in court proceedings where AI is being used by a Litigant in Person (LIP) to prepare their case.
The following three areas are just some examples of how AI can actually be a hinderance in complex legal proceedings:
AI Reassurance – are you being told what you want to hear?
If you open any publicly available AI tool and ask it for its opinion on something, it will very often reply in a cheery and helpful way. However, if you then respond telling the AI chatbot that it is incorrect, very often it will own up to its mistake and inform you that actually you are right and it has made a mistake.
As a quick experiment, the author of this article pulled up a publicly available AI tool and asked it:
“How many months of the year contain the letter ‘x’?”
The reply came:
“Exactly one month contains the letter ‘x’
- August – no
- September – no
- October – contains ‘x’
- All the other months do not contain an x
Answer: 1 month (October)”
Not only is that statement incorrect (more on this later), but when the author pushed back and told the AI chatbot that it was not correct, it admitted it had made a mistake but then proceeded to explain again that only one month contains the letter ‘x’ – October.
The point here is that AI very often will sacrifice accurate advice for what it believes the human operating it wants to hear. When you need someone to look at your case objectively, and weigh up all the pros and cons, using AI could hurt your case.
In legal proceedings, for example, if a stressful email is received from your opponent and you copy and paste that email into AI and ask it to explain how the email is incorrect; AI chatbots will very likely think you want it to criticise the email. So that is what it will do, even if the email is making a legitimate request.
It may well be that what you are being asked for by your opponent is understandable, but if you listen to the AI chatbot, you may well respond aggressively believing that you are in the right and your opponent is wrong. This will only serve to enflame tensions and make coming to a resolution that works for you and your family even harder.
Family proceedings are complicated and more often than not you need someone on your side to give you detailed advice and not just tell you what you want to hear.
AI Hallucination – can AI make up the law?
As with the example above, AI is not totally infallible; it makes mistakes.
There are a large number of examples of cases out there where an AI tool has confused two cases and blended them together or completely made up the facts. If you are in court and quoting a case that does not exist, this can seriously harm your credibility and the court’s impression of your own case.
We as practitioners have spent months and years training in this area not only to give you the correct legal advice confidently, but to tailor it to your situation. A human lawyer can research all aspects of your case and give you advice confidently and effectively advocate for you at a hearing.
An AI chatbot might be able to help you prepare for a case but cannot argue for you at a hearing and respond when a judge asks a question that you do not know the answer to. The role of a lawyer is therefore essential when preparing your case and cannot be replaced by an AI chatbot.
Say for example your case involves a complex or little-known point of law. An AI chatbot is likely to only give you an overview or summary of this which will be of little help to a judge. A human lawyer can research the issue fully and come up with the answer, which will end up helping your case.
It is therefore important not to treat AI as if it knows the answers to everything, remember the example above – October certainly does not contain the letter ‘x’!
AI and privacy – are you at risk?
Another key feature of publicly available AI chatbots is their vulnerability to hacking. Any question you ask an AI chatbot is likely to be logged and held for a period of time, and if you send court documents for the AI to consider, this will also be held on its server.
In most child proceedings, the court imposes a rigorous demand of privacy, so children subject to court proceedings are not able to be identified. There is a real risk if you start sending court documents to AI that you will be in breach of this requirement, given that some AI chatbots store information in a non-secure way on the cloud.
It is really important in family proceedings that your information and information about your family is placed in a safe pair of hands and not put online where it could potentially be broadcast to the rest of the internet.
Solicitors are under an obligation to keep client information confidential and have robust IT systems in place to prevent data being leaked.
Conclusion
AI can and does get many things right, but it really is no match for getting a professional, qualified legal representative in family court proceedings. Having a professional, human lawyer to advise you and prepare your case diligently with an expert background can make all the difference when you are facing a difficult time in your life.
At National Legal Service, we understand that legal representation can be expensive, but did you know there is legal aid available still in many areas of family law? And even if legal aid is not available to you for your case, National Legal Service offers competitively priced private client rates.
Please do not hesitate to give us a call if you would like to have a conversation about instructing us to act for you on 020 4638 6185.
