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The Genie and the Lamp: How Can Artificial Intelligence Help Us Find New Case Law?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

Paul Magrath
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Abstract

Based on a presentation given at the BIALL Annual Conference in July 2022, this article by Paul Magrath provides an overview of how technology including artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming legal practice and the conduct of litigation, followed by more detailed consideration by way of a case study of ICLR's development of its AI-driven search tool, Case Genie. The article examines the problems that it was designed to solve, particularly the legal researcher's anxiety over ‘unknown unknowns’, and the options for further development of the technology and its application in other areas.

Keywords

artificial intelligencecase lawlaw reportinglegal research
Type
Feature Article
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 114 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians

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References

Footnotes

1 Magrath, Paul, ‘Transparency, Data Protection and the Law Courts of the Future’ (2018) 18 Legal Information Management 70–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The Coronavirus Act 2020, sections 53–57 provided for temporary amendments to other legislation, as set out in Schedules 23–27, including new the Courts Act 2003, into which was inserted new sections 85A ‘Enabling the public to see and hear proceedings’, 85B concerned with ‘Offences of recording or transmission in relation to broadcasting’ and 85C with ‘Offences of recording or transmitting participation through live link’. Those amending provisions have now been re-enacted on a permanent basis in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.

3 There are prohibitions against filming under the Criminal Justice Act 1925, s 41 and against audio recording under the Contempt of Court Act 1981, s 9.

4 Would You Let a Robot Lawyer Defend You? (BBC, 15 August 2021) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58158820

5 Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner, ‘Machine Bias’ (ProPublica, 23 May 2016) https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing

6 Pranshu Verma, ‘This AI model tries to re-create the mind of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’, (Washington Post, 14 June 2022) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/14/ruth-bader-ginsburg-ai/

7 ‘Open Source Natural Language Processing for Legal Texts’, ICLR&D/Blackstone https://research.iclr.co.uk/blackstone