Although there is a widespread use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the legal industry worldwide, the use of AI in law and legal practice in India is still in its nascent stage. Recently, more legal professionals are becoming dependent on AI tools and applications because of its efficiency, ability to work faster and time saving properties. But with boon comes the bane. AI has both its own merits and demerits. We have discussed a few below:
Advantages and Opportunities
- Legal research: This is the field where the most amount of time and intelligence is required as researching requires patience and diligence. AI has made this task easier by introducing chatbots (I think everyone remembers the genie of excus) that generate required data or relevant judgments as per our requirement thereby reducing the time consumed in manual research. There are various AIs that help in legal research like SCCOnline, CaseMine, OpenAI, SUPACE (Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Court Efficiency), etc.
- Drafting and Documentation: AI software like SpotDraft and Contractable.AI, has been widely used by practitioners and professionals for drafting contracts, appeals and various other documents. The requirements and needs are entered which gives a drafted document in no time, again reducing the human time consumed in drafting. These AIs are also equipped to analyze contracts and give feedback to the user about the parts which may be favorable or unfavorable. This not only saves the human effort but instantly prevents the user from signing that document which may prove to be contentious in the future.
- AI for translation: AI now helps in translating the judgments to vernacular languages for better understanding. An initiative for the same was taken by the Supreme Court of India in collaboration with Engineers of IIT Kharagpur which led to the designing of an AI called SUVAS (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software). This helps in translating the orders and rulings of SC into the desired vernacular language, making it available to a wider range of people.
By reducing the processing time and enhancing effectiveness, consistency, dependability, accuracy, intelligence has completely transformed the legal industry. In addition, it has improved access to justice, learning opportunities, compliance reporting, and more time for lawyers.
Obstacles and Key Considerations
- Relevancy of the data: although AI makes our work easier and saves time, there is still a concern regarding the credibility of data it generates. Most of the time the AI chatbots provide wrong information or judgments that would be really problematic if relied upon. The data generated are based on the data input that are made.
- Ethical and Privacy issues: In order to get to desired output and save time, we feed certain data to the AI which ae sensitive and confidential. India so far lacks a proper legal or regulatory framework to safeguard the ethics and privacy of the data inputs made in the AI.
- Development of Legal Grounds: AI cannot be relied upon for out of the box legal solutions which may depend upon extensive interpretation of law. Neither can it be relied upon when it comes to interdisciplinary application of law and legal grounds.
- Lacks Legal Personality: Since India does not yet have laws like EU AI Act, Interim Measures for Generative Artificial Intelligence Service Management China, it is a grey area when it comes to deciding the person ultimately responsible in case of a breach or misuse.
In short, if the world is seeing a change in many sectors due to AI so will legal affairs. AI has major implications in the world today, good or bad. Even though nothing can beat the intelligence and the mindset of humans, humans can no longer ignore the existence of AI.