In this issue of the legal tech digest, we report on three different stories that thread together to reveal a larger question: What is the state of reform in the legal services and justice industry, and are we indeed making progress in the right direction?
There are a few course recommendations from reputed institutions including UNESCO, A2J and NYU, as well as a few job opportunities for Indians to work in legal tech contexts within India.
Lastly, in the essential readings section, there are two recommendations.
The first is a lecture by Sir Geoffrey Vos, a British judge and Master of the Rolls who talks about dispute resolution mechanisms we may need by 2040 in light of upcoming technologies.
The second is a highly practical research paper addressed to General Counsels and in-house teams that argues why current digital transformation frameworks don’t work and what to do about it.
If you are reading this issue on the website, you will find embedded PDFs, bookmarks, and other rich media on the webpage itself.
A Supreme Court bench while hearing an appeal by the Bar Council of India pointed out several concerns in the functioning of the Bar Council of India, saying “what you need is a complete revamp”. This appeal was in the context of allowing enrolment as advocates without having to quit their previous employment.
The bench discusses 4 main questions:
While these questions certainly have relevance, they only seem to be symptomatic of larger, deeper questions that have been unresolved for decades, and which involve a much more nuanced and careful look at the process of lawyer formation in India.
The order copy is here:
An opinion piece titled “Too little, too less” takes an incisive look at how far (or not) we have come since the establishment of the e-Committee responsible for the virtualisation of the judicial infrastructure.
10% of the courts reportedly don’t have access to internet, 100+ court complexes don’t have a washroom for women, and 91.36% of funds allocated for infrastructure develop remain unused.
The betel-stained, muck-filled washrooms of Kurla Magistrate Court. Source.
Despite there being a number of initiatives, launches, and ribbon-cutting ceremonies, adoption rates remain low. Lack of a change management framework, improper utilisation of funds, and lack of a streamlined system for digital infrastructure for the judiciary continue to remain critical challenges.
Phase III of the eCourts project envisions a platform-based approach to judicial infrastructure to bring in more modularity in the integration of technological solutions. Raman Aggarwal of Jupitice has explained how this is a promising mindset change over the previous “cylindrical approach”.
Read the article here
In a Bar & Bench editorial, the authors take a deeper look at the problems plaguing the Indian judicial system and argue that it is critical to focus on the cure rather than the symptoms. The authors caution that blaming the judiciary for the situation is short-sighted and incorrect, and that “all the stakeholders including the Bar, the litigants, and the government have contributed to this crisis”.
Reforming the judicial process in India: Principle-based solutions
The authors have taken examples of different initiatives that have been taken up in the name of judicial reform, and have given principle-based arguments on why they have not worked / couldn’t have worked. The authors seem to echo a larger concern: that a piecemeal approach towards solving the larger crisis is deeply problematic, and we must take a holistic approach based on a “strategy of not just reducing existing pendency”, but also taking steps “to reduce the pipeline of cases so that expeditious dispensation of justice [...] becomes a reality”.
They propose a set of principle-based solutions, including a comprehensive strategy for data collection and analysis at all judicial and quasi-judicial levels, increasing access to information to the general public, and ramping up digitization and technological facilities.
Speaking at an arbitration conference, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud has emphasised the role that smart contracts can play in commercial contracts. He explained how the terms of contracts can be encoded in smart contracts and how the breach of terms would automatically enforce the contract in accordance with its pre-coded rules.
Quoting J. Chandrachud:
*“For eg, if there is a clause in the contract which stipulates that the payment for rented articles must be made on the 7th of every month, then a non-payment of the rent within the stipulated time would automatically enforce the penalty clause.
One example of smart contracts in the insurance sector in providing travel insurance through a smart contract so that when the transport is delayed, the compensation for delay is automatically credited to the account of the insurer”.*
There were also comments made on artificial intelligence, inherent bias in technological systems, and a review of global initiatives to this effect. To read a more detailed account, read this LiveLaw report.
This initiative has been announced in response to a 2020 survey in which judicial operators across the globe were interviewed, an overwhelming 85% had expressed interest in formal training about the working of AI systems and how judicial operators should interact with AI systems.
The course is named “AI and the rule of law” and addresses two primary issues:
The course is offered in 7 languages and features case studies and best practices from a number of countries including India, Brazil, Senegal, and Kenya.
The course is free. Register here.
Registration link for the course.
Despite the promise of ODR in improving access to justice in society, there remain significant challenges such as expense management and the availability of facilitators. To address these challenges, Dr Karl Branting the Chief Scientist at Machine Learning for Computational Law (MITRE) is doing an online talk on 8th April 2022.
Dr Karl proposes a model implemented in a decision-support system (DSS) that fulfils two objectives:
The link to the event is here.
A Computational Model of Facilitation in Online Dispute Resolution
An introductory course aimed at teaching how technology, data, and innovation can improve our legal system.
The course explains the concept of open data and open justice, the mindsets behind open justice, case studies of real-world open justice projects, and guidance and strategies for implementing open justice projects.
The course is free (unless you want a certificate). More details here:
This course may be of interest to those interested in creating legal tech applications but don’t have a technical background or coding knowledge. It was available for free for 24 hours on March 18, 2022 and is now only available as a paid course.
Examples of use cases that the course should help you tackle:
Watch this lecture by Sir Geoffrey Vos, a British judge and Master of the Rolls. He reviews the state of affairs of our dispute resolution mechanisms as they stand today (in the British context but much can be extrapolated and generalised for other jurisdictions too). He describes the current framework as a 3-step model of digital justice.
That is the starting point of the discussion. Given the current state, what are additional variables that we need to keep in mind when developing justice infrastructure for the future? He examines this in light of emerging technologies such as blockchain and smart contracts that are expected to shape our society in the coming 20 years.
The lecturer then looks 20 years into the future and pre-empts the kind of dispute resolution system we will need to have to accommodate for the coming generations.
Watch the lecture here.
A transcript of the lecture is below:
MR-to-SCL-Sir-Brain-Neill-Lecture-2022-The-Future-for-Dispute-Resolution-Horizon-Scannings-.pdf
This scholarly paper written by Michele Destefano, Bjarne P. Tellmann, and Daniel Wu, addresses the current lack of scholarship on the specific issue of how General Counsels are approaching digital transformation, why a lot of isn’t working, and how they can approach DT instead.