ABSTRACT:
The swift adoption of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology in the practice of law creates a unique set of opportunities as well as ethical concerns. One challenge AI generates is the inaccuracywithin outputs referred to as hallucinations as well as the lack of detail. AI gives when addressing legal matters. Getting things right is really important in the field. If Artificial Intelligence makes mistakes that is a problem for the justice system and for people to trust it.
This research is, about how technology’s changing things, especially Artificial Intelligence that can create content and how it affects the way law is practiced. The main goal of this research is to make sure that Artificial Intelligence is not fast but also accurate when it comes to legal work because right now Artificial Intelligence is fast but legal work needs to be accurate. This research aims to show that the necessity of AI provokes the absence of sufficiency that overrules the special obligations of the legal profession, where practitioners are expected to exercise responsible judgment. The study confirms the gap on practitioners profoundly trusting the AI tools while underscoring the need to prompt legal integrity in the wake of the innovation. In addition to technical errors, this study focuses on the procedural threats posed by privileged communication under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 along with Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 and socio-economic impacts of specialized legal AI, which could exacerbate the access to justice gap between top law firms and solo practitioners.
Keywords: Cloud-basedGenerative Artificial Intelligence (AI)hallucinatins, The BharatiyaSakshyaAdhiniyam (BSA) 2023, The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023, Socio-economic Impacts, Judicial Integrity
INTRODUCTION:
At present, the legal profession witnesses a technological revolution in the form of AI, which moves from being merely innovative to becoming essential for legal work. While the integration of technology into the legal system has provided many advantages related to efficiency in performing routine tasks such as analyzing legal documents, it creates an unstable relationship between efficiency and accuracy. This is because, in the generation of information with the help of AI technologies, the focus is not on identifying the factual truth but instead on patterns, leading to hallucinations which is the creation of false information in relation to cases and sources[1]. Therefore, there emerges a serious issue of an AI malpractice gap since there is no legislation regulating the errors created by AI technologies[2]. In an era where there is heavy reliance on technology, a lack of regulation will prove to be extremely harmful to the justice process since it will undermine the most crucial aspect of the process.
Indeed, the transformation in the legal landscape can be viewed as a transition from bespoke lawyering towards a technology-driven approach, where the processing speed is crucial to stay competitive[3]. Still, it faces considerable philosophical opposition. The law relies on a certain human element, the cognitive capacity to distinguish between different elements of a case, while AI relies on the compilation of huge datasets. Once autonomous technologies start performing actual analysis, the line dividing attorney’s findings from the results achieved by artificial intelligence starts becoming indistinct[4]. In fact, this raises serious doubts about the unauthorized practice of law. Moreover, many generative models remain a mystery, as their operation remains a complete black box[5]. At the same time, there is a clear need for reasoned arguments in the legal domain, which contradicts the very nature of machine learning algorithms, not to mention the duty of candor in communications with a judge.[6] Finally, it bears mentioning that there might be some systematic bias encoded in the dataset, which can affect legal results even before a lawyer sees a client’s case[7].
Thus, the objective lies in developing a techno-ethical bridge between the digital revolution and the safeguards contained in the Indian Evidence Act, the obligation on the part of an advocate to speak the truth before the Court, and equality of access to justice in a democracy.
[1] Sandra Wachter, Brent Mittelstadt and Chris Russell, ‘Why Fairness Cannot Be Automated: Bridging the Gap Between EU Non-Discrimination Law and AI’ (2021) 41(4) Computer Law & Security Review 105567.
[2] See David Freeman Engstrom and Jonah B Gelbach, ‘Legal Tech, Civil Procedure, and the Future of Adversarialism’ (2020) 169 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1001.
[3] Richard Susskind, Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future (3rd edn, OUP 2023) 62.
[4] John Armour, Richard Parnham and Mari Sako, ‘Augmented Lawyering’ (2022) 22(1) Journal of Corporate Law Studies 191.
[5] Karen Yeung, ‘Hypernudge: Big Data as a Mode of Regulation by Design’ (2017) 20(1) Information, Communication & Society 118.
[6] Bar Council of India Rules, part VI, ch II, s I (Standards of Professional Conduct and Etiquette).
[7] Nathalie A Smuha, ‘From a Race to AI to a Race to AI Regulation: Regulatory Challenges and Opportunities’ (2021) 13(1) Law, Innovation and Technology 146.