Prof. Mireille Hilderbrandt has recently seen an article published for the Netherlands journal ‘Rechtstreeks’. It contains scientific articles on Case Law, published by the Netherlands Council for the Judiciary, focusing on the practice and development of case law in the Netherlands. The article is titled: ‘AI and the Future of Legal Method’ and concerns further output of my ERC Advanced Grant ‘Counting as a Human Being in the Era of Computational Law’. It demonstrates once again that ’Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral’ (as Kranzberg would have it in 1986).
Abstract
Last year, four men with work experience at dating app Tinder (as 'tech veterans'), raised 2 million euros for their start-up LegalFly, which serves, among others, the Dutch market. This contribution focuses on the deployment of AI as part of the legal method, whether for deciding on case law, drafting contracts or preparing legislation and regulations. The deployment of AI in law is enabled by myriad types of legal technologies, traditionally offered by legal publishers. As LegalFly shows, by now legal tech start-ups are entering the market for what has been called ‘legal search’, ‘prediction of judgment’ or ‘rules as code’.
I start with a brief discussion of the legal method-as-we-know-it, followed by an overview of different types of legal technology that are becoming part and parcel of legal methodology. I then describe a method to study the deployment of AI technology in law, mapping, analysing and comparing the underlying methodologies, thus preparing an evaluation of the impact on law. The thrust of this contribution is that lawyers will need to delve into the normative implications of design decisions, not because they should become computer scientists or software developers, but to learn how to ask the right questions when acquiring and deploying these types of technologies. I end with concluding remarks, linking the impact of AI as part of the legal method to the Rule of Law, highlighting that we cannot take the checks and balances of the Rule of Law for granted, also not when ‘legal tech’ is concerned.
Article (in Dutch only):
https://www.rechtspraak.nl/SiteCollectionDocuments/rechtstreeks-2024-02…
https://www.rechtspraak.nl/SiteCollectionDocuments/rechtstreeks-2024-02…