Judges are using AI to make rulings, top justice reveals

Judges are using AI to help make rulings, senior High Court justice Sir Colin Birss has disclosed to the CLLS. 

Sir Colin Birss, the chancellor of the High Court, said they were using AI tools to help make the judgments consistent, redact content to anonymise details, create transcripts and search for key details in emails and files.

He described the application of the technology as “exciting”, “helpful” and “transforming” in helping to speed up justice and improve judgments. His comments came after it emerged that judges in immigration tribunals were using AI tools to generate skeleton judgments. They also have official approval to ask chatbots to check their decisions.

In a lecture to the City of London Law Society, Sir Colin warned judges not to use public AI systems unless they were known to be secure. All judges in England and Wales already have access to a secure version of Microsoft Copilot.