Voltaire Uses AI and Big Data to Help Pick Your Jury

Legal AI company Voltaire has launched an application that will allow lawyers and litigation consultants to rapidly analyse potential jurors by crunching public Big Data, including social media posts. The system is of primary use in America and similar legal systems where lawyers for either side in a trial are allowed to research potential jurors before the case commences and selectively apply preemptory strikes, or make a case for a'for-cause' in order to seek a better outcome for their client. Also known as the voir dire phase of trial, jury analysis and selection is an often complex and time-consuming element to much US litigation. Voltaire hopes to use AI, such as machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to not just greatly speed up the process, but to provide lawyers with new insights via Big Data analysis that would normally be very hard and expensive to attain using manual methods. Colorado-based founder and former IBM staffer, Basit Mustafa, explains to Artificial Lawyer that Voltaire explores all public data related to the potential juror, correlates the data against known patterns in human behaviour and then produces a detailed profile, with indications of the type of person they are and how their views and biases may be a positive or negative factor as part of a jury.