Court system on'brink of collapse', former senior judge warns The court system is on the brink of collapse as the backlogs for trials reach unprecedented levels, the head of a major review has said. Sir Brian Leveson, a senior retired judge, warned ministers, the police and others that there could not be a pick and mix response to solving the crisis. Last year, in the first stage of the review, Sir Brian called for the right to a jury trial to be scaled back and many intermediate crimes to be dealt with by a judge alone. His second and final report has recommended 130 efficiency changes, from technical measures to allowing prison vans to use bus lanes to hit court appearance deadlines. Sir Brian's two reports were commissioned by ministers as part of an attempt to reverse the backlogs that had reached record levels before Labour came into power, but have continued to worsen since then.

What will your life look like in 2035? When AIs become consistently more capable than humans, life could change in strange ways. It could happen in the next few years, or a little longer. If and when it comes, our domestic routines - trips to the doctor, farming, work and justice systems - could all look very different. The'AI' doctor will see you now In 2035, AIs are more than co-pilots in medicine, they have become the frontline for much primary care.

The judge said: 'I am bound to observe that one of the cases cited has recently been wrongly deployed by ChatGPT in support of similar arguments.' The judge said: 'I am bound to observe that one of the cases cited has recently been wrongly deployed by ChatGPT in support of similar arguments.' Barrister found to have used AI to prepare for hearing after citing'fictitious' cases Judge rules Chowdhury Rahman used ChatGPT-like software and then tried to hide it, wasting immigration tribunal's time Thu 16 Oct 2025 09.47 EDTFirst published on Thu 16 Oct 2025 09.33 EDT An immigration barrister was found by a judge to be using AI to do his work for a tribunal hearing after citing cases that were "entirely fictitious" or "wholly irrelevant". Chowdhury Rahman was discovered using ChatGPT-like software to prepare his legal research, a tribunal heard. Rahman was found not only to have used AI to prepare his work, but "failed thereafter to undertake any proper checks on the accuracy".

The high court has told senior lawyers to take urgent action to prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence after dozens of fake case-law citations were put before the courts that were either completely fictitious or contained made-up passages. Lawyers are increasingly using AI systems to help them build legal arguments, but two cases this year were blighted by made-up case-law citations that were either definitely or suspected to have been generated by AI. In a 89m damages case against the Qatar National Bank, the claimants made 45 case-law citations, 18 of which turned out to be fictitious, with quotes in many of the others also bogus. The claimant admitted using publicly available AI tools and his solicitor accepted he cited the sham authorities. When Haringey Law Centre challenged the London borough of Haringey over its alleged failure to provide its client with temporary accommodation, its lawyer cited phantom case law five times.

The legal sector is quickly moving to embrace digital transformation and leaning towards innovation as it recognises the opportunity to improve customer services, drive productivity and adhere to the raft of compliance checks that all law firms have to meet. In fact, in feedback from legal professionals in our recent Advanced Trends Survey Report 2019/2020, only 40 per cent felt their law firm wasn't acting fast enough to keep up with the pace of technology innovation – so that means 60 per cent are acting with pace and are certainly well ahead on that journey. To encourage greater innovation, one technology that we predict will have a transformative effect on the industry is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although AI is still in its relative infancy, it is already helping to change the way many industries operate and the legal sector is increasingly recognising its potential benefits. For example, a recent Deloitte study estimated 100,000 legal roles will be automated by 2036, leaving legal professionals to concentrate on higher value, client facing tasks.

Three major players in the legal services market have created the first truly automated end-to-end digital solution for insurers, solicitors and counsel using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Keoghs Solicitors, St John's Buildings barristers' chambers and Advanced, the legal software specialist, have developed a digital solution using AI which enables Road Traffic Accident (RTA) personal injury cases to be litigated electronically, or identified as requiring a barrister, without the need for human intervention. The system has been in operation since late 2018 and is delivering a rapid, seamless and cost-saving service for clients. Keoghs created Lauri, the first AI litigation product, in 2017. Lauri reads unstructured data and pre-loads personal injury cases at Keoghs.

The Bar Council has turned to artificial intelligence to help barristers report bullying and harassment quickly and anonymously. Talk to Spot, a smatphone app developed by Spot, a US tech company, will enable barristers to talk through and record contemporaneously inappropriate behaviour at work. Barristers can choose to save the report for their own records, or print the report and sent it to their chambers, employer, other bodies or the Bar Council. The Bar Council says no human, nor the Spot team, will see what a barrister discusses with Spot unless they decide to submit a report, which they can do anonymously. A global study led by the International Bar Association, published earlier this year, showed that bullying and harassment is endemic in the law.

One year ago, we wrote about the world's first robot lawyer. It is a website with a chatbot that started off with a single and free legal service: helping to appeal unfair parking tickets. When the article was published, the services was available in the UK, and in New York and Seattle. At the time, it had helped overturn traffic tickets to the value of 4 million dollars. Apart from appealing parking tickets, the website could already assist you, too, in claiming compensation if your flight was delayed.

Did you hear the one about the affordable yet efficient human lawyer and its robot counterpart? One is complete myth and will never happen while the other might be just around the corner thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). Everybody loves a silly lawyer joke but the joke may be on us because the lawyer or barrister is one of the professions least likely to be replaced by automation and it may also be one that will benefit most from AI and machine learning. There is an interesting website called willrobotstakemyjob.com where you can enter various jobs and see the probability that automation will, at some point in the future, render certain professions obsolete or not. This is calculated using a methodology developed by Oxford University researchers looking at the future of employment.

Every time you read a trade journal, an article on LinkedIn or attend a conference you can bet there'll be something about AI and Big Data (it's always capital B and capital D too). It's also probable that many businesses will be able to get along fine without either. However, anyone wanting to profit from these innovations will be finding out exactly how they can assist them. On the one hand, AI will undoubtedly help in processes, transactions and compliance. Machine learning will reduce time, cost and complexity from many arduous jobs within companies, businesses and firms.