AI might not be coming for lawyers' jobs anytime soon Generative AI might have aced the bar exam, but an LLM still can't think like a lawyer. When the generative AI boom took off in 2022, Rudi Miller and her law school classmates were suddenly gripped with anxiety. "Before graduating, there was discussion about what the job market would look like for us if AI became adopted," she recalls. So when it came time to choose a speciality, Miller--now a junior associate at the law firm Orrick--decided to become a litigator, the kind of lawyer who represents clients in court. She hoped the courtroom would be the last human stage. "Judges haven't allowed ChatGPT-enabled robots to argue in court yet," she says.

This paper examines the role of public interest litigation in promoting accountability for AI and automated decision-making (ADM) in Australia. Since ADM regulation faces geopolitical headwinds, effective governance will have to rely at least in part on the enforcement of existing laws. Drawing on interviews with Australian public interest litigators, technology policy activists, and technology law scholars, the paper positions public interest litigation as part of a larger ecosystem for transparency, accountability and justice with respect to ADM. It builds on one participant's characterisation of litigation about ADM as an exercise in legal retrofitting: adapting old laws to new circumstances. The paper's primary contribution is to aggregate, organise and present original insights on pragmatic strategies and tactics for effective public interest litigation about ADM. Naturally, it also contends with the limits of these strategies, and of the Australian legal system. Where limits are, however, capable of being overcome, the paper presents findings on urgent needs: the enabling institutional arrangements without which effective litigation and accountability will falter. The paper is relevant to law and technology scholars; individuals and groups harmed by ADM; public interest litigators and technology lawyers; civil society and advocacy organisations; and policymakers.

A chatbot powered by artificial intelligence will appear in court next month to help a defendant fight a traffic ticket, CBS News reports. The "robot lawyer," the first of its kind, is an experimental step toward exploring the capabilities of increasingly sophisticated AI tools. Consumer-focused tech firm DoNotPay is behind the AI-powered legal assistant. The company's CEO, Joshua Browder, says the company's creation runs on a smartphone that listens to court arguments. The information is then fed through an AI program that outputs legal arguments to the defendant through wireless headphones in real time.

The evolution and utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise and shows no signs of stopping in the near future. In fact, Statista reports that global revenues from enterprise applications making use of AI are expected to increase by almost $30B by 2025. With such monumental growth, it's no wonder the legal industry is getting in on the action. As luck would have it, the legal field is fertile ground for the benefits of AI technology. Time-consuming tasks that attorneys have previously expended manual resources into can now be accomplished using automation and machine-learning in less time and for less money.

In 2017, U.S. state trial courts received a gastronomical 83 million court cases. The Chinese Civil Law system sees over 19 million cases per year, with only 120,000 judges to rule over them. In the OECD area (consisting of most high-income economies), the average length for civil proceedings is 240 days in the first instance; the final disposition of cases often involves a long process of appeals, which in some countries can go up to 7 years. It's no secret that the judiciary system in many countries is long, tedious, slow, and can cause months of misery, pain, and anxiety to individuals, families, corporations, and litigators. Moreover, when cases do see the light of day in court, the outcome is not always satisfactory, with high-profile cases especially receiving criticism for being plagued by judge biases' and personal preferences. Scholarly research suggests that in the United States, judges' personal backgrounds, professional experiences, life experiences, and partisan ideologies might impact their decision-making.

As the ways to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) grow, so do the amount of people implementing this cutting-edge technology to their work. According to Statista, the rate of adoption is quite high -- global revenues from AI for enterprise applications is projected to grow from $1.62B in 2018 to $31.2B in 2025. Its popularity reaches every sector and is substantially affecting the legal space as well. The possibilities for lawyers to benefit from AI are endless. Many automated and machine-learning features enable lawyers to complete a number of tasks faster and cheaper.

Recent headlines about Artificial Intelligence (AI) flooding legal press in recent months with accompanying images of human-like robotic associates have many lawyers asking: will AI really take our jobs? And the follow up: can Siri or Alexa help me quickly research basic legal principles? My short answers are currently "no," and "not quite yet." The answer to the former is not likely to change; the answer to the latter is subject to change at any moment. In the meantime, my discussions around AI, or cognitive computing, and its place in the law, as well as my recent transfer from litigation partner to innovation partner, have allowed me to reach some (preliminary) observations about it all, and preview where I think the technology can and should be going in the practice of law – particularly, for the purposes of this article, litigation.