A judicial AI company is teaming up with Los Angeles County Superior Court to provide artificial intelligence technology to some civil courtrooms to assist judges in conducting legal research and even help draft rulings.
Court officials stressed that the technology used in a newly announced partnership with judicial AI company Learned Hand is not meant to take decision-making responsibility away from actual judges.
“Court leadership is unequivocal: generative AI will not make judicial decisions or replace judicial discretion,” David Slayton, Executive Officer, Clerk of Court said in a statement announcing the program. “Any exploration of AI is limited to administrative or research support for judicial officers, and only with appropriate safeguards.”
The AI company has already rolled out their technology in smaller court systems in other parts of the country. But introducing the technology in Los Angeles County Superior Court — one of the country’s largest and busiest trial court systems — could spur other courts to consider adopting their own use of AI.
In an overloaded court system where nearly 600 judicial officers at three dozen courthouses deal with approximately 1.2 million new cases each year, officials hope the AI technology will help streamline the research, analysis and drafting of judicial rulings, while still requiring judges to actual review and personally edit drafts before adopting a ruling.
Under a one year pilot program, which began in early February, the AI technology will be used by a group of six judicial officers and a limited number of staff, according to a Los Angeles Superior Court spokesman. After assessing the results of the program — and determining whether it led to effective case management — court officials will decide whether to expand their use of the technology.
Court officials noted that judges have long used research attorneys and law clerks to assist with tasks such as legal research, legal analysis and even the drafting of rulings. As with the AI technology, officials said, judges are still responsible for reviewing that material, verifying the research and coming to their own decisions.
The use of widely available AI technology has gotten some attorneys across the country in trouble over the past few years, particularly when AI-hallucinated case law — references to fake legal cases — has been included in motions submitted to judges.
Shlomo Klapper, the CEO and founder of Learned Hand, said the AI technology provided to the courts is built to be neutral and cautious, and has guardrails meant to avoid fabricating case law.
“We are trying to let the judge do the judge work and not the drudge work,” Klapper said.
Klapper said his inspiration for the judicial AI technology dates back to his time at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where he clerked after graduating from Yale Law School. The first case he was assigned as a clerk involved a woman who had been sentenced to 30 years in prison. But Klapper said no one had the time to look deeply into the case file, until his efforts led to her sentence being reduced by 10 years.
“Because it was my first case, I had nothing but time,” Klapper said. “That was the first and last time I could do that, because cases came in fast and furious.”
Judges already dealing with massive case loads will have to contend with an increasing amount of litigation filed by people using AI to write their own lawsuits and motions, Klapper noted.
Personal records that are never entered into the public court record will remain encrypted and in the full control of the judges, Klapper said. In pop culture terms, Klapper compared the judicial AI technology to Jarvis, the helpful AI assistant in the “Iron Man” films, rather than Skynet, the AI system that brings about the apocalyptic future in the “Terminator” films.
“I do not want the responsibility of making those decisions — heavy is the shoulder that wears the robe,” Klapper said. “I’m trying to make sure they have all the information at their fingertips in order to make the best decisions possible. When a judge signs his or her name on a piece of paper, they take responsibility for it, they take ownership of it.”
Klapper, in an interview on Thursday, said he had spent the last few days monitoring social media feedback to articles in several news outlets about the LA Superior Court partnership. Some of those commenters had sharply criticized the system, with Klapper noting, “Some people have this vision of this evil person that is trying to manipulate the courts …
“Nobody has ever elected me, nobody has appointed me, it is not our role to decide cases,” Klapper said. “No judge would adopt something that is replacing them. They are kind of skeptical people. To think they are going to adopt a tool that will give up what they are doing is silly.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment about the judicial AI technology program. A representative for the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office said that since it isn’t being used in criminal cases yet, their office did not have a comment.
The judicial AI pilot program is among a number of recent technological programs adopted in Los Angeles Superior Court, including an AI assistant on the court homepage to assist with users’ questions, a redesigned remote courtroom appearance platform and a redesigned jury duty portal.