In the world where we live today, AI is omnipresent. There is a spectrum of areas AI deal with. Every industry is now adapting this new technology in their respective domains. From being part of healthcare and transportation to media, the impression of AI can be seen everywhere. The plunge from technicality to creativity, AI can not only help but do anything, anywhere and anytime in no time. 

One area where AI is making a big impact is law. Traditionally, law has been a people’s profession, but now it’s being reshaped by technology, just like education and healthcare. Lawyers today find themselves at a turning point, balancing their long-standing practices with the rise of AI tools. This shift is both exciting and challenging. Surprisingly, AI has found its place in the legal fraternity. 

Let’s discuss further what part AI plays in the legal industry and how it is transforming the way legal practices work. 

Legal Industry Accepting AI

The former CJI, Justice D Y Chandrachud said "Not only does the use of technology make our courts more accountable and responsive, but it also brings people closer to the courtroom. The use of technology is intrinsically linked to the values of transparency, democracy, and equitable access to justice" during the conference held in Chandigarh Judicial Academy.  

With the above-mentioned statement, the former CJI highlighted the transformative impact technology has on the legal system. This clearly indicates how the judiciary is willing to accept AI as an ally. Not only does technology help lawyers in their fair share of the workload, but it also gives citizens a hope of being closer to justice by bringing them a few steps closer to the courtroom.  

The former CJI in his speech mentioned the AI generated arguments before the Constitutional Bench in the Supreme Court. He referred to it as a valuable resource for lawyers and researchers. This clearly is a stepping stone for the union between AI and the legal fraternity. 

The use of AI getting accepted by the former CJI indicates that the Legal Industry is now ready to move forward with this transition from manual to automation. By not seeing AI as a nuisance and merely using it for the purpose of making work easier, the Legal Industry can take a leap from hard work to smart work. 

AI Helping Legal Fraternity 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the legal profession by automating routine tasks, enhancing efficiency, and enabling legal professionals to focus on more complex, high-value activities. From streamlining legal research to assisting in drafting work, AI empowers lawyers, paralegals, and law students to work smarter, deliver faster results, and reduce costs. Below are the diverse use cases of how AI helps the legal fraternity: 

Legal Research

AI-based legal research tools significantly reduce the time and effort involved in researching statutes, case laws, regulations, and jurisdictions. 

Drafting Legal Documents and Arguments

AI assists in drafting legal arguments, petitions, agreements and notices. It helps lawyers' structure compelling arguments, generate tailored petitions and reduces the risk of omissions, ultimately saving time and ensuring precision. 

Contract Analysis and Review

AI tools simplify the contract review process, which traditionally required extensive manual effort, as it aids in spotting inconsistencies, missing information, and thus it streamlines the review process. 

Proofreading and Quality Control

AI systems ensure that legal documents are free from errors and inconsistencies as they detect grammatical mistakes and formatting issues.   

Education for Law Students

AI is an invaluable learning tool for law students, helping them understand and apply legal concepts efficiently. It simulates case research to improve legal reasoning. It also helps in summarizing lengthy judgements for fast and better understanding.  

AI: A Friend or a Foe

To consider AI a friend or a foe for the legal fraternity is something which would attract varied views and opinions. In the legal field, lawyers are trained to do everything manually, be it the documentation of resources, analysis of documents, intense research or preparing arguments for court appearances. To completely rely on AI, lawyers need to utilize it in a manner that they find beneficial in their work.    Through its benefits, AI tools can provide ease in the workload and be a helping hand to them, just like a valuable junior associate or a hardworking intern.  On the contrary, these benefits and the gradual update in technology come through as a threat to the profession as well as the professionals working. Today it might not seem to be after the job of lawyers but with advancements in technology nothing can be predicted.  

Recently we saw CJI interacting with an AI bot in the Supreme Court Museum, which indicates that there will be a time when these software generated personalities might end up in court fighting your case! 

During this interaction, the AI lawyer was able to give accurate answers to the questions. This innovation can act as a friend to a lawyer helping them in cases. 

Whereas it may also be seen as a threat or foe in future. Whatever the situation is, we should always be ready to adopt and manage updating technologies and as always, the AI will always be in the hands of people using them.  

AI also has a friendly relationship with clients looking for legal aid. When in urgent need for consultation, AI can provide solutions to your problems free of cost and in the blink of an eye.  

Thus, in today’s scenario, the world is dependent on AI and technology. The legal fraternity and AI should work co-dependently, irrespective of the multiple nuances. 

Ethical Considerations

Use of AI comes with responsibilities and ethical dilemmas; these ethical dilemmas are discussed below:

Bias and Fairness

AI can produce historically biased information. If there is any bias in precedents, then the AI will give results on this basis. The unfair outcome helps in perpetuating biasness and discrimination.  

Developing transparent algorithms can cure this problem. This will ensure the ethical use of AI in legal decision-making. 

During the book launch of ‘Generative AI in the Courtroom: A Practical Handbook for Modern Justice’ written by entrepreneur Aspire. K. Swaminathan and lawyer Anita Thomas, the Justice of Madras High Court stated “AI should not be used for writing judgments because it does not have a heart. Judges require empathy to decide, especially when it comes to cases dealing with children or domestic violence.” 

This empathetic factor is one of the qualities of lawyers or judges, which cannot be replaced by AI. Without this quality, the judgements will be apathetic. 

Accuracy

Should we rely on everything AI has to say? Is the data factually correct?     These are the questions that arise in a lawyer's mind while taking AI’s help. They prevent taking help from AI because of the lack of trust in the accuracy of results.  

In the legal field, where one information can have a significant impact on a person's life it is essential to ensure the accuracy of the data.  

Accountability

Who will be held accountable if an error has occurred? Are there any grounds for holding an AI accountable for its mistakes? 

As we know, currently there are no laws that govern and regularize the usage of AI technology. In the absence of such laws, who shall be held accountable for the outcomes and incidents that happen due to output generated by AI? Thus, one should be careful while using AI.

Benefits of AI in Law

AI in law comes in as a transformative change. With its benefits, AI will help lawyers solve a lot of their problems. Some of the benefits as listed below: 

Documentation of Resources

A lawyer spends most of his/her time skimming through case laws, statutes and judgements to find information. An AI tool on the other hand can easily provide data for documentation in just one command. It saves a lot of time for lawyers. With the help of its algorithm, an AI tool can also help in formatting the documents. Through its robust technology, AI tools can understand difficult legal provisions and provide necessary legal information to users. 

Use of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning

Natural Language Processing algorithms break the complex legal jargons into simplified languages for the tool to understand.  

These simplified resources can be used to generate precise results. Only relevant data pertaining to the case is identified. This makes the research process easy and efficient.   AI is essentially used to perform tasks that are ordinarily performed by human intelligence. In the legal industry, mundane tasks such as researching, reviewing contracts or formation of any legal documents are done with the use of AI.  

Removing Language Barriers

AI in law has proved itself as a beneficiary in removing linguistic barriers. AI tools can be used by lawyers and citizens to translate documents like judgements and orders into multiple languages.  

For example, Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software (SUVAS) is an AI software, used by Supreme Court to actively translate its judgements and orders into regional languages.  As India is a country which has diverse cultured people inhabiting together, a technology such as SUVAS, is a revolutionary change in the Indian Legal System. This technology makes the court proceeding go smoother without any hindrances. 

Challenges With AI in Legal Industry

With the rise in the demand of AI in the field of law, many technical updates are happening. These updates come with their own challenges. Some of the challenges are listed below:

Unpredictability and Hallucination of Information

The major challenge of AI is that it can produce information that is unpredictable in nature. For example, sometimes AI can come up with its own judicial opinions which are non-existent. This information cannot be used in court as it is not valid. So, the need for lawyers comes in, to check the credibility of information.   

One of the drawbacks of AI is that it generates data by referencing historical cases in the algorithms. When the case is unique and there is no historical data available, AI can make huge mistakes like generating fake citations and made-up cases.  

Data Protection

With the hike in the usage of AI for legal purposes, data protection is seen as the main concern. As users or lawyers use AI, they are putting confidential information in the system, to get the results. As the user's data privacy and confidentiality is on the line, protecting the data from illegal use and breach of privacy comes in as a big challenge.

Innovators should consider protection of user's data while allowing proper analysis of records, especially in the legal industry. The client’s data confidentiality should not be breached. Due to absence of relevant statutes, it becomes the duty of the user to make sure that no sensitive data is entered. 

Easy to Manipulate

AI can be easily manipulated by external factors. Jailbreaking is one of the examples of manipulation of AI. Jail breaking in AI refers to bypassing the built-in policies and guidelines that it has been programmed with. As AI is fine-tuned, it involves tricking or prompt filtering which produces results according to their specific needs. It poses as a challenge for lawyers to prove the credibility of their research. 

Future of AI in Law

The future of AI in the field of law is promising. There are potential growth requirements. Both the citizen and the lawyers have their own specific needs. Merely answering queries and performing routine tasks is not enough, AI should be able to perform complex tasks without making mistakes.  

AI and Lawyers must learn to co-exist with each other in this journey of modernization of traditional concepts and technological automation. Embarking on this journey together, AI and Lawyers both need to adapt according to the requirements of the future.    In a very recent case in India, a student from OP Jindal University sued the college for failing on taking help of AI in assignments and exams. As stated by the student there were no guidelines for using AI, then how is he being held accountable for Unfair Means practices.     The main question here arises is 'AI is ready for adaptation, but is the future ready to adopt AI, especially in such a knowledge centric field?'

Lawyers should be proactive toward upgrading skills for the smooth operation of AI tools and must continue to remain indispensable in the legal arena in the light of change. 

AI could, therefore, significantly support lawyers to make decisions by providing analysis that could provide alternative views, thus providing critical insights and judgments that might not have been discovered in the absence of AI. Acting in a virtual "second opinion," legal professionals can exercise an improved strategy and stronger argumentation capabilities. 

This requires not only education and public awareness but also proper training for judges, lawyers, and public servants to improve their knowledge and skills in handling cases that involve AI.  

Conclusion 

AI in legal field, balancing opportunities and challenges, has a transformative journey. Being a friend to the law and trimming down the negative aspects, makes it more helpful. AI enhances efficiency and task simplification, manages ethical dilemmas and inaccuracies. 

Lawyers and AI must co-exist, leveraging technology to modernize traditional practices while preserving core human values like empathy and judgment.  

The future of AI in law hinges on responsible adoption, ongoing education, and robust regulations.  

DigiLawyer can complement legal professionals, empowering them to deliver smarter, faster, and more equitable solutions in a rapidly evolving landscape. This tool also increases awareness among the public regarding their duties, rights and responsibilities.