Speeding up judicial processes: How AI is reshaping Indian legal system

The Indian legal system is deploying artificial intelligence for improved efficiency

The Indian legal system moves at a snail’s pace. A staggering 47 million cases were pending in Indian courts as of last year, of which 182,000 were pending for the past 30 years.

This dismal situation could change, thanks to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in India’s judicial proceedings. Last month, the Supreme Court adopted an AI-based software to start live-transcription of hearings. This solution, developed by Bengaluru-based Technology Enabled Resolution (TERES), helped the court put out the text of the hearing on the Maharashtra political controversy by the evening of the same day.

While Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju has urged the judiciary to embrace emerging technologies, the use of AI to speed up legal proceedings has already begun. Under Phase III of the eCourt project under the National eGovernance Plan, the SC constituted the Artificial Intelligence Committee last April to help identify areas where AI can be deployed in judicial matters.

The transcription project is only the latest in AI-aided initiatives after the Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Courts Efficiency (Supace), which was launched in 2021, and the Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software (Suvas), became operational in 2019. Supace is an AI-powered tool that compiles facts and laws relevant to a particular case and makes them readily available for judges. It is aimed at making legal research more efficient and less time-consuming. Suvas, on the other hand, is designed to translate judgments and orders into nine vernacular languages.

What are the major areas of legal and judicial work that AI can facilitate? Decreasing the massive backlog of cases will be top priority, experts believe.

“India has a huge number of pending cases. To reduce this, it is important to understand how similar matters could be potentially clubbed and decided together. Using AI algorithms will prove quite helpful in this,” says Pavan Duggal, Supreme Court advocate and chairman of the International Commission on Cyber Security Law.

Duggal points to the experience of Estonia, where an AI algorithm is used to judge smaller legal claims. “In Indian courts, challan matters, including traffic challans, take a lot of time and resources. These cases can be potentially handled by AI algorithms,” he adds.

Prashanth Kaddi, consulting partner at Deloitte India, believes that AI can also automate repetitive tasks to increase efficiency. “AI and analytics can not only help in collecting and analysing large chunks of data to find patterns and precedents in related judgments, but also help improve the overall experience by providing clients with instant access to information.”

Others believe that AI services should be designed to benefit people who cannot afford high legal fees.

A few high courts have already begun deploying AI solutions in new and innovative ways. In 2019, the Bombay High Court introduced an AI system for case prediction. This system uses machine learning algorithms to predict the outcome of cases based on past judgments and data analysis. The Jharkhand and Patna High Courts have implemented optical character recognition, a tool which converts scanned documents to computer-readable texts, allowing text extraction from legal documents. 

“Tools like ‘Jupitice’, which is an online private digital court powered by AI and blockchain, aims to solve commercial and civil cases through various alternative dispute resolution mechanisms,” points out Nandini Gore, senior partner at Karanjawala & Co Advocates.

Besides these, AI assistance for scrutiny of filings, data handling and management, legal research, predictive analytics, document analysis for patterns in crime, virtual hearings, and even analysing social media and news articles for public sentiment around issues such as marital rape and uniform civil code are some of the other judicial and legal uses of AI that are at various stages of implementation across local, state and national courts.

Challenges

Nonetheless, fully integrated and uniform deployment of AI solutions across different rungs of the Indian judiciary may still be far in the future.

A crucial challenge would be to train a skilled workforce within the judicial ecosystem to manage and deploy AI solutions, experts believe. “The major challenges in deploying these services include training of member registries of courts for familiarity and access to the technology, uploading accurate and timely information, adoption of AI tools for legal language, and huge investments required for adoption,” says Tejas Karia, head of arbitration at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.

Pranav Srivastava, a partner at Phoenix Legal, adds that the greatest challenge in integrating AI services will arise in the lower judiciary, thanks to a greater infrastructure deficit. Moreover, “litigants approaching the courts often lack the resources to access advanced technologies.”

The biggest challenge is inherent in the very nature of AI software, however. AI algorithms require large amounts of data to be trained, and the quality of this data is critical to the performance of the algorithms. “The Indian judiciary operates in a data-poor environment, with many cases not being digitised, and the quality of digitised data being inconsistent. This makes it difficult to build accurate AI models,” notes Gore.

AI algorithms can also develop and perpetuate biases if not monitored responsibly. Salman Waris of TechLegis Advocates & Solicitors points out that sensitive personal information of victims or commercially confidential information not available in the public domain, including in-camera proceedings, will have to be excluded from AI bots to protect confidentiality. “Further, a lack of cybersecurity safeguards could expose the Indian judiciary to possible cyberattacks by state and non-state actors,” says Duggal.

India does not have a legal framework to recognise and regulate AI. “The lone Indian cyber legislation being the Information Technology Act, 2000, it is not applicable to the use of AI. Many countries have come up with national AI strategies. India needs to learn from the experiences of the US and European Union and come up with its own distinct minimal framework to legally regulate AI,” he adds.

While the ministry of electronics and information technology has already constituted four committees to bring in a policy framework for AI, experts like Waris believe that AI must be introduced in a phased manner to achieve the stated objectives effectively. An initial phase could focus on enhancing administrative efficiency, while the later stages can prioritise improvements in decision-making through case query tools, intelligent analytics, research augmentation, and legal robotics.