How Lawyers Around the World Are Using AI Technologies

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly entering our lives, and lawyers and judges are no exception. AI technologies help them work faster, make more informed decisions, and free themselves from routine tasks. In this article, we will examine how exactly AI is used in courts, discuss how AI assists in legal practice, and explore which areas of AI application appear most promising at the moment.

Currently, one of the leading countries in the application of AI technologies in the judicial system is China.

The Chinese government expressed interest in applying AI in courts as early as 2014, and ten years later, China has achieved impressive results.

Digital AI Court in the WeChat Messenger. WeChat is an extremely popular messenger in China owned by Tencent, used by virtually all Chinese citizens. The functionality of WeChat extends beyond just messaging and includes numerous other features, such as live streaming, mobile payments, gaming support, and more.

One of its many features is a "mobile court," implemented in WeChat with the support of the Supreme People's Court of China. The "mobile court" itself takes the form of a chatbot.

This "mobile court" handles simple consumer disputes arising in the field of e-commerce (for example, disputes related to the quality of goods purchased online).

The parties to a legal dispute submit their procedural documents and upload evidence directly into the chatbot (the chatbot even supports audio message uploads). Identity verification of the parties is carried out through WeChat's facial recognition technology.

The entire procedure of collecting evidence and hearing the parties' positions is carried out by AI (the so-called "AI judge"). This AI judge can also ask the parties additional questions necessary for rendering a decision on a specific case.

After hearing the parties' positions and collecting all evidence, the materials are "transferred" from the AI judge to a human judge, who then renders the final decision on the case.

China's Smart Court. Since 2022, as part of the "smart court" initiative, the Supreme People's Court of China has required judges to consult with an AI assistant on every court case. As of 2022, the AI assistant's functions were limited — it could only recommend the application of certain legal provisions and judicial precedents in a specific case.

Continuing the "smart court" initiative, the Supreme People's Court of China announced the launch of an AI system aimed at providing full litigation support.

The system has been trained on more than 320 million units of legal information, including laws, court decisions, legal opinions, and other high-quality legal data. A key feature of the system is its understanding of legal terminology and its ability to construct logical reasoning.

At the same time, the Supreme People's Court of China specifically emphasizes that decisions on court cases must be made exclusively by humans, while the system's purpose is to simplify the courts' work with large volumes of information and to enable automation of routine processes, such as preparing court hearing transcripts, systematizing evidence, and others.

Law firms around the world have relatively recently begun using AI. In most cases, usage is in a pilot mode; however, it is already possible to identify the most promising — and therefore more popular — directions for the development of AI technologies for law firms.

E-Discovery. E-discovery refers to the process of searching, collecting, and analyzing electronic information carried out by humans.

The application of AI in this area is nothing new. E-discovery specialists have long used predictive coding, also known as Technology-Assisted Review (TAR), to analyze large volumes of case materials. However, applying such technologies requires engaging competent IT specialists for each new court case, since AI training is performed anew for each new set of case materials.

Currently, many specialists suggest that Generative AI may replace TAR. Unlike TAR, generative AI does not require a lengthy machine learning process, since generative AI is pre-trained on large language models and can deliver good results from the start, as well as "communicate" with users in natural language.

Moreover, generative AI has far greater capabilities compared to TAR. For example, thanks to generative AI, one can literally ask questions about case materials — for instance, asking AI to determine the cost of work performed over a specific time period.

Legal Research. Legal research involves searching for and selecting the most relevant legal provisions and case law applicable to the specific circumstances of a case. The application of generative AI in legal research is far more effective than the search systems offered by traditional legal reference platforms.

Examples of generative AI applications in legal research include services such as Lexis+ AI and Harvey. In particular, PwC uses Harvey in its practice.

Of course, the application of generative AI in legal research currently carries the risk of neural network hallucinations; however, specialists assure that as technologies advance, the likelihood of hallucinations will be substantially reduced.

AI Assistants. Perhaps the most exciting direction for AI application in legal practice is the creation of full-featured assistants whose functionality would include analyzing contract terms, drafting contracts and procedural documents, preparing legal positions, and conducting preliminary assessments of their viability in court.

The main challenge in creating AI assistants for lawyers is that each law firm has its own approach to identifying risks, drafting documents, and writing legal positions — it is no coincidence that there is a saying "two lawyers, three opinions." It follows that an AI assistant essentially needs to be created individually for each law firm and each legal department.

Development of such assistants is currently underway at major international law firms, based on their best legal practices.

Approximate analogues of such AI assistants include the services DoNotPay and Lawgeex. DoNotPay was originally positioned as a "robot lawyer" fully replacing a human lawyer in consumer disputes in the United States.

Lawgeex, in turn, is a contract review assistant that automatically checks a contract for risks and non-standard terms, and also provides recommendations on adding or removing specific clauses and sections.

AI is no longer just the future — it is already actively being used by lawyers and judges. In Chinese courts, AI technologies help accelerate the evidence-gathering process, analyze data, and even assist in preparing judicial decisions.

Many law firms are already integrating AI into their practice and are training full-featured AI assistants, including on the basis of their own LLMs, while international IT companies offer their AI solutions designed exclusively for lawyers.

The integration of AI into the legal field is already producing results in other countries, and Russian lawyers can leverage the experience developed by their international colleagues when implementing AI into their own work.