Law in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Transforming Legal Practice in India

This Blog is Written by Rajlakshmi Chutia, 3rd Year, BA LLB, Christ Academy Institute of Law, Bangalore.

Blog 15 | Edition VII

Introduction

I initially joined law school with the idea that all of the battles I would have in the future would be very similar to my experience in Bollywood classics, where I spent many a night in the dark corners of the library, reading about dusty case files and burning the midnight oil. After two years, that image has drastically changed. AI has woven its way into the legal profession, from the review of contracts in the early stages to courtroom research. From the initial stages of contract review to courtroom research, AI has made its way into every facet of legal practice, subtly redefining the concept of "thinking like a lawyer" in India.

The Evolution of Legal Research

Conducting legal research was once a time-consuming process of manually following up on all changes, cross-referencing sources and reading through voluminous law reports in India. In today's age, there are platforms such as CaseMine's Case Crux, Manupatra's AI tools, and SCC Online AI that are streamlining that process in mere minutes. With precedent data in the past, these systems can be able to locate precedents which have been overruled, describe how rulings are made, and even predict which arguments are able to succeed. Freeing and nerve wracking for me as a law student--freeing because it frees up time to focus on strategy instead of finding the case. That's disturbing, because it raises a significant point: What value can a young lawyer add if a machine can find the perfect precedent in a few seconds? Now I believe that the answer is not retrieval, but judgment, being able to weigh two or three different precedents, to see past a judge's words and to tell a good story. Even if they are able to retrieve and build the bricks, AI still needs a human architect to put them together and form the argument.

Attorneys and Case Management Systems

The Indian judiciary have begun to experiment with AI. AI is used by the Supreme Court's SUPACE (Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Court's Efficiency) initiative to help judges by gathering pertinent data, laws, and precedents for a case without rendering judgements. Similarly, if a litigant cannot read Hindi or English comfortably, the justice can be made more accessible by translating the judgments into languages spoken in the area, through a machine translation, by the service of SUVAS (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software). The golden vision of these technologies is to reduce the gargantuan pendency of more than four crore cases in all courts of India. e-courts, virtual hearing and AI aided case-listing have become not only experiments but the basis of general court proceedings at the time after pandemic. As I have personally seen in my own judicial experience, I have seen how the profession has embraced these as an accepted means of practice so quickly as a participant in webinars on judicial reform and virtual moot courts.

Drafting Contracts and Conducting Due Diligence

In the realm of business law, AI is undoubtedly the most popular. Contract review software with AI capabilities is increasingly adopted by law firms to detect potentially problematic clauses, ensure regulatory compliance, and accelerate due diligence during mergers and acquisitions. What used to take weeks for junior associates to redline now takes hours, as AI marks anything that doesn't meet compliance standards. This translates to the skills sought after in campus placements evolving with a focus on not just the Companies Act or SEBI regulations, but also legal-tech skills.

The Regulatory and Ethical Issues

But there are some factors to consider about this change. There are concerns about data privacy, algorithmic bias and accountability. In the event that AI suggests a precedent that is incorrect or fails to reference an important amendment, who will be held accountable—the law firm, the software developer, or the judge? Although the NITI Aayog's discussion papers on Responsible AI and the continuing discussions surrounding the Digital India Act indicate that policymakers are starting to consider these issues, India does not yet have a specific regulatory framework for AI in legal practice. Another more basic issue is access to justice. While AI is intended to be efficient, it also has the potential to widen the gap between smaller practices or legal aid clinics and well-funded law firms that can afford to access expensive legal-tech subscriptions. As a law student engaged in legal aid, I often wonder whether without deliberate legislative effort, to ensure access to justice for everyone, AI will be able to help to level the playing field, or simply serve to reinforce the status quo?

Keeping Up with the Joneses

This is a call to teachers, not to students, to change their approach, not their attitudes. The future generation of Indian lawyers will be characterized by their understanding and critical analysis of the basics of AI tools, their ability to decipher the outputs of the tools rather than blindly believing them, and their knowledge of the ethical considerations involved in legal-tech usage. Rather than add these subject areas as an add-on to the law school curriculum, they need to be integrated.

Conclusion

In India, AI won't take the place of solicitors just yet. It is challenging the traditional ways of conducting legal research because it asks us to focus on judgement, ethics and strategy rather than simply researching. It is an honour, albeit somewhat daunting, to be a law student in the midst of such rapidly changing times. In addition to being knowledgeable about the law, future solicitors will have to be competent in the operation of machines that help them interpret the law.

 

(Write to the author at rajlakshmichutia2@gmail.com.)