Comment by dozerly
14 hours ago
Maybe we need a better-scaling legal system that does not take years to resolve simple disputes. I am not convinced AI can replace lawyers, but more people having access to the law without extremely costly fees does sound good to me.
Moving from an adversarial each-party-has-lawyers-presenting-as-extreme-a-case-as-possibly-can-be-made-for-their-side system to something more like expert arbitrators and independent/court fact-finders would avoid the 'bury them in paperwork and filings' lawyer-cost explosions.
Usually the concerns I've seen are around the lines of "the experts are gonna favor the powerful incumbents who they see a lot" buttttt if our system is already doing that AND costing way more anyway, barring entry entirely to many, is that so much worse? Even assuming we can't try to regulate that?
Such systems do exist in 'civil law' (vs common law) countries (which are most of them outside the English-speaking world).
Yes, although they don't really obviate the issues raised by GP (costs, length, complexity).
If anything, some of the largest civil law countries in Europe, like Germany and Italy, can arguably be considered worse than common law countries in all of these respects. Whether that's incidental or due to civil law, I cannot say.
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I'm not sure I understand what you are referring to here. The lack of a jury system, or no trial procedures? Both common law and 'civil law' has quite similar forensic expert and arbitration systems. One thing I can think of as a difference is that in civil law notary systems (and civil cases), you may request an out-of-court preliminary evidence taking. But you can have something similar in pre-trial discovery/disclosure in common law, at least in the UK (where you don't have jury system at all in civil cases).
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How is that different from the current system? Wouldn’t you just bury those fact-finders in paperwork? Or are you trying to shift the cost and responsibility of the discovery phase to the court instead? Would the court pass it through to the plaintiffs/defendants like the lawyers do or is it just covered by the state?
We have quite a few tribunals, ombudspeople, and other non court dispute resolution services in Canada.
Typically, the arbitrator is very well versed in the rules/area they are enforcing, and can see right through a snow job. In my province there is a tenancy tribunal that has to make a ruling before a court gets involved, and the courts rarely disagree with a decision made by the arbitrator in the 1% of cases that do get appealed. Because the rules are so clear, you can shovel piles of paperwork at them, and they will ignore it because they know what pieces of paper they actually need to make their decision.
It isn't for complex big money cases, but it means that courts have more time for those cases because they aren't dealing with ticky tacky minor disputes over damage deposits and fender benders.
Tenancy arbitration is just one of them, BTW. Just about every industry or agency has an outside ombudsperson that is the first step of dispute resolution before a court will be interested.
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With frontier models, I have found so many self contradicting points in Indian tax law that I would rather welcome a good AI helping to reduce discretionary powers of officers via highly subjective interpretations. This power asymmetry is basically the driver for a lot of developing world corruption.
I've been thinking about autoformalizing local laws using agents into TLA+ or something, but it's sufficiently past enough my actual skillset that I'm pretty sure I'd just end up wrestling with slop like a pig in the mud. It's a shame though, I consider law to be just kind of a shitty codebase, with natural language being tortured into cooperating, so it's a really natural fit.
I'll probably yield to my temptations eventually and proceed anyways. Lord help me from all the creative but completely detached interpretations I'll land on.
I did this for a few federal agencies, here a few examples
https://ice.dhs.dev/program/13732-human-trafficking-investig...
https://atf.doj.dev/program/44825-open-gun-store-need-ffl
LMK if you want to know more.
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AI doesn't give you a lawyer service without fees though. It makes you feel like you're getting a lawyer service, then you show up in court and say what the AI tells you to say and lose ten times your net worth because what the AI told you to say was legally nonsense.
The theoretical system can't be "court." I mean it literally can't. If the cost to file legal cases is actually low then there won't be enough judges to handle them.
The answer is in the article. There needs to be a financial mechanism to deter nuance complaints. A small penalty for lodging a complaint and losing.
This fee should help pay for the courts and reimburse and employer for time spent defending itself.
(With the judge / magistrate able to wave the fee on compassionate grounds)
That deters honest complaints from poor plaintiffs. The Economist may approve, but justice shouldn't depend on the relative finances and/or power and status of the opposing parties.
Of course it does, often. But that's a pathology, not a feature to be proud of.
It's true that some complaints are irrational, vindictive, or vexatious, but the system seems quite good at identifying those already.
> That deters honest complaints from poor plaintiffs.
If the complaint has a high probability of success then it has a low probability of making the plaintiff pay costs. If it has a low probability of success then isn't that what we're trying to deter?
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This is a thing, and in the context of the article too. In UK, if an employment tribunal finds you’ve wasted the tribunals time they can and do order costs paid for both the tribunal and other party. Odd they don’t mention it.
As with most such things, though, what is needed are escalating penalties. If you're a Joe Schmo who files a complaint that turns out to be invalid, no penalty for you. If you're a rich jerk who files a bunch of such complaints, a few million maybe. If you're a giant company that is using the legal system to push people around, $50 billion.
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In Germany, the losing party pays 3x the court costs. The only issue is that everyone gets paid - the lawyer, the court etc. The only person that doesn’t get paid for their time investment is the person who is suing.
But as far as I understand in many lawsuits both sides lose at least for some of their claims/counterclaims, at least in business law. So court sees it as both sides lost, who should pay 3x?
what about a "rich loser pays" rule? if the losing side can afford to pay the other sides fees without getting close to bankruptcy they have to do it, otherwise it reverts to each side paying for itself.
that would encourage lawsuits against the state and big corporations, and make it less worth it to sue small businesses or your own employees. thats common sense because bigger more powerful organizations tend to be more evil (as in breaking the law because they can afford to pay fines) and money is a good measure of power in capitalism.
I don’t see how that helps?
A lawyer isn’t going to sign on to take liability risk unless they spend quite a lot of time analyzing the AI’s outputs for possible blunders?
So it structurally can’t cost significantly less.
Lawyers normally don't have any liability risks, no? And reputational risks are very limited, a lawyer can always point to a judge, to the other lawyer, to circumstances, and away from their own (or the AI's output) blunder.
Layer can be disbarred. And judges do not accept "ai did it therefore I, the layer am not responsible for the false claim" as an excuse from layers.
Representing anyone in a court room by definition carries liability risks, because the judge can punish the lawyer unilaterally, but not the AI.