Are You Ready For Internet Courts?

"[I]f we are to stand any chance of clearing the backlogs around the world and are serious about access to justice, we will need to look beyond human beings assembling in hearing rooms." - Richard Susskind

 

There's been a lot of talk lately about online courts. They can take many forms, but the basic idea is that everyone avoids trekking down to the courthouse and instead attends hearings virtually. The more robust versions are asynchronous: Evidence and arguments are submitted by a deadline and judges render decisions on their own schedules. Many predict that soon AI platforms will handle some small matters with just a little human oversight.

If this sounds like hype: China's "internet courts" have now litigated cases for more than a million people. Think about that. How much strain would a system like that take off the federal and state judiciary?

Richard Susskind has a new book out on this topic and an excellent post dishing up the takeaways. According to Susskind:

"If you plan to be a litigator, you should know that most disputes in the future will be resolved in online courts rather than in physical hearings."

It's hard to argue with him. Setting aside that he's been right about this stuff before--online courts make sense, right? There's a lot of waste in the brick and mortar model. Like much of the AI hype, I'm skeptical about whether we'll be using AI judges anytime soon. But online dispute resolution seems nearly inevitable. And if some of the small tasks can be handled by more sophisticated programs--why not? 

On the skills side, the rise of internet courts will matter. If nothing else, writing will become even more important to lawyering (and given that writing is already much of the game, that's saying something). 

How would you litigate a case differently if you knew: 

• You would never meet the judge in person; 
• Your writing would be all that your decisionmaker ever sees of you; 
• You would never have the chance to verbally explain the evidence; 
• Whether you passed certain case hurdles might be decided by an automated program; 
• The decisionmaker would see all of your arguments and evidence on a screen; 
• The decisionmaker would never see your client in person; and
• Lots of other things I'm not thinking of. 

Joe Regalia is a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law and regularly leads workshops training legal writing and technology. The views he expresses here are solely his own and not intended to be legal advice. Check out his other articles and writing tips here.