Barristers’ professional standards are robust enough for AI use, Bar Council says

The Bar Council has published its response to the Civil Justice Council's (CJC) consultation on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) when preparing court documents.

Last November the Bar Council updated its well-received guidance to barristers on the responsible use of generative AI, and underlining the risk of potential 'hallucinations' - plausible but entirely false information - created by the software.

We agreed with many of the CJC's suggestions, including that there is no need to add new court rules concerning the use of AI by legal professionals when writing documents like statements of case or skeleton arguments.

Lawrence Akka KC, Chair of the Bar Council's IT Panel, said: "Barristers are already regulated by the Bar Standards Board (BSB), meaning they must follow its code of conduct. This includes the important duties not to mislead the court, and to act with honesty and integrity. Material produced by AI must therefore be carefully checked for accuracy and completeness.

"Within that framework, the Bar Council encourages the responsible use of modern technologies to help provide access to justice and to assist with the administration of justice."

However, we believe witnesses should not be able to generate, alter, embellish or rephrase their statements using AI. That would be inconsistent with the courts' requirement that witness statements are written in the witness' own words, and they are not asked leading questions.

Many AI tools involve text enhancement or make suggestions about the text, meaning an AI-assisted statement may not be written in the witness's own words, or could reach conclusions they might not have come up with themselves.

We therefore agree with the CJC that a rule should be introduced, requiring witnesses to sign a declaration that AI has not been used to generate their statement.

Our CJC response comes as the Ministry of Justice announces a new study to explore how AI might be used to produce faster, cheaper court transcripts to improve access to justice for victims of crime.

Improved access to justice is of course welcome, but the Bar Council is concerned to ensure that the study considers the key importance of accuracy across the whole range of languages involved, including those where less training material is available.

It is also important to ensure that there is no use of confidential or restricted information for machine training purposes. This includes the identity of rape victims, who have the right to lifelong anonymity, and the identities of children involved in court cases, who are automatically granted anonymity until their 18th birthday at least.

Read our full CJC AI consultation response.

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