Federal Judiciary Task Force Prepares Several Recommendations On Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Courts

 

A federal judiciary task force has made dozens of recommendations about courts’ use of artificial intelligence, the group’s leader said.

 

Judge Sidney Thomas of the Ninth Circuit, who chairs the judiciary’s AI task force, said the group may issue final guidance by as soon as the end of this year on what courts might want to do to address use of the platforms.

 

He said interim guidance that the group issued last year addresses judges’ use of the tools, by making it clear that the platforms can’t be used for “core functions” like deciding cases. But Thomas said AI seems to be most effective in handling administrative tasks in the courts.

 

“Publicly, I think people have focused on the use in chambers, but actually I think the more important and significant use may be in court operations,” Thomas said during a federal judiciary press briefing Thursday.

 

Some court clerks last year have experimented using AI for their administrative tasks, Bloomberg Law reported. Some courts have publicly rolled out use of AI for some functions: The Fifth Circuit, for example, offers the use of AI to help attorneys properly file documents.

 

The federal judiciary described the AI task force’s interim guidance last year after a pair of judges acknowledged that the tools were used by their staff, resulting in fake or incorrect case citations.

 

Thursday’s press briefing took place after the biannual meeting of the Judicial Conference, the courts’ policy-making body. That group heard a presentation about the AI task force at its meeting, held at the US Supreme Court.

 

Thomas told reporters that the task force is solely an advisory body, and its recommendations will have to be considered by other judiciary committees in order to be formally implemented.

 

Courts have also been facing AI-generated content from attorneys and self-represented litigants, with judges issuing discipline in some cases.

 

Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who chairs the Judicial Conference’s Executive Committee, said AI use by litigants is an issue that may be addressed by potential changes to the courts’ procedural rules.

 

The Administrative Office of the US Courts also said it will start rolling out this year a new case management system for court documents, after repeated hacks targeted the current infrastructure for hosting filings. Bloomberg Law reported last year that hackers targeted sensitive, sealed court documents, using the same vulnerabilities that were exploited in a previous breach.

 

All new district court cases will be in the new case management system by the end of next year, according to the judiciary’s press release, and appellate and bankruptcy courts will then adopt it.

 

Judge Robert J. Conrad, director of the AO, said at the press briefing that the changes will take place on the back-end of the courts’ websites, and users will see “little to no difference in the way that system is accessed.”

 

 

“We can offer litigants, cooperating witnesses in criminal cases, businesses with trade secrets, the confidence they deserve with their case is tried in federal court,” Conrad said.