Justice at the limit – Using AI to combat staff shortages and mountains of cases
Is justice falling by the wayside? The justice system is groaning under the weight and volume of proceedings. AI should help.
(Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com)
The judiciary is groaning under the burden of unprocessed proceedings. According to evaluations by the Federal Statistical Office, 923,452 cases were still open nationwide at the end of 2023. So what can be done when case law remains buried under mountains of files on the road to justice because authorities are overloaded? "We will have to consider whether we actually need human intelligence in certain proceedings," Berlin Attorney General Margarete Koppers told dpa at the beginning of the year. The federal and state governments have been working for some time on a plan to make processes within the justice system more efficient through the use of AI.
"Law in upheaval – AI as a game changer?" is a question not only asked by the EDV-Gerichtstag, whose event was held under this title in September. AI is indeed gaining ground in the justice system. We take a look at how the "AI version" is being put into practice.
It won't work without digitalization
Although the public prosecutor's offices in Germany will have completed more than 5.5 million cases in 2023, the mountain of unfinished cases will continue to grow – by 25% from 2021 to 2023 alone. Justice is suffocating in the masses, pleadings are getting longer, files thicker and shelves fuller. The more dust settles on individual cases, the better for the perpetrator(s). Instead of bringing charges, the judiciary is dropping more and more cases. "The prosecution rate has fallen nationwide because we no longer have the resources to prosecute all crimes equally," states Attorney General Koppers. And the longer a case takes, the more of a discount there is later when a conviction is handed down in court, as delays in proceedings must be taken into account when sentencing according to the Federal Court of Justice. The state cannot justify excessively long proceedings with circumstances that lie within its sphere of responsibility. A strained personnel situation and the resulting overload do not count.
It is not only the number of mass proceedings and extensive proceedings that is growing. The applicable law is also becoming ever more extensive; legal texts are becoming more complicated due to chains of references. Many a judge wonders who is supposed to read all this in the short time available. AI-supported judge assistance systems can help here. "Review 1,000 pages in 1 second" – A human judge can't do that, but with the help of "Codefy", users will be able to "master such complex procedures" and "no longer overlook anything", the manufacturer promises.
A study by the Legal Tech Association sees a "large, heterogeneous and growing market" in Germany. Not only lawyers and law firms have discovered the benefits of "legal tech", the state also wants to use "justice tech". Anyone who has ever seen judges and public prosecutors in court rummaging through a moving box full of files searching for a statement in a document, while the lawyer calmly opens his laptop to find what he is looking for in a matter of seconds, can understand the desire for a technological "equality of arms".
In addition to the growing number of cases, the judiciary is also struggling with another problem: the shortage of specialists. By 2030, more than 25% of all judges will retire, according to a study on the future of digital justice in 2022, which found that Germany is 10 to 15 years behind other countries when it comes to the digitalization of the justice system. Other countries "have probably set the strategic course and made efforts to digitalize the justice system much earlier", according to the Bundestag's Scientific Service one year later in its status report on the digitalization of the justice system.
Justice tech: the implementation of a vision
It is not only the CDU that wants to comprehensively anchor AI in the judiciary and administration. The federal government also wants to make the justice system more efficient and modern through digitalization and the use of AI. The federal government is making up to 200 million euros available for the digitalization initiative and in particular for "artificial intelligence projects" for the judiciary by 2026.
The federal states must "tackle digitalization projects together and join forces", demanded Lower Saxony's Minister of Justice Dr Kathrin Wahlmann at the most recent conference of justice ministers. This could prevent the "emergence of a nationwide patchwork of different digitalization solutions". Since November 2023, there has already been a joint "AI vision of the justice system" for the federal and state governments, which is available online at heise and will soon also be published on the justice portal www.justiz.de.
An AI strategy is to follow in spring 2025, which is currently still being finalized in federal and state committees - this was announced by First Public Prosecutor Aniello Ambrosio, press spokesman for the Baden-WĂĽrttemberg Ministry of Justice and Migration, at the request of heise online. Baden-WĂĽrttemberg is responsible for project coordination of the AI strategy, the AI platform and other AI projects in the justice system as part of the cooperation between the federal and state governments. According to its digital strategy, the federal government wants to develop "innovative services" for the justice system or support the federal states in their development.
