Giving a speech on legal professional privilege to the City of London Law Society last week, Sir Colin said anonymisation was a particular issue in family law, although not limited to that area.
‘The way this works is that the judge prepares their reserved judgment in the normal way,’ he said.
‘The AI is then used as a tool to help the judge produce an anonymised version, by making suggestions. The judge can use them or not, and of course it is the judge who is responsible for the final version.
‘However the tool has been found to be valuable and, in particular, some judges have commented that the AI has identified pieces of information as candidates for anonymisation, which are not the obvious things to redact (like the names and so on). The AI identified information combinations which might risk a kind of jigsaw identification of the individuals concerned.’
He said he personally used AI to ‘identify internal inconsistencies’ in his judgments as well as for admin work, revealing ‘I don’t always agree with the AI but it has been helpful and I have clarified wording in draft judgments as a result’.
He has also been working with HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) and the Ministry of Justice on using AI as an in-house transcription tool.
‘This is very exciting and has potential to make a big difference in all our courts and tribunals,’ he said.
Sir Colin said the judiciary now has two secure AI systems, a version of Microsoft Copilot that is available to all judges and a system based on in-house development by HMCTS and the Ministry of Justice.
