Transforming access to justice through technology

Argyri Panezi remembers the glory days of the internet when technology was seen as a way to make life better.

She graduated from law school in 2009, at the same time that cloud computing and e-discovery were gaining traction in the legal world. By the time she started teaching at Stanford University in 2018, her optimism was starting to wane as privacy, cybersecurity, and the need for more regulation became bigger issues.

“The early cyber-libertarian days of tech are over,” Panezi says.

“John Perry Barrow wrote about how cyberspace would be this out-of-law utopia. We don’t really think the Internet is like this or even should be.”

Panezi is now home in Fredericton and running the new University of New Brunswick Legal Innovation Lab. The lab’s first major project will be creating an algorithm to file uncontested divorces electronically. It’s part of a long-term partnership with New Brunswick’s courts to shape and modernize the justice system and give guidance on how to incorporate artificial intelligence.

“The lab’s mission is to look at law, tech and access to justice,” Panezi says.

“There are important issues to be studied around digitization, especially digital transformation in the justice sector, privacy and cybersecurity. These are sensitive sectors and understudied when it comes to courts, especially in Atlantic Canada. The legal profession is also transforming, and we are studying this transformation.”

The lab was established in 2023 through funding from the Canada Research Council, the provincial government, and a grant from the CBA Future of the Law fund.

The same year, Panezi became the Canada Research Chair in Digital Information Law and Policy and began teaching law courses about AI and cybersecurity.

Students and staff are building the family law program from scratch, creating a front end for users to upload documents and a system that integrates with the court system to receive documents. The UNB Legal Clinic, which opened in 2022, will begin using the program this fall to help clients file court documents. The goal is to help people representing themselves and others who cannot afford legal services.

Originally, Panezi wanted to do more, but that changed once she met with court administration.

“They have limitations,” she says.

For example, the court cannot effectively communicate electronically with people or their lawyers without a robust electronic filing system, which allows all parties to access court documents.

There’s also training for court staff and judges to think about, as well as maintenance for digital tools.

“With our e-justice projects, we were initially very ambitious. We quickly understood we needed to take things one step at a time. Change is not easy and should not be rushed,” Panezi says.

Because New Brunswick is bilingual, she and her team will explore how AI can be used for translation in courts. AI and translation are not new, with popular tools like Google Translate existing for decades. What is new is the prevalence and better accuracy of these tools, which could help the courts be more efficient and increase capacity. Panezi says the challenge is finding the right balance between machine translation and the need to have more translation services in the court system.

“It’s not as straightforward as it might sound and calls for a serious discussion,” she says.

“There can be mistakes or misinterpretations that will affect people’s lives, but we have a shortage of translators. We need to have important debates about the needs of other language groups, especially speakers of Indigenous languages. This is not just a tech issue, but a multifaceted and human issue.”

Although she never considered working with technology until now, third-year law student Laura Rourke will examine when translation services should be used. She completed a degree in law and society at York University in 2022, and, having joined the lab, wants to focus her career on intellectual property and AI. She’s currently working on a paper on the issues surrounding legal translation and AI.

“There is a risk with using machine translation in cases where there are vulnerable people,” Rourke says, noting refugees, in particular, are at high risk given the significant impact an incorrect translation could have on their lives.

Students at the lab spend a year researching a topic. Jacob Powning is heading into his third year of law school and looking at how liability is assigned in copyright infringement involving AI.

For instance, if a user enters a prompt that generates a response and the response contains copyrighted material, who is at fault for the copyright infringement? If an AI provider didn’t know the copyrighted material existed in the training data, who is at fault for the copyright infringement? Is it even possible for an AI provider to not realize it has copyright material in its training data?

Powning is drawn to AI, but as a craftsman and former illustrator, he is critical of how it is being used.

“The idea of having machines with creative capacity is useful but also very dangerous,” he says.

“Art is how we imagine the future. We have to think about how we’re going to use this technology.”

Kyle Cullen came to law school wanting to see how lawyers use AI. Having heard about how AI was breaking the law, the second-year law student wanted to see for himself and is now working on a research paper about cybersecurity.

“I love looking at tech from different angles,” he says.

“There’s a lot of issues around digital sovereignty and how to protect people’s privacy.”

The lab is in a good spot to work with leading tech leaders. The Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity is based at UNB, along with the Quantum Sensing and Ultracold Matter Lab. Quantum computing is seen as the next frontier in internet technology. Panezi’s goal is to bring more experts into the conversation of technology and access to justice. Later this month, the lab will host its second annual access to justice summit.

So, while it waned at one point, Panezi’s hope in technology is still there.

“There are serious challenges we need to tackle today, especially with AI, but I am optimistic,” she says.

“There are lots of brilliant people, civil society members and scholars working towards addressing the challenges. It’s fascinating.”