https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/commentary-and-opinion/are-we-ready-for-ai-translators-in-the-legal-industry/5122114.article
23 January 2025 by Rowena Rix
Are we ready for AI
translators in the legal industry?
Interpreters
bring an incredible skill to the legal profession. They perform many roles,
from precisely translating documents for certification to simultaneously
translating phone calls, conference presentations and court proceedings.
In
courtroom settings, the ability of speech-to-speech interpreters to impartially
and accurately express both counsel's questions and witness responses is both
an essential and an immense responsibility.
Today,
artificial intelligence (AI) powered audio transcription and translation tools
are beginning to be introduced into the legal industry, as an alternative to
human interpreters.
The
incentives for using this type of technology in law largely centre on
productivity gains. AI translators remove the often time-consuming need to
find, vet and brief interpreters.
Immediate
translation at the push of a button allows lawyers to advise clients in real
time – which is especially valuable in time-pressured situations, such as
injunctive proceedings.
And,
of course, while good quality legal translation tools and LLM-based products
are not cheap, in the long-run they are likely to be more cost-effective than
human interpreters, especially for long-running cases.
There
are also wider ethical benefits, such as improving access to justice for people
who find themselves involved in legal proceedings in jurisdictions where they
do not speak the language, and cannot find or afford an interpreter.
What are the concerns?
Despite its many apparent advantages, to date, there has been some
nervousness about introducing AI translation tools into legal proceedings.
Clients, witnesses and even lawyers themselves are not always fully
comfortable with machines being part of sensitive conversations.
Lawyer-client relationships are built on trust, and historically the
exchange of person-to-person legally privileged information has been highly
secure and reliable, even when this information is transferred through the
medium of a human interpreter. Precision and accuracy of language is also
central to legal process.
Putting aside the fear of change that often dogs attempts to modernise
the legal profession, this anxiety about AI translation is partly due to
justifiable confidentiality concerns about how recorded information will be
safely stored and used, as well as questions about liability for mistakes or
the leakage of sensitive data. […]
