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. […]
No comments:
Post a Comment