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This legal article/report forms part of my ongoing legal commentary on the use of artificial intelligence within the justice system. It supports my work in teaching, lecturing, and writing about AI and the law and is published to promote my practice. Not legal advice. Not Direct/Public Access. All instructions via clerks at Doughty Street Chambers. This legal article concerns AI Law.
Introduction
I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at Thursday’s Legal AI Webinar pilot webinar, where our panel of lawyers will discuss the growing impact of artificial intelligence across the legal profession. If you still wish to sign up there are spaces and the link is here:
Alongside introducing the panel, this post also highlights seven key takeaways from the Master of the Rolls’ recent speech, which challenges us to consider how far AI should go in shaping the future of law and justice.
The Panel
I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone at Thursday’s pilot legal AI webinar. I’m a little disappointed that the timing doesn’t work for everyone, but I’ll make sure the next one is planned with more notice and at a time that suits all jurisdictions.
I’m very pleased to announce the following panel members, who bring a broad range of experience across numerous areas of law each has a unique perspective on the impact of artificial intelligence in those areas:
Manjinder Kaur Atwal is a Solicitor and Director of Housing and Property Litigation at Duncan Lewis Solicitors Limited. Manjinder’s team has been focused on how Artificial Intelligence is being used in public law decisions, especially in council homelessness decision-making and she has a unique perspective of how AI may impact Legal Aid.
Tara Taubman-Bassirian is a French based lawyer in the UK. A privacy advocate and legal expert based in data protection, privacy, intellectual property, and internet law. With a background in French corporate law and a Master’s in Computers and Telecommunications Law from QMUL, she has focused her career on the legal challenges arising from new technologies, connectivity, and digital communications. A recognised authority on GDPR and international privacy frameworks, she was voted Privacy Hero in 2018 and has contributed to leading initiatives including ENISA, ICANN’s Noncommercial Users Constituency, and ISACA. She has co-authored research on mobile security and privacy risks, spoken at major conferences such as FOSI, and continues to consult, research, and write on the evolving intersection between law, technology, and human rights.
Baljinder Bath is a Barrister at 4pb Chambers. She is an experienced children law specialist with a strong reputation for handling complex and high-profile cases. She has a particular interest in artificial intelligence and is currently completing an MSt at the University of Cambridge in AI, Ethics, and Society. She was recently involved in an AI panel at the High Court of Chandigarh, discussing how AI is shaping global legal practice, as part of the Bar Council of England and Wales’ UK delegation to India.
Karlia Lykourgou is a Barrister at Doughty Street Chambers who specialises in Criminal Law, Crime-related Public Law, Professional Discipline and Regulation. Karlia has an interest in the evolving issues around AI technologies and the legal system in particular. She is the founder of the Perinatal Legal Project and Ivy & Normanton legal outfitters.
Other Contribution and Attendees
Due to the high level of interest and number of sign-ups, there will be a significant online audience. This means that only panellists will be able to speak and contribute directly to the discussion. However, I hope those attending will still take part by submitting written questions and engaging with the issues raised. If you would like to speak and be part of the panel, please let me know in advance, and we may be able to accommodate you.
The Topics
There are many issues the panellists are keen to discuss, many of which are regularly explored on this blog. Expect a discussion on AI hallucinations, chatbot harm, and AI’s role in legal practice and judicial decision-making. I also hope to focus on some of the key points below from a speech given by Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales on 15 October 2025 at the Legal Geek Conference titled “What a difference a year makes“.
7 Key Takeaways from Recent Speech by the Master of the Rolls
The full text of Sir Geoffrey Vos’s speech can be read here. In that Speech, the Master of the Rolls made several important observations, which I will set out below.
1. Changing Attitudes Among Lawyers
Only a year ago, many lawyers were sceptical of AI’s value to their work. Now, as Sir Geoffrey Vos noted, enthusiasm has taken hold:
“Last year, lawyers were generally in denial about the value of AI to their treasured profession. Now, they are piling into using Harvey, Legora, ChatGPT 5, CoPilot, Claude and Gemini and everything else they can find for every purpose under the sun.”
2. AI as both tool and Risk
Sir Geoffrey Vos emphasised that AI remains a tool, capable of great usefulness in the right hands
“…but, just like a chain saw, a helicopter or a slicing machine, in the right hands it can be very useful, and in the wrong hands, it can be super- dangerous…”
3. Three Practical Rules for Legal AI use
There are three core rules which .”..are not rocket-science”:
1. Understand how an LLM works before relying on it;
2. Never input confidential or private data into a public LLM; and
3. Always verify AI-generated content before using it for any purpose.
4. On the Proper Use of AI
So what should AI be used for? Can it be used to generate legal advice for lawyers and judgments for judges?
“…Yes, of course it can. But the big question of our age is about what it should be used for. I see no reason why AI should not be used to draft contracts and to research legal questions. Lawyers and clients should always check what it has done carefully before using it, but that is a different issue…”
5. Judicial Decision-Making and AI
Turning to the judiciary, Sir Geoffrey asked whether society might one day accept machine-made judicial decisions:
“The answer to that question is truly difficult and potentially troubling for a whole host of reasons. The answer is not obvious, because nobody can really tell me why AI should not be used to assess, for example, personal injury damages by reference to the numerous authorities found in the textbooks. That task would take an AI a couple of minutes, whilst the wait for a judicial hearing and determination might be more like two years. Having acknowledged, then, that there may be some judicial decisions that people might really want to be made by machines, why should we baulk at allowing that to happen?”
Sir Geoffrey Vos suggests three reasons:
1. Judicial decisions are the last resort for everyone in our society: “…If the decision is wrong, at least after an appeal, nothing can be done about it in most cases – Parliament is unlikely to change the law to reverse a run-of-the-mill AI-generated judicial decision made by a machine as to personal injury damages…”
2. Machines, even considering AGI, will arguably never be able completely satisfactorily to mimic a human’s emotion, idiosyncracy, empathy and insight.
3. The decision will be something generated from the state of intelligence at a given point in time, without the application of developing human thought: “…That may be fine for a while, but where will it leave us in generations to come? There is a potential problem if we, as humans, become unable to second guess or even check what the machine is suggesting or deciding. In that situation, it might be very difficult for human thought processes to influence the law of the future in the way that many people might think remained appropriate.”
6. The Need for Debate Now
Sir Geoffrey Vos called for a serious debate now, “before it is too late”. He urged reflection on two urgent questions:
- What human rights should exist in the age of increasingly capable AI?
- What decisions should remain in human hands?
He identified the first question as probably one of the most critical present day legal questions:
“…It is whether a machine-made decision can ever be properly regarded as having been made by an “independent and impartial tribunal established by law” for the purposes of article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Some think so, but many more think not.”
and expanded on the second question:
“…What do we, as humans, want human judges rather than machines, to decide in the future? What do we, as a society, want machines to decide about our lives in preference to human judges, and ought we to have a choice. Ought a criminal, before being sentenced, be able to say that they want to be sentenced by a machine rather than a human or vice versa? In China, judges already routinely use AI in that process. Do we want judges to feed the facts of our cases into an AI tool, to see what an AI tool, or even a range of AI tools, think the answer should be? Or would we rather stick with the grumpy old judge – or even – the vibrant young judge – whose experiences may differ one from another, and whose idiosyncrasies we cannot predict, and only the Court of Appeal can correct.”
7. Looking Ahead
Sir Geoffrey Vos finished asking everyone to think carefully about these questions. He then introduced the International Jurisdiction Taskforce, which is exploring how to align private law frameworks across jurisdictions to support digital asset transactions on chain without legal conflict.
Comment
Sir Geoffrey Vos has urged that we begin this debate “before it’s too late,” and I share that sense of urgency. These questions cannot wait. My aim, through these legal articles, is to help move that discussion forward in a constructive way. I’ll be exploring each of his seven key points during the upcoming legal AI webinar with the panel, and afterwards, I plan to publish a full article reflecting on the discussion, bringing together the key insights, concerns, and next steps needed to address these pressing international issues.
In the meantime, if you have not already, you might like to explore my legal trackers that collect authoritative and thoughtful commentary on how AI may replace or reshape the roles of lawyers and judges. Both trackers are still in development, and I welcome your views and suggestions as the work evolves.
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