Geoffrey Vos, the retiring head of civil justice in England and Wales, is urging courts to debate whether AI could help decide some lower-stakes civil disputes. Current guidance advises judges to keep AI use largely to administrative work. Vos says he uses Microsoft Copilot to locate and summarize documents, but not to write judgments.
After visiting a court in Shenzhen where judges receive extensive AI assistance, Vos argued that personal-injury claims and low-value professional-negligence cases might eventually be handled more quickly and cheaply with automation. He drew a boundary around complicated commercial disputes and sensitive family matters, which he said may continue to require human judgment. He also stressed that courts would need broad public agreement and transparent rules to preserve confidence.
The risks are already visible. Lawyers have submitted hallucinated case citations, one UK practitioner lost a license partly over misuse of the technology, and chatbot-assisted litigants are filing more claims without reliable data on their legal quality. Vos said county-court filings are rising about 10% a year, though that does not show AI caused the increase. His proposal is an argument for cautious trials and debate, not an adopted policy allowing chatbots to decide cases.