'Robots will replace lawyers in court' says head of Serious Fraud Office

The director of the SFO has said robots will soon replace human lawyers
SFO

Artificial intelligence will soon be used routinely instead of lawyers to prepare criminal cases, one of Britain’s top prosecutors said today.

David Green, director of the Serious Fraud Office, predicted that it would become “the norm” within years for algorithms to examine evidence — because they are more reliable, faster and cheaper than humans.

He said the change was a “no-brainer” and could reduce the cost of preparing for trials by up to 90 per cent.

In an interview with the Standard, Mr Green also warned that consumers are facing higher credit card bills because “everyday” fraud is being “under-policed”.

He questioned whether it was right for banks to “take fraud in their stride” on many occasions.

On the question of artificial intelligence, Mr Green said the technology was used by the SFO to scan 30 million documents in its investigation into Rolls-Royce over bribery in overseas markets.

“In a few years’ time I can imagine the courts expressing themselves in favour of wider use of this kind of artificial intelligence,” he said.

“Normally we would use large numbers of barristers hired in for short term to go through the documents one by one.

"But in the Rolls–Royce case we noticed two things — one that it took about a tenth of the time and two it was shown to be more reliable, because computers don’t get bored, they don’t get distracted, and the algorithm that drives the AI actually learns as it goes along, as it makes its decisions.

“It’s done fairly routinely in civil cases, but if you imagine it being applied to finding things of relevance in a criminal investigation you could get through very large amounts of information.”

Mr Green said AI could also be used in relation to disclosure, where prosecutors are obliged to make certain material available to the defence:

“It would require defence consent or permission from the court, but I can imagine that not being far away. Why not? It’s a no-brainer really.”

He added: “Very often, a complex case is about to start and there will suddenly be a blizzard of disclosure applications from the defence.

"Those last-minute requests can cause delay and trials being put back. So if you can have a reliable and speedier mechanism built into the disclosure process early on that would be extremely good. That’s something I can see being the norm in crime in 10 years.”

SFO figures from the Rolls-Royce case show that 600,000 documents a day could be processed by AI, compared with about 300 by a lawyer.

Mr Green leaves the SFO next April after six years in charge. He said that the organisation was achieving results, including “deferred prosecution agreements” with Rolls-Royce and Tesco, which agreed to pay fines of £497 million and £129 million respectively.

But he warned that lower-level fraud, which is the responsibility of the police and the National Crime Agency, was costing the public “huge” sums.

He said: “Banks often take fraud in their stride. Can that be right? There is a significant area of fraud that is under-policed.”