Digital Transformation of Legal Services and Access to Justice: Challenges and Possibilities

Abstract

The pandemic affected the access to justice situation in terms of the never rapid shift to digitalisation of legal services, and in this article, we evaluate whether artificial intelligence (AI) and its state-of-the-art technologies like machine learning and human language technologies have the potential to improve access to legal services. For this purpose, we not only examine and identify problematic areas, but also share the empirical data and insights of the practical application of AI technologies, especially human language technologies. In the first part of the article, we explore how the internet has created the foundations for a new paradigm of society including institution law. The second part of the article is devoted for analysis of challenges for access to justice in post pandemic world. In the third part, we elaborate on questions about technical feasibility, legal and moral acceptability of the digitalisation of legal services. Then follows the case analysis of the practical application of human language technologies in legal domain.

Keywords

• digitalisation
• access to justice
• human rights
• legal services
• artificial intelligence
• human language technologies
• legal language