TL;DR
A serving judge, Kaly Kaul KC, has urged peers to consider turning the NHS’s AI self-help tools into a secure support service for jurors. She pitched it as a low-cost first step ahead of helplines and counselling. It marks a shift in tone: AI proposed by the judiciary as a welfare tool inside the jury system, rather than a hazard to be warned about.
The proposal
Kaul was giving evidence to the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, which is examining how jurors are looked after. She appeared as a representative of judges organised within the GMB union.
Her model is a protected web page that each juror enters with the number the court already assigns them. An AI assistant would begin by explaining what jury service involves. Once the trial ended, it would become the entry point to further help, potentially followed by a phone line and counselling. “I think we should use more of AI,” she said, and suggested the cost would be modest.
Baroness Bertin asked whether such arrangements could undermine random selection, with people ending up on trials for the wrong reasons. Kaul rejected that, saying that across ten trials in which she had warned jurors about distressing material, she would expect one person to come forward.
How thin current support is
Other witnesses painted a sparse picture. The Criminal Bar Association’s vice-chair, Kama Melly KC, said jurors needing help are generally told to see their GP or ring the Samaritans, and argued for something more specialist. Kaul separately backed relaxing the blanket ban on jurors discussing deliberations, so accredited counsellors and researchers could hear what happened in the jury room.
Looking forward
The appeal is clear: the tools already exist and the committee’s inquiry reflects real concern about juror welfare. The detail, though, is missing. Kaul did not name the NHS product she had in mind, and a juror-facing assistant would sit right next to the material courts protect most carefully. Any build would need to stop the chatbot becoming a place to talk about a live case.
It also extends a pattern. Ministers already plan to pilot AI legal assistants in crown courts, though that scheme targets the case backlog rather than the twelve people deciding the verdict.