TL;DR
Chatbots built to please their users are misleading unrepresented people in the family courts, digital justice specialist Dr Natalie Byrom argues in new work for the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, covered by the Law Gazette on 4 November. She also says the justice system’s growing reliance on overseas AI suppliers is a choice ministers can reverse. For UK lawyers, this moves the debate past fake citations and on to who controls court technology.
The family court problem
Generative tools can tell a litigant what they want to hear, and the report links that to overstated confidence in going to court, a trend the Gazette describes as “vibe lawyering”. In family disputes the stakes are higher, because the same tools “may affirm and enflame vexatious litigants and domestic abusers” while helping them produce plausible paperwork in volume.
Better alternatives are thin on the ground. LawtechUK’s tracker lists eight family law providers, and only one, by the report’s reading, might count as pre-court online dispute resolution. Practitioners report something similar from another angle: the Family Mediation Council said on 2 November that separating couples are increasingly turning to chatbots, although the council is also promoting its own register of mediators.
Delegation by default
The wider argument concerns the state’s role. According to the report summary, financial pressure, trouble with court reform and fast-moving generative AI pushed government towards private providers, with regulation failing to keep up. Judges have been given a locked-down Microsoft Copilot, yet the public knows little about what made it safe to adopt, how it is monitored or how a litigant could challenge it.
Byrom wants the Ministry of Justice and HM Courts & Tribunals Service to assess lock-in and sovereignty risks before buying, to build in-house capability, and to reduce reliance on a handful of foreign developers. The 26 recommendations stop short of rejecting technology. The paper says it is “not an argument against digital or AI-mediated justice, or against private-sector involvement”.
It lands soon after the Civil Justice Council’s final report on AI in court documents. In our view, the two are complementary: that one addresses what parties may file, while Byrom asks who owns the systems behind the process.
Looking Forward
The Gazette notes the timing: Sir Colin Birss, described as an AI champion, became Master of the Rolls in the week of publication. Whether the senior judiciary engages with criticism of its Copilot choice will be an early test. Family courts, the report says, must quickly learn to tell weaponised litigation from genuine high-conflict cases, and that capacity will need funding and training that have yet to be specified.