NYC Bar AI Task Force Tackles Access to Justice, Tech in Courts

The New York City Bar Association wants to be at the forefront as artificial intelligence takes hold in the legal community with its newly launched AI task force.

AI holds both “great promise and great peril” for the legal community, New York City Bar Association President Muhammad Faridi said in a press statement Monday. Organizations like the bar association must, he said, facilitate discussions about appropriate use of AI in legal services and administration of justice.

The Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies has 58 members from across the country —not just New York City—that include judges, court personnel, New York government officials, attorneys, and representatives from corporations like Merck & Co. Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. As they plan to tackle issues like AI’s role in access to justice, legal ethics, and use of the technology in courts, task force leaders hope their recommendations will be used by courts and attorneys beyond New York.

“If we were to take an approach where we focus specifically on New York and people located in New York, we don’t believe we’d have ability to see the forest,” said Jerome Walker of Jerome Walker PLLC, who co-chairs the task force alongside Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP Partner Lorraine McGowen and White & Case Partner Edward So.

Within the year, the task force’s subcommittees will start producing podcasts, seminars, and reports and making various recommendations to stakeholders, Walker said.

AI in the Courts

A number of current and former federal judges have joined the task force, including Judge Xavier Rodriguez of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas and retired District of Maryland Judge Paul Grimm.

Grimm, Rodriguez and others will initially focus on the use of AI in state, local, and federal courts, including use by litigants and court administration. The subcommittee will also focus on specialized technology courts, such as AI courts and robo judges, and alternative dispute resolution.

The group will work on creating practical recommendations and contributions, not guidelines that “sit on a shelf and gather dust,” said Harut Minasian, an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, who co-chairs this subcommittee along with Baker McKenzie Partner David Zaslowsky.

Minasian said he envisions the panel creating model rules around how courts and self-represented parties can use AI.

AI and Access to Justice

The issue of whether nonprofits and solo practitioners will be able to access AI tools to the same degree as Big Law is an important area of focus, said task force co-chair McGowen. “These are the types of issues that we need to start thinking about now and addressing,” she added.

Those issues, as well as the potential for AI to exacerbate existing disparities in access to justice, will be addressed by the Subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence and Access to Justice. The subcommittee will focus its recommendations on risks and potential guardrails of AI, said subcommittee co-chair McGregor Smyth, executive director of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.

It’s significant that the bar has created a subcommittee entirely focused on access to justice, said Abbe Gluck, a professor at Yale Law School and Medical School, who co-chairs the panel with Smyth.

Now is the time, Gluck said, to focus on the effects of AI on unrepresented and underrepresented litigants, who oftentimes aren’t included in these kinds of conversations at the outset of technological change.

The group’s focus on and the bar association’s dedication of resources to access to justice issues, Gluck said, show it isn’t “just an afterthought or one component of a larger report of the legal system.”