The country is launching a project to develop an assistance program for structuring files in the justice system. The program is intended to use artificial intelligence to help judges understand the concerns of the parties to the proceedings more quickly.
Nowadays, court files often contain several hundred or even a thousand pages. Judges must fully understand the content of the documents in order to understand the parties’ concerns. They therefore invest a lot of time in reading and preparing the case files.
With the AKIRA project (“General Artificial Intelligence (AI) Judge Assistance”), the Ministry of Justice and Migration of Baden-Württemberg is researching how the summary of content and legal pre-structuring of the procedural material can be supported by AI. Digital preparatory work should enable judges to record file contents more quickly, correctly and completely. This allows them to concentrate more on managing the proceedings, the legal assessment of the file contents and personal interaction with the parties. The focus of the project is initially on social jurisdiction.
Prepare and pre-structure highly complex file contents
Ministerial Director Elmar Steinbacher said: “The AKIRA project is based on the vision of developing an AI assistant that can prepare and pre-structure even highly complex file contents. This enables members of the judiciary to have quick and precise initial access to the facts and status of the dispute. Judges of all jurisdictions should be able to use this, not only in Baden-Württemberg, but in the judiciary throughout Germany. With the AKIRA project, we are working together with our colleagues from the Social Court Ulm a first draft that will show the direction for achieving this vision. Here too, in the end, it is always people who decide.”
The project, which is part of the Digitalisation initiative of the judiciary commissioned by the federal and state governments, is being carried out in cooperation with the Materna Information & Communications SEthe Infora GmbHdem GovTech Campus Germany and the Aleph Alpha GmbH In addition to the information technology departments of the Baden-Württemberg judiciary, judges from the Ulm Social Court are also working on the project and are directly contributing the perspective of practitioners.
