The National Council of Barreaux (CNB) launched a survey of the profession to map uses, understand expectations and anticipate the challenges posed by lawyers.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an impose on a silent but deep revolution in the practice of law, and the criminal does not escape this mutation. The National Council of Barreaux (CNB) has also just launched a large survey of the profession to map uses, understand expectations and anticipate the challenges posed by French lawyers. What implications for the penalty, its ethics and equality of arms?
An upheaval of practices, an opportunity to supervise
The generative AI today makes it possible to automate documentary research, to assist the drafting of acts or to anticipate certain judicial decisions, promising a time saving and a multiplied productivity. According to a study relayed by the CNB, up to 44 % of tasks in the legal sector could be automated in the years to come. For the penalty lawyer, this means the possibility of focusing more on strategic analysis, defense in audience and the relationship with the customer.
But this technological revolution is accompanied by major uncertainties. AI tools, in particular generative, work as “black boxes”: it is often difficult to understand the logic that underlies their suggestions or analyzes. However, in the criminal field, the slightest approximation can have serious consequences for individual freedoms.
Ethics: vigilance and duty of control
The use of AI by the criminal lawyer must be part of the strict respect of the ethical rules: professional secrecy, duty of competence, prudence and independence. The CNB insists on the need to train lawyers for these new tools and provide them with practical guides to guarantee responsible use. The lawyer remains responsible for the content produced or validated by the AI; He must therefore exercise rigorous control over the sources, the reliability of the analyzes and the adequacy of the solutions proposed to the concrete situation of the customer. The recent jurisprudence also recalls the risks of blind confidence: in 2023, two American lawyers were sanctioned for producing false case law generated by IA, stressing the need for systematic human verification.
Equality of arms and access to justice: a democratic issue
AI can be a formidable lever for equal access to justice, by democratizing access to legal information and by reducing costs for litigants. But it is also likely to accentuate inequalities: not all firms have the means to invest in high -performance tools, and the quality of solutions varies sharply according to the available resources. The CNB is working on pooling solutions and training the whole profession to avoid a “digital divide” between lawyers.
Finally, AI cannot replace human discernment, essential in criminal defense. The algorithms, as sophisticated as they are, struggle to take into account the attenuating circumstances, the intuition of the audience, or the singularity of each file. The lawyer must therefore remain master of his tools, not the other way around.
Tame AI?
Artificial intelligence requires a deep transformation of penalist practice, provided that it is tamed with rigor, ethics and discernment. It is at this price that AI may become an ally of law and justice, not a factor of injustice or dehumanization.
