As India moves towards the election year we need to look
around the issues that we would like as a country to address that will help
India to become a better place to live. India’s judicial system is one such
place which has affected all of us. The current state of our judicial system is
such that it takes decades to get a verdict and even worse are many million
cases that have not seen the light of the day and it is difficult to see any
hope for them.
A quick look into some statistics gives us a complete picture;
we have more than three crores (30 million) pending cases at various courts. To
add to litigants' woes, there's also a shortage of judges as vacancies are not
filled: high courts have 32% fewer judges than they should and district courts
have a 21% shortfall. India has approximately 11-12 judges per million persons,
as opposed to the global average of around 50 judges per million.Some years
ago, a Delhi High Court judge reckoned it would take more than 450 years to
clear the backlog given then judge numbers.
Judicial Reforms
In order to address the problem plaguing Indian judicial
system a range of Judicial reforms have been suggested. Some of the suggestions
that are there in common discussion are
·
Setting up of more number of fast track courts to
quickly resolve the cases
·
Improvement in Judicial Procedures
·
National Litigation
Policy - The Centre has formulated a National Litigation Policy to reduce
the cases pending in various courts in India under the National Legal Mission
to reduce average pendency time from 15 years to 3 years.
Technology
However after a lot of thought that have gone into these
studies on judicial reforms a lot of them have tried to de-link the relation
between the judge-population ratios and have pointed to the fact that the
answers to streamlining the working of the judicial system are not to be found
in resolving pendency by increasing the number of judges. They lie
elsewhere, some of the suggestions that they have given are listed above.
There seems to however one very critical factor missed by all studies done and
that is the Technology factor. It must have found a mention somewhere here and
there but no one goes into the detail of how exactly India can use its huge Information
Technology capabilities to clear the mess in its judicial system. The
answer may however be there in how to use make the correct use of Big data and
analytics capabilities.
Big Data &
Analytics
Big Data’ is a popular term used to the recent explosion in
data, which is fuelled in particular by the ubiquity of the Internet and
smartphones. Walking to the bus stop, writing a movie review, tweeting and
liking something on Facebook are all common informal data streams. Information
of all kinds is produced daily on an unimaginable scale. Conventional data
conjures up ideas of surveys and research. The idea is to use this
unprecedented amount of information to innovate and change our world. Big Data
presents the opportunity to avoid troublesome issues causation, simply looking
for correlations in the data to better understand our world. This shift
represents one of the most fundamental changes to our society in recent years.
Historically, we have been restricted by lack of information, whereas now we
have abundance.
However, this data is no good without anything to make sense
of it. This is where algorithms step in to frolic in massive data sets. The
intelligent extrapolation from large amounts of data can be used to make sense
of our world. Using analytics, correlations can help to predict earthquakes,
divorce, elections, better allocate resources, optimize sporting endeavors, and
revolutionize healthcare provision and countless other uses.
The question is whether this new explosion in data could
provide a backdrop to a fundamental change in law. The probable answer is Yes,
Big data works with huge volume of data and as I just mentioned above we have millions
of resolved and pending cases. Therefore the technology that can be used to
predict election results, can be used in medical transcription can definitely
be used in the field of law.
Clinical v Mechanical
Prediction
An article by Darragh Hyland and Owen Collins “Future
of law” gives us an insight into this whole question. Lawyers are
often asked to provide predictions. When it comes to prediction, there are
essentially two possibilities available.
First -The clinical method. ‘From my experience and in my
opinion, it is likely that you have a good/bad case.’ This method of handling
data is informal and subjective. It is the method that prevails today. The
legal expert determines from his opinion, experience and expertise the most
likely outcome of the case before him.The second approach is known as mechanical or actuarial prediction. With this method, we look to statistical means of prediction. The opinion of the lawyer is irrelevant in this context. Rather, the outcome is predicted by following an analysis of patterns ensconced in previously acquired case law and general legal data.
If you think this mechanical method sounds inflexible and
entirely robotic, you are not alone. However, empirical research has
consistently and definitively proven this type of prediction to be superior to
clinical prediction. For our actuarial prediction we look for as large a data
set as possible. This data would tell us about cases and how they were decided.
More data means a better chance to find correlations.
Application Area
India should be seriously looking to explore this option and
more discussions are required to identify the level till which this
technology be used to help aid our judicial system. While some may argue that
this should be limited to be used only for lawyers or law firms I see it having
a role even on the desk of the judges at least in the lower courts. My argument
stems in the fact that most of the court cases in the lower court are more
about judicial procedures and the application of correct laws for a particular
case. Say for e.g. take the case of thousands of pending accidental claims
cases which usually takes 6-7 years to get a verdict however if we look closely
into the case details we will see that it is investigation by the police (which
gets ready within in matter of weeks) that remain as the most conclusive piece
of document on which the judgment will be based. What if this assumption is
verified by an analytic system which across millions of cases in the past is
able to tell the judge and the lawyers that the party against which the
investigation report was based lost the case in a majority number of times?
Will the party who is supposed to lose the case will still spend a considerable
amount of time and money on such a losing case?
The way Indian judiciary works we have lower courts, high
courts and Supreme Court. It is however left to high courts and supreme courts
to interpret the constitution and it is only there where a huge expertise of
the constitution however at the lower court level big data and analytics can
prove to be a major helping hand for judges, lawyers and the parties in the
dispute. Analytics may be able to guide parties in dispute even before they
come to the courts about their chances of winning or losing a case. It may also
show the variation for a case won against all the odds as what were the extra
pieces of evidence or legal data that were invoked in such a case.
Question of Quality –
Judicial accountability
On the question of quality we need to look into perspective,
to reduce the number of pending cases a huge number of fast track courts were
set up. More than 1,000 fast track courts have disposed of more than three
million cases in past few years however in order to achieve quick resolution did
they compromised on quality ? Hasty trials raise fears of possible miscarriages
of justice. But what if the fast track courts were given a helping hand in the
form of big data technology where the judges took a leaf out of millions of
similar cases to arrive to a quick judgment, definitely this will improve the
quality of the judgment. The technology may even flag a possible judgment as against the popular predictable judgment which happens a lot in cases being fought for the poor people. The judges may then have to give an extra explanation as why did they choose to give a judgment against the normal sense. While technology may not be binding it will introduce accountability in the system as the system will question on the wisdom of the judges. This may come as an extra benefit for the use of technology.
Roadmap for Future
What is suggested here is however bound to disrupt the way
we see judicial system as of today but predictive coding is a disruptive innovation
that will change how law is practiced. The magnitude of the problem gives us an
opportunity where we can apply technology to the problem and come up with a
totally innovative way to address this problem. Increasing the number of judges
by too big a count is not the answer to our problems and it will create even
more problems to deal with.
However even if we look to choose to adopt the technology
there has to be ground work done, instant digitalization of our huge amount of legal
data records will be the first step, so that the same information could be used
to produce a pattern ( it is in addition to all the Judicial reforms
suggestions mentioned above). Again this will require some funding, can this be
done by private corporations? Again a different way of looking at problem but
then if corporates are allowed to come in the judicial system will it not do
good for the complete industry? We already have LPO’s doing similar kind of
work being outsourced from outside can’t that strength be used to deliver
things for our own country and in turn generate jobs and deliver quick justice.
Will we be able to move in this direction? All I can say is that the time is
ripe to start this debate.
Was thinking on the same lines. Very apt blog
ReplyDeleteThanks Kiran , to hear this from you means a lot :) specially since you are working in the field of analytics :)
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