The legal system in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) is all set to see drastic positive changes over the next decade in view of the increasing use and innovation of AI (artificial intelligence), according to a senior official of the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre (QICDRC).

"Over the next five to ten years, I expect there will be significant and positive changes in the legal sector in the GCC as a result of greater use and innovation using Al," Umar Azmeh, Registrar of QICDRC, said in an article in Lexis Middle East Law Alert, which was distributed at the Digital Ecosystem conference, organised by Ooredoo Group.

Within the courts, the main opportunities, according to him, will come from the significant savings in time and resources, which will be important as generally courts are public bodies with finite resources.

"In addition, the Al innovations we are already starting to see will make case management processes easier and more efficient - resulting in greater access to justices," he said.

There is also the potential for a greater use of Al decision making tools by lawyers at the pre-litigation stage but also potentially in the future by judges, he said.

Expecting Al tools to be used as decision making aids by judges, rather than a means of making automatic final decisions in cases; Azmeh said Al has the potential to become a very valuable tool for judges in the courts, as it could sift through large volumes of material to spot patterns judges could then interpret, improving the consistency of case decisions.

Finding that with the public release of scaled large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, industries and sectors of all types across the world have been looking at ways in which they can harness and benefit from AI, he said: "In this respect, Middle East Courts, including the QICDRC in Qatar are no different."

Within a court system, an Al system can either be internal facing or external facing, he said, adding internal Al systems can assist the court, court staff and judges with case progression and decision-making.

In this regard, he said, Al can be used to scan and review case papers which are often long, made up of huge numbers of documents and can include complex data, in order, to provide summaries of complex financial data which identifies patterns, or they can be used to automate procedural tasks such as the acceptance and service of a case on behalf of a claimant, which helps make judicial procedures faster and cheaper, improving access to justice.

The external facing Al in a court context is technology which assists court users, he said.

It may be possible to put programmes in place that review the paperwork which has to be provided to the court to ensure the parties have fulfilled all the mandatory requirements when they file their case and reduce the risk of cases being rejected because of purely procedural mistakes, according to him.

"Since our first case in 2009, the QICDRC Courts have prided themselves with having a case management system that has a strong technological setup through which cases process and having an online hearing system which allows simultaneous translation so parties from all over the world can participate in cases being heard in our courts live on our website," Azmeh said.

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