Belize's judicial system is advancing its use of technology by employing artificial intelligence.
And to get everyone on the same page, a two day workshop is being held to help judges and attorneys become more efficient in their AI usage. The first day of the workshop was facilitated by Scott Wiles, who told us more about the training.
Scott Wiles, Dir, Trade and Export, LexisNexis
"I think it just saves times so it doesn't matter, as far as the different judges that I've spoken to from different jurisdictions, they've got a lot of work and any way that we can help streamline that process and reduce bottlenecks has been a really big impact for them so even if it's summarizing cases, whether it's actually helping them with workflows and draft judgements, that's some of the ways they've been using it so far."
"Lexus Protege is an AI solution and it really helps to supercharge the content, there are many uses in the Caribbean, including the Supreme Court use within their day to day workflow so the AI sits on top of that and really just supercharges that content to be able to provide authoritative, legal content and help them in their day to day."
Courtney Menzies:
"Over these next two days what one thing you're hoping the participants take away?"
Scott Wiles:
"Don't be scared of using it, don't be scared of trying it I think my own personal experience of using AI is that the more I use it the more effective I become at using it, I understand how it interacts and how it can help me and I think that's the biggest challenge, people are scared of it or think I don't have the time to invest in using it so I'll do it another day, just use it."
Derek Sylvester, Judge, Senior Courts of Belize
"As part of the court's strategic plan, the judicial education institute which is the training arm of the court headed by the president, the Honorable Chief Justice Louise Esther Blenman, she has embarked upon a series of training, not only training but also technological development for the court. Training in AI because AI is now a major factor in terms of technological development with greatly assist the judiciary, both in terms of judgement writing, legal research because gone are days when you rely on books and coursing through pages, now you turn to the computer, tell it what you want, and create all your material. Legally, it would assist the court, secondly it would tremendously reduce backlog because the issue with the courts is time."
The workshop ends tomorrow.
