Democratizing Law through Digital Transformation: Expanding Access to Justice through Inclusive Legal Technologies

Abstract

Computerisation of law is a big opportunity and a significant threat to the contemporary jurisprudence. This paper discusses the democratization of access to justice due to inclusion of legal technologies, and eliminates the access to justice gap that is endemic to all marginalized groups in the world. This paper investigates the question of whether technology in fact enhances access or merely creates new forms of exclusion by critically examining some of the new digital legal technology, artificial intelligence applications and online dispute resolution platforms. As evidenced by the paper, despite the opportunities offered by the digital transformation that the elimination of the legal services barriers has never been this minimal, the digital divide, the bias of the algorithms, the privacy of the data, and the loss of the human-centered approach to the legal advocacy remain the issues of concern. The paper relies on the factual data concerning various jurisdictions and it is assumed that the real democratization cannot be confined solely to the use of technologies but should be constructed in a particular fashion with the focus on equity, transparency, and procedural fairness. As it can be seen, participatory legal technologies must be designed with the participation of underserved communities, lawyers, and technologists. Besides, the paper claims that laws should be revised to ensure that such innovations can be utilized in the name of justice and not efficiency. This paper, lastly, recommends a normative model of evaluating digital law intervention, which identifies that the limitation of access to justice to technological access but must imply meaning, meaning, and empowerment of the law processes.