UAE to launch Virtual Lawyer, the first AI-guided legal professional in the region

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

The Ministry of Justice, in partnership with the Office of Government Development and the Future and the Office of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications in the UAE Government, announced, in conjunction with the activities of GITEX, the "Virtual Lawyer" project enabled by artificial intelligence.

The project helps legal institutions develop pleadings in simple cases, and contributes to enhancing the readiness of the justice sector for future opportunities and variables, and their impact on the justice sector and legal professions, and employing advanced technology and artificial intelligence to create new government models to accelerate services and improve the customer experience in a digital and interactive litigation environment.

The virtual lawyer is the first project of its kind in the UAE and the region, and aims to achieve additional value represented in accelerating litigation time, developing its services and global leadership, and facilitating the litigant's journey. It will use the database of unified national legislative texts that will be created by the Ministry of Justice, while law firms wishing to use it will have to feed its database, after registering the virtual lawyer with the ministry.

The pilot version will be launched in 2025, to be a model for services enhanced with advanced digital solutions that future governments seek to provide.

In the first phase, it is limited to assisting lawyers in simple cases with features, most notably the ability to interact with a human judge, convert voice to text and vice versa, and submit memoranda and documents.

Abdullah Sultan Bin Awad Al Nuaimi, Minister of Justice, said that the ministry is constantly looking to employ innovations and visions that serve justice and raise the efficiency of procedures, and is moving forward in facilitating the journey of clients in the field of providing legal government services, to ensure the quality of services provided to beneficiaries, in accordance with the best international practices.

He added that artificial intelligence technologies open new horizons for us in developing the judicial system in modern, flexible and interactive ways that establish justice in a safe society and a competitive economy, which will contribute to raising operational efficiency, shortening time and effort, improving the effectiveness of procedures, enhancing accuracy and speed in decision-making, and reducing the administrative burden on the judicial system; to keep pace with the requirements of the knowledge economy and the era of digital openness by investing these technologies to the fullest extent.

For her part, Ohoud Bint Khalfan Al Roumi, Minister of State for Government Development and the Future and Chairperson of the Higher Committee for Government Digital Transformation, said: “This project is one of the UAE’s important future projects that focuses on transforming the vision of the wise leadership into proactive government work models for future readiness in all sectors.” She added: “The Office of Government Development and the Future works in permanent partnership with government entities to enhance their readiness for future variables and requirements and enhance levels of performance, productivity, speed, flexibility, effectiveness, efficiency and trust in government work.”

Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, stressed the importance of enhancing government initiatives aimed at accelerating the adoption of technology and artificial intelligence solutions in various areas of government work, especially in developing the new generation of services enhanced by technology and digitization.

He said that the Ministry of Justice’s initiative represents a qualitative addition to the government’s efforts in the field of developing services, eliminating bureaucracy, and creating new services that facilitate customer experiences, and support the achievement of the leadership’s visions by designing, innovating and providing the best government services in the world.

The project will provide new and distinctive opportunities, by employing artificial intelligence to advance the legal work environment in the country, and move it to a new stage to become a model to be emulated on the global level.

The Ministry of Justice will also work on studying the legal dimensions and preparing legislative formulations to keep pace with new legal professions, and developing legislation for the use of the national digital infrastructure in legal professions with the best digital security standards, in implementation of the directives of the wise leadership to enhance efforts to develop government services, through the constant endeavor to facilitate the journey of customers.