Saying 'Hello World' To Legal Services and Judiciary

“Juror #8: You’re a sadist.

Juror #8: Ever since you walked into this room, you've been acting like a self-appointed public avenger! You want to see this boy die because you personally want it, not because of the facts! You're a sadist! [Three lunges wildly at Eight, who holds his ground. Several jurors hold Three back]

Juror #2: I'll kill you.

Juror #3: I'll kill him! I'LL KILL HIM!

Juror #8: Would you really do that?

Juror #8: You don't *really* mean you'll kill me, do you?”

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These dialogues form a pivotal scene from “12 Angry Men”, probably the best legal/courtroom drama to be ever produced. One major point this movie highlights, apart from the socio-economic challenges of the times, is the conflict as a human one faces while making decisions, and the consequent introduction of multiple unknown variables, which might not be a good idea when deciding whether to legally kill someone or not.

Closer to reality, and closer back home, a similar conundrum was encountered in the highly publicized case of K. M. Nanavati v. State of Maharashtra, which has even inspired several books and films. While the accused confessed to murder, the Jury pronounced him not guilty, after which he was retried and convicted without a Jury, and then finally pardoned by the then Governor of Maharashtra. This is also the case with which veteran lawyer Ram Jethmalani first shot to fame.

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According to the National Judicial Data Grid, more than a staggering 3.3 crore cases are pending in Indian courts. Out of these, just a little under 50 lakh cases are between 5-10 years old, more than 23 lakh cases are between 10-20 years old, more than 4 lakh cases are between 20-30 years old, and more than 85000 cases are more than 30 years old!

Not to forget lakhs of those cases for which potential litigants do not have access to lawyers. We’ve heard countless accounts of gross inefficiencies in courts, judges not paying attention and cases dragging on for years with adjournments after adjournments. And how can one miss recounting the (in)famous police-lawyer nexus at play sometimes, which makes a mockery of the litigants and wants to milk off as much wealth as possible.

Given the abysmal state of things in Indian judiciary, it would be no rocket science to extrapolate and predict a complete collapse of the systems with personal liberties and civil quarrels at stake.

Is a moment of eureka led by the digital technologies what the Indian Judiciary system needs?

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Meet Aayush Kumar, a budding entrepreneur who wants to solve the problem of accessibility to legal products and information asymmetry all by utilizing the power of the Internet. On being asked about his start-up, he proudly tells us Legex as a company “aims for technological disruption for all stakeholders in legal B2B”. The excitement in his voice is a spectacle to witness when he proudly tells us about Legex’s partnerships with the Entrepreneurship Cells at the prestigious IIM Kashipur, IIT Jodhpur and NIT Hamirpur.

Legex, starting up with an ecommerce model, a marketplace with in-house lawyers available for online consulting and other services like patents, contracts etc.

However, he is quick to note that just as all industries are slow to adapt to change, especially at the scale brought on by disrupting tech in today’s times, the legal/judicial industry too is slow, even more so in the Indian scenario.

Legal Tech represented just 0.4% of the USD 794B global legal services industry, being valued at a meagre USD 3.2B in 2018. This number has since grown to above USD 5B in 2020, with the US markets alone accounting for USD 3.7B.

Back in India, arguably the hub of all things tech and IT in the world today, legal tech accounts for a total of 314 startups, with 21 of them having received funding. These operate on a variety of models, with so much space for innovation in the legal space.

While Companies like Legex target the B2B customers, helping with contracts and patents and copyrights, among other forms of legal literacy, companies like LegalKart target the retail customer, or the individual customer that is most likely to be the largest market segment by volume of customers. Still companies like LegalMind look at ways to introduce a wave of analytics in the heavily knowledge-based legal industry by providing lawyers with research and prediction-based solutions aimed to improving efficiencies and cutting costs while apps like Vidyo want to work with the judiciary and solve the problem of distance and remote connectivity for official proceedings and related purposes.

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In an interview to ET, Arvind Singhatiya, founder and chief executive of legal tech startup Legal Kart says that, “On comparing Indian legal system with that of developed countries like USA, UK Australia; the glaring difference is the adoption of technology at every level of legal hierarchy. When 95% of Lawyers in UK & 100% Lawyers in the USA are using technology just 4% Lawyers are using any kind of technology in India.”

LegalKart, an app-based solution, acts as a virtual assistant to lawyers and helps manage cases, customers and team members and share documents, add voice notes to cases and receive important documents from their clients. Despite the low adoption of technology in the Indian legal services industry, in less than a year of its launch, LegalKart is now used by more than 3500 Lawyers in 250 cities in India.

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Lawyers are known to be very smart people who know very well how to protect their own interests. Dan Jensen, CEO of NextLaw Labs, puts it to the ABA Journal with a very straight, in-your-face attitude, “Law firms have historically had a pyramid structure that technology is evolving into a diamond. If the work at the bottom of the pyramid is being automated, we want to own that technology and not be a victim of it.”

Clearly, the existing law firms want the change to come, but they want it to come from very trustworthy and reliable sources, with transparent costs, and probably exclusive vendors. Hence, this has kickstarted several Indian law firms to start their own incubation centers, creating clear synergies for themselves.

In an effort to be at the forefront of technological adoption, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, one of the most sought-after law firms in India, in February 2019, launched Praaramb, the country’s first ever legal-tech startup incubation program, and announced its first cohort of three startups – Legal Mind, Leegality and JRTC Intern – which graduated after a seven-month program from its offices.

Data analytics by startup Legal Mind will shed light on the trends in court decisions for different types of cases, the most cited sections of legislations and precedents during their arguments, the number of hearings, the lawyers with the highest success rate in pleading for such cases pricing litigation costs.

Legal Mind is looking at a go-to market that comprises over 100,000 plus lawyers who engage with digital tools frequently – with institutions and processes like the research arms of the RBI, IBBI (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India and CIRP (Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process) to name a few.

Gurgaon-based Leegality, a cloud-based e-stamp and e-document workflow platform, helps businesses automate their paperwork and move the entire flow to the cloud. Any digital transaction that requires a signature is a potential area of service to the company.

The three-year-old startup offers digital solutions through Aadhaar-based e-signatures. Indeed, the startup’s Aadhaar-enabled signature platform helped execute an INR1,116 crore resolution plan of Dhanuka Labs during the lockdown – it was meant to acquire Chennai-based debt-ridden Orchid Pharma and had the involvement of around 22 banks in the transaction.

And Karnal-based JRTC Intern is building an organized online marketplace for internships with law firms. It hopes to provide a level-playing field for law students across India, helping them showcase their talents.

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While the Indian judiciary saw computerization efforts first begin in the 1990s, the first big step toward truly embracing digital technology was taken with the “National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology in the Indian Judiciary” back in 2005.

Having introduced the concept of eCourts in India, the policy was a vision to transform the Indian Judiciary to make the justice delivery system accessible, affordable and cost-effective.

Like most other judiciary processes, this too unfortunately progressed at snail’s pace and Phase 1 of the project took as long as till 2015 to be completed. However, the results were encouraging, and more modern looking initiatives were brought on in Phase 2 onwards. With the aim of going completely paperless, the National Judicial Data Grid and the Judicial Knowledge Management Systems were launched, built on free and open source solutions (FOSS).

While first paperless court under this program was started in 2016 in the Hyderabad High Court, 2017 saw the PM launch the Supreme Court’s Integrated Case Management Information System, with transparency and efficiency being the biggest features of the apex court’s first step towards going paperless.

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Things were surely going at their own pace, with the governments, big law firms and new-age startups all working towards leveraging digital technologies, until of course, the Covid-19 pandemic struck, forcing an overnight digital transformation of whatever businesses there are on the face of the Earth.

The courts shifted to VC over the app Vidyo, instead of the secure and robust systems developed by the NIC, since they need dedicated studios and VC rooms to operate. Not any/every app can be used for the purpose, for example BT Meet Me from the UK Judiciary, since they apps must also integrate with the FOSS-based data systems already deployed here.

While the move could be called forward looking, the condition is not very optimistic, with things like internet issues and low digital literacy across all stakeholders, the results are nowhere close to the already inefficient physical courts. It is surprising with matters and crucial as someone’s personal liberty, there was no standard protocol at least till a month ago, with proceedings being coordinated over unsecured platforms like WhatsApp.

Organizational issues apart, cultural issues like lack of opportunity to interject also plagues lawyers, and they are not in good spirits about the sudden tech disruption caused by the pandemic. ETPrime reports that everyone concerning this matter they talked to agreed that there is a case for having more efficient use of technology in exceptional circumstances, but only when guided by well-defined protocols and the use of most appropriate tools.

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What remains to be seen is, whether the legal services industry and the Judiciaries make use of these technological moves to inch closer towards and probably someday realize the commercial utilization and standardization of AI-based lawyer bots like ROSS, or will it remain just another technological marvel for museum and nerds.