{"id":135984,"date":"2025-10-28T15:43:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T23:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/28\/law-school-runs-mock-trial-before-jury-of-ai-chatbots-as-dystopian-nightmare-accelerates\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T15:43:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T23:43:56","slug":"law-school-runs-mock-trial-before-jury-of-ai-chatbots-as-dystopian-nightmare-accelerates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/28\/law-school-runs-mock-trial-before-jury-of-ai-chatbots-as-dystopian-nightmare-accelerates\/","title":{"rendered":"Law School Runs Mock Trial Before Jury Of AI Chatbots As Dystopian Nightmare Accelerates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sci-Fi Author: In my book, I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale<\/em>.
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don\u2019t Create The Torment Nexus<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

So goes one of the truly perfect social media posts<\/a> of our era. Last week, law students at the University of North Carolina School of Law had an opportunity to try out the legal profession\u2019s equivalent of the Torment Nexus with a mock trial placing AI chatbots<\/a> \u2014 specifically ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude \u2014 in the role of jurors deciding the fate of an accused defendant. For all the faults of the modern jury system, should we replace it with an algorithm prepared at the behest of a moron<\/a> who wants to rewrite history<\/a> to make sure his personal bot injects an aside about \u201cwhite genocide\u201d into every recipe request?<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the answer is still no. At least as a 1-to-1 replacement.<\/p>\n

The experiment centered on a mock robbery case pursuant to the make-believe \u201cAI Criminal Justice Act of 2035.\u201d Under the watchful eye of Professor Joseph Kennedy, serving as the judge, law students put on the case of Henry Justus, an African American high school senior charged with robbery. The bots received a real-time transcript of the proceedings and then, like an unholy episode of Judge Judy: The Singularity Edition<\/em>, the algorithmic jurors deliberated.<\/p>\n

Professor Eric Muller left with some concerns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The idea that robots can cure the justice system\u2019s bias \u2014 and save the government $15\/day per juror in the process \u2014 is the sort of Silicon Valley pipe dream that generates another round of funding to be heaped on the capex fire. Venture Capitalists and tech bros may market on \u201cdisrupting empathy\u201d or whatever, but we\u2019re just swapping one bias for another: human for algorithmic, emotional for opaque, personal for corporate. So far, the robots as a whole have proven efficient vectors of implicit bias, taking the unconscious biases of their designers and the training data they\u2019re given and spitting it back with a deceptive coat of false neutrality. <\/p>\n

Except Grok, of course, which is constantly being tinkered with to better exhibit explicit<\/em> and very conscious<\/em> bias. <\/p>\n

And there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since it\u2019s Claude, I assume it got to \u201cLadies and Gentlemen of the\u2013\u201d and just threw up a \u201cmessage will exceed the length limit\u201d warning.<\/p>\n

But a machine can\u2019t tell if a witness is lying based on their conduct, because it can\u2019t perceive that conduct. It can only tell if there\u2019s an outright contradiction of a definite fact. Maybe it could conjure up some approximation of \u201cdoubt\u201d if a witness exhibits inconsistent sentence structure or something, and that\u2019s fine if you think the difference between an innocent man and a sociopath should hang on their grasp of Strunk & White. Which, honestly\u2026 fair. Muller\u2019s deeper concern though, is that the tech industry\u2019s improvement death drive will take all the present drawbacks and patch the symptoms without acknowledging the disease.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The thing with AI \u2014 aside from its inherently rickety funding model \u2014 is that (a) it\u2019s very good at the tasks it\u2019s good at, and (b) almost everyone pretends it\u2019s good at the tasks it\u2019s not good at. Can AI replace human jurors? No. No matter how bad human jurors are, a sycophantic calculator playing \u201cword roulette\u201d is not better. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say there isn\u2019t a role for AI in the jury process. It goes without saying that civil litigation offers much lower stakes than criminal cases and a panel of robots might provide an opportunity to direct limited juror resources toward the criminal cases that matter more. Even within the criminal context, there could be \u2014 with responsible design and regulation beyond what we have right now \u2014 a role for AI in allowing jurors to query the evidence to avoid missing key answers buried in pages and pages of transcripts without the benefit of a verbatim search query. Or assisting jurors in visualizing the points of disagreement between the parties.<\/p>\n

Just because AI isn\u2019t in a position to replace humans in the box doesn\u2019t mean it has nothing to offer though. We just need to keep experimenting\u2026 in mock trials only.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Law School Runs Mock Trial Before Jury Of AI Chatbots As Dystopian Nightmare Accelerates<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sci-Fi Author: In my book, I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale<\/em>.
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don\u2019t Create The Torment Nexus<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

So goes one of the truly perfect social media posts<\/a> of our era. Last week, law students at the University of North Carolina School of Law had an opportunity to try out the legal profession\u2019s equivalent of the Torment Nexus with a mock trial placing AI chatbots<\/a> \u2014 specifically ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude \u2014 in the role of jurors deciding the fate of an accused defendant. For all the faults of the modern jury system, should we replace it with an algorithm prepared at the behest of a moron<\/a> who wants to rewrite history<\/a> to make sure his personal bot injects an aside about \u201cwhite genocide\u201d into every recipe request?<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the answer is still no. At least as a 1-to-1 replacement.<\/p>\n

The experiment centered on a mock robbery case pursuant to the make-believe \u201cAI Criminal Justice Act of 2035.\u201d Under the watchful eye of Professor Joseph Kennedy, serving as the judge, law students put on the case of Henry Justus, an African American high school senior charged with robbery. The bots received a real-time transcript of the proceedings and then, like an unholy episode of Judge Judy: The Singularity Edition<\/em>, the algorithmic jurors deliberated.<\/p>\n

Professor Eric Muller left with some concerns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The idea that robots can cure the justice system\u2019s bias \u2014 and save the government $15\/day per juror in the process \u2014 is the sort of Silicon Valley pipe dream that generates another round of funding to be heaped on the capex fire. Venture Capitalists and tech bros may market on \u201cdisrupting empathy\u201d or whatever, but we\u2019re just swapping one bias for another: human for algorithmic, emotional for opaque, personal for corporate. So far, the robots as a whole have proven efficient vectors of implicit bias, taking the unconscious biases of their designers and the training data they\u2019re given and spitting it back with a deceptive coat of false neutrality. <\/p>\n

Except Grok, of course, which is constantly being tinkered with to better exhibit explicit<\/em> and very conscious<\/em> bias. <\/p>\n

And there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since it\u2019s Claude, I assume it got to \u201cLadies and Gentlemen of the\u2013\u201d and just threw up a \u201cmessage will exceed the length limit\u201d warning.<\/p>\n

But a machine can\u2019t tell if a witness is lying based on their conduct, because it can\u2019t perceive that conduct. It can only tell if there\u2019s an outright contradiction of a definite fact. Maybe it could conjure up some approximation of \u201cdoubt\u201d if a witness exhibits inconsistent sentence structure or something, and that\u2019s fine if you think the difference between an innocent man and a sociopath should hang on their grasp of Strunk & White. Which, honestly\u2026 fair. Muller\u2019s deeper concern though, is that the tech industry\u2019s improvement death drive will take all the present drawbacks and patch the symptoms without acknowledging the disease.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The thing with AI \u2014 aside from its inherently rickety funding model \u2014 is that (a) it\u2019s very good at the tasks it\u2019s good at, and (b) almost everyone pretends it\u2019s good at the tasks it\u2019s not good at. Can AI replace human jurors? No. No matter how bad human jurors are, a sycophantic calculator playing \u201cword roulette\u201d is not better. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say there isn\u2019t a role for AI in the jury process. It goes without saying that civil litigation offers much lower stakes than criminal cases and a panel of robots might provide an opportunity to direct limited juror resources toward the criminal cases that matter more. Even within the criminal context, there could be \u2014 with responsible design and regulation beyond what we have right now \u2014 a role for AI in allowing jurors to query the evidence to avoid missing key answers buried in pages and pages of transcripts without the benefit of a verbatim search query. Or assisting jurors in visualizing the points of disagreement between the parties.<\/p>\n

Just because AI isn\u2019t in a position to replace humans in the box doesn\u2019t mean it has nothing to offer though. We just need to keep experimenting\u2026 in mock trials only.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Law School Runs Mock Trial Before Jury Of AI Chatbots As Dystopian Nightmare Accelerates<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sci-Fi Author: In my book, I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don\u2019t Create The Torment Nexus. So goes one of the truly perfect social media posts of our era. Last week, law students at the University of North […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":135985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Headshot-300x200-G5ksml.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}