FW-HTF-P: Impacts of Artificial Intelligence and Remote Conferencing on Work Practices and Equity in State Courts

State courts hear about 95 percent of all legal matters in the United States, and they are facing a pivotal moment. The rapid advancement of new technologies, along with the societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and renewed calls for racial justice, have dramatically shifted the work of the state courts. New technologies affecting the state courts include the automation of case filing and case processing, the integration of Augmented and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in legal decision-making, and the movement of court operations from physical space into virtual space. As these technological developments accelerate, courts will need the help of researchers to identify which legal decisions can be made by AI systems or by human-technology teams, reconfigure the composition of different occupations and skill sets within the court workforce, address job satisfaction, learning, and well-being among court practitioners, promote equity in court employment outcomes, promote equity in case outcomes for court users, and foster public trust in the legal system as a whole. This project will lay the groundwork for a comprehensive research agenda on the future work of the state courts. The potential outcomes of the research that stems from this award will include improved access to the courts for individual litigants, more equitable justice outcomes for different groups in society, more equitable employment outcomes within the court workforce, court-system-level changes in efficiency and case processing, and improved perceptions of the legitimacy of the courts and rule of law in society.

This project will bring together experts in organizational psychology, social cognition, science communication, computer science, design, engineering, adult learning, and legal decision-making, as well as court practitioners and court stakeholders, for a year of guided ideation and discussion. The research team will: 1) develop a detailed review of relevant literature in the areas of automation, AI, and virtual space; 2) conduct an environmental scan regarding the current use of automation, AI, and virtual space in the state courts; 3) convene an interdisciplinary workgroup to review the literature and current practices, identify research and knowledge gaps, and craft a convergent research agenda; 4) identify methodologies for examining automated legal processes, AI-based tools, and virtual court spaces for evidence of bias; and 5) develop recommendations for future education and training of the court workforce around new technologies. The primary outcome of this project will be a research agenda with clearly defined research questions and methods regarding the future work of the state courts at human-technology frontiers. This project will also result in a communication network of researchers and practitioners across multiple disciplines and sectors with a shared vision for research on this topic. The knowledge produced by this research can be leveraged to inform recruitment, retention, and promotion strategies within the court workforce, educational and retraining opportunities for court leaders, science communication strategies for court workers and members of the public, and the development of future technologies themselves.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.