"One third fewer judges" - judiciary faces AI wave

Düsseldorf. It takes time - a lot of time - for a civil claim to be heard in court today. It now takes an average of almost 18 months in the district court, two years ago it was three months less.

In many courts, pending cases are piling up; in North Rhine-Westphalia alone, there are 255,000 cases. There are too few staff and too many lawsuits.

Ralph Guise-Rübe, President of the Regional Court of Hanover, recognises little improvement. His forecast: there will be a "profound disruption" in civil law due to artificial intelligence (AI). "It will come like a tsunami and assert itself with all its brutality," he expects.

AI applications are already being tested in the first areas of the justice system. Handelsblatt provides an insight into specific areas of application and a sometimes controversial discussion about the impact on the legal system.

For civil law, district court president Guise-Rübe has the paradigm shift in mind: notices of termination, disputes with neighbours or incorrect utility bills - in his opinion, many conflicts will no longer end up with lawyers or courts first, but will be settled by an app.

The judge calls this the "zero instance". Even today, ChatGPT solves a legal case at the touch of a button with a quality "that corresponds to the upper average of students or trainee lawyers", says Guise-Rübe.

And the trend is rising. The judge predicts far-reaching consequences. He says: "The demand for state jurisdiction will fall radically." In the future, a third fewer judges could be needed by 2035.