“If your time to you is worth savin’, then you better start swimmin’, Or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’.”

–Bob Dylan (The Times They Are A-Changin’, 1964)

Introduction

A lawyer’s office in India in the late 1980s was typified by desks piled up with papers, drawers overflowing, cabinets crammed with folders, fax machines beep- ing, and photocopy machines clicking all day. Legal documents had to travel by post to be physically delivered, signed, sealed and returned. The court of law relied heavily on dictation and typewriting of judgments. Stenographers recorded court proceedings in shorthand and clerks maintained books manually. This was India at the cusp of liberalisation. Getting legal work done was time-consuming, laborious, and expensive. Cut to the 2020s: a lawyer’s office today has embarked on a paperless journey. Spreadsheets, smartphones, and scanners have replaced note-taking in journals and record-keeping in ledgers. Electronic mailing (e-mail) services over the World Wide Web have revolutionised communication by replac- ing the inter-office paper-based mail system. Drafting has moved from typewriters to word processors and file storage from cabinets to cloud computing services like Dropbox and Google Drive. Courtrooms, too, have tried to move from hard-to- access-or-refer-to paperwork to case management software, speech-to-text tools, and digital archives. Whether it has made access to justice easier, faster, or afford- able will not be debated at this juncture; but wherever successfully done, it has made information available at the click of a mouse. Figure 1 provides a bird’s-eye

view of the evolution of this landscape. The two major milestones that have driven this evolution are liberalisation and lockdown . A more detailed description follows in the rest of this section.

India’s rapidly changing institutional landscape in the run-up to liberalisa- tion set the tone for reforms in Information Technology (IT) and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITeS). The Department of Electronics (DoE) was established in 1970 and India’s first IT park—the Santacruz Electronic Export Processing Zone (SEEPZ), was set up in 1973. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) was established in 1976 with the vision to integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) with government services. A blueprint for implementing IT services in banking was laid down by the then Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Dr C. Rangarajan in 1983, called the Rangarajan Committee. Railways were computerised with the introduction of the passenger reservation system in 1986. The DoE framed the new Computer Policy in 1984 and set up software technology parks (STPs) in an attempt to liberalise IT services. This was followed by the Software Policy of 1986 and the establishment of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in 1988.

However, protectionism from the planning era cast a show over these policies and led to private players such as International Business Machines (IBM) pulling out of the country. Legal frameworks including the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) stood in the way of technology entering India. From the 1980s, tech giants of today—Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Infosys— faced licensing barriers that kept them from expanding production capabilities. Back then, obtaining a telephone connection took the founder of Infosys, NR Narayana Murthy, one year; and importing a computer three complete years! The masses resisted as well. In 1984, bank employees burnt effigies of computers, and political parties marked labour day as ‘anti-computer day’. 1

In the first few years post-liberalisation, India’s new dispensation paved the way for tech-based innovation in the country. Laws which were seen as a hurdle to foreign investment were amended. Computer software and consumer elec- tronics industries, among many others, were delicensed, under the Industries Development and Regulation Act (IRDA). FERA was amended to remove the ceiling on foreign equity. The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act, which would later be replaced by the Competition Act, was restructured to allow entry and growth of new enterprises. Foreign direct investment (FDI) was welcomed through the automatic route, without bureaucratic approvals from the government or the RBI. Tariffs on the import of capital and intermediate goods were rationalised, and tax concessions made both technology transfers from abroad and innovation at home lucrative.

Between 1991 and 2000, the services sector grew at 7.5 per cent per year 2 on an average—much faster than agriculture (3.1 per cent) and manufacturing (5.8 per cent). Telecommunication, banking, business, and hospitality services contributed heavily to the growth of the service sector. Software services expanded 34 at the rate of 40 per cent and their export constituted 80 per cent of all software sales by the year 2000. The availability of low-cost, skilled labour made India the back-office of multinational corporations for IT services. Around this period, the failure of the National Telecom Policy of 1994 to attract private investment was corrected. The New Telecom Policy, 1999 removed licensing requirements and encouraged multiple service providers to compete in the market. In 2000, the Information Technology Act recognised electronic records and electronic signatures to be at par with physical ones.

One way to consider the debut of technology in India is to ask whether it was economic policy and the law that enabled the pace of tech-based innovation. Today, however, this question is reversed. We either ask, ‘How will tech-based innovation enable the law?’ or think about it in the way Australian jurist Michael Kirby put it 5 in 1987: ‘The hare of science and technology lurches ahead. The tortoise of the law ambles slowly behind’.

From Liberalisation to Lockdown

On 24 March 2020, India went into a nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus—an outbreak that was shaping itself into a deadly global pandemic. People were mandated to live without close contact with each other; movement was restricted as part of public health guidelines, and stay-at-home orders were in place. The mobility restrictions had a far-reaching impact on every sector—from tourism, hospitality, and recreation to education, banking, and finance. Big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Twitter allowed employees to work from home, as did other private sector firms in India and across the world. And so, the future of how human beings work suddenly seemed to be going in unchartered waters. To keep businesses afloat, companies had to restructure their business models. State functions—right from delivery of goods and services to the working of the Parliament and courts—also needed to be re-imagined amid the pandemic.

In this new imagination, the use of technology emerged as the sole connecting link – a backbone for digital transformation. Digital alternatives seemed to be the only way forward, and so, the masses embraced the power of Zoom, QR codes and UPI payments. A combination of cheap mobile data plans and UPI ensured home delivery of groceries, access to online classrooms and tele-consultations with doctors. E-commerce marketplaces such as Grofers, Amazon and Big Basket were not the only players anymore. The neighbourhood kirana store, 6 the local florist, the gym trainer, school teachers, restaurants, offices, government agencies, and even courts, were adapting digitally. An explosion in the volume of UPI transac- tions marks this trend. It took four years since its launch in 2016 for UPI to cross a billion transactions. The next one billion was clocked in a matter of just one year 7 between 2019 and 2020. In March 2022, the volume of transactions crossed a record 5 billion in a single month.

Before the digital disruption due to COVID-19, the pace of digitisation in India was good and ready to take flight. The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) laid out in 20006 by the Department of Electronics and Information technol- ogy (DeitY) and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) designed 44 Mission Mode Projects 8 (MMP) under an e-Kranti frame- work with the vision to ‘transform e-governance to transform governance’ and lofty aims to provide service delivery to citizens through the electronic mode. A three-layered IT infrastructure, viz., i) Data networks (state-wide area networks),

ii) Data repositories (state data centres), and iii) Common service centres (CSCs) located in remote areas was designed to realise this vision. According to TRAI, between 2004 and 2011, India witnessed an average annual growth rate of 51.8 per cent in wireless/cellular/mobile phone subscriptions 9 and from 2000 to 2011, a compounded annual growth rate of 33.3 per cent in internet subscribers. 10 The data revolution was around the corner.

A McKinsey global survey in 2020, established that the pandemic accelerated the speed of tech adoption globally by several years. 11 In India, this sentiment was echoed by the CEO of Digital India Corporation, who said that the pace of digital adoption in the country had been phenomenal 12 since the pandemic struck, and that technology was being leveraged not only by businesses but also by government departments and the common man. However, the most con- spicuous of this leverage, viz., the choice of working remotely, was available only to a small set of highly educated workers 13 across a few industries. While Tech- solutions became the pat response for several issues, including more citizens in the beneficiary set has emerged as an important task. That is, with great power implicit in digital solutions, came the great responsibility of building digital infrastructure and a digital workforce. Here, digital infrastructure encapsulates all open data ecosystems – registries, stacks, platforms, marketplaces, and web portals.

The Indian government stepped in and began contact tracing to identify close contacts of the person infected with the COVID-19 virus; and launched the Aarogya Setu app; and for vaccination, the CoWin platform. The earlier National Health Mission, urban and rural, was combined with the National Digital Health Mission and was renamed as the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission in 2020. 14 The aim was to create digital health records.

A National Health Stack, the digital infrastructure required to generate and store digital health IDs for a billion Indians has been well underway since 2018. Tech companies emerged as all-weather friends for investors. Valuation of fin- tech, edtech, agritech, and healthtech soared 15 as consumers increasingly expected mobile apps and web portals to be the solution for everything – from ordering pizza – to filing taxes. The great reliance of businesses on data and technology for streamlining processes came to be known as the ‘The Domino(s) Effect’ after Dominos, the pizza company, redefined itself ‘as a tech company that just hap- pened to sell a lot of pizzas’. 16 It was the comfort of ordering, not the pizza, that the average educated Indian had come to expect, of services in the country. As for businesses, the product was being sold in exchange for customers’ data.

Amidst all this, how did the pandemic pivot the world of an average lawyer, the legal industry and the judicial ecosystem? The Bar Council of India (BCI) estimates there are 2 million advocates in India. A majority of India’s lawyers, especially those working in lower courts, earn their wage on a per-appearance basis on hearings or on fresh filings. 17 During economic downturns, it is common for transactional work, contract and litigation work, to remain stable. 18 However, a crisis curtailing physical movement and courtroom gatherings, along with neg- ative growth economic growth, meant lawyers did not just lack new clients, but also could not earn their daily income at the courts. A 2019 survey of 2,800 lawyers across eight High Courts in Delhi revealed that 80 per cent believe that a lawyer’s income in the first two years of practice never 19 exceeds Rs 20,000 per month. And so, at the peak of the second wave in India, lawyers turned to the Bar Council of Delhi for financial help and ration kits. 20 Many returned to their hometowns. The courts closed. Only urgent matters were being prioritised, that too virtually.

Just as it did across the world, the pandemic pushed lawyers, law firms, court- rooms, law-making and law-enforcing agencies into a natural experiment. There was no option but to make a quick and smooth transition to tech-based alterna- tives. Law firms in India, working towards maximising efficiency and minimising costs, were able to rely on a pre-existing cushion of tech support. Blending into the remote working model was the matter of re-directing cash flows – away from the fixed costs of office real estate and fresh hirings – towards already existing cloud-based systems. The impact has been swift: of the 63 law firms surveyed 21 by the Indian Business Law Journal in 2021, 59 per cent were optimistic about revenue growth, and just 9 per cent expected lower profits than last year. The lawyers surveyed believed corporate matters were only deferred, not discontinued, unlike litigation work, which was stalled.

Thus, the positive note in the legal ecosystem is not across the board. Even before the pandemic, law firms have dabbled in software solutions that speed up back-office operations for decades. This demand initiated a new genre of tech companies – the legal-tech companies or start-ups – which innovated and marketed directly for the efficiency needs of the legal ecosystem. The solutions aimed at standardising legal documents (as in the case of LegalZoom in 2001); online case law research (Manupatra in 2001, SCC Online in 2009); efficient case management (Zelican in 2013) and automated client billing and invoicing (Invoicera in 2005).

In contrast, courtrooms and law-enforcement agencies struggled to migrate to digital processes. Before the pandemic, only 14 per cent of the 3,280 court complexes 22 in India had operational access to video-conferencing facilities. Just one in four of the 1,355 prisons were equipped with the same. Despite initiatives that aim to modernise the judiciary and increase its reliance on ICT, capacity constraints routinely lead to costly delays in the delivery of justice in India. But in the two years following the pandemic, case pendency rates soared to reach record highs. The pendency rate quadrupled, 23 from 5.29 per cent in 2018-19 to 20.4 per cent in the subsequent year, in the 25 high courts across the nation. In the lower courts, backlogs crossed a record four-crore mark. 24 In a September 2020 report on virtual courts in India, 25 the Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice urged that virtual courts continue as a model that makes digital justice faster and cheaper, compared to traditional courts. The report submitted to the Rajya Sabha, emphasised the enabling of infrastructure. The working of the Indian parliament was also affected by the pandemic. In the first four months, for instance, no parliamentary committee met virtually or in person. 26

It is not that the Law and justice ecosystem has triggered all its efforts only after the pandemic. While this volume delves into this in more detail, efforts at mod- ernising India’s judicial processes using technology date back to the development of the Court Information System (COURTIS) and Judgement Information System (JUDIS) in the 1990s. Implemented by the NIC, these systems facilitated case filing, cause-list generation, issuance of orders, and access to the text of judgments for Supreme Court cases. A similar system called List of Business Information System (LOBIS) was implemented to track case load in the high courts as well. However, after failed attempts 27 at taking computerisation to subordinate courts in the following years, the eCourts project was formulated as part of the National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology in the Indian Judiciary, in 2005. As a Mission Mode Project under the NeGP, the project envisaged streamlining court procedures using ICT, across district and subordinate courts in three phases. The first phase (2010 to 2015) emphasised on building hardware and software capabilities, such as server rooms, LAN connectivity, court websites, and case information system (CIS), along with training staff to use web-based applications. Phase II (2015 to present) is running in tandem with the Digital India campaign and has led to the creation of the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) in 2013 to monitor pendency. This phase includes video conferencing facilities, software upgrades, mobile apps, SMS-based updates and digital archiving of cases for easy retrieval.

As described in more detail in the chapter on the future of the Indian justice system, in the third phase, it is proposed that the project will move the focus towards building services on the foundation of sound digital infrastructure. It envisions a justice system that is modern, inclusive, accessible, interoperable, and sustainable. This includes online case management systems, registries, and digital courts (e-filing, automatic scheduling, online hearing, transcriptions), built on free and open-source software (FOSS). It also aims to build an Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) where information can be shared between courts, police and prisons, within certified data-sharing protocols. Phase III of the project recognises that institutions, private or state-owned, need to talk to one another to build digital architecture. It recommends behavioural and administrative changes, among citizens and government, to strengthen technology adoption in the judicial system, and for the ecosystem to evolve as a whole. An example of digital architecture that phase 3 can draw ideas from is IndiaStack. The digital payments sector in India has witnessed a coming together of government, banks, businesses, start-ups and developers to create a unified system that has no physical presence, is paperless, cashless and consent-based in principle. IndiaStack has been developed as a means to achieve the larger goal of financial inclusion. Similarly, to widen access to justice, there have been calls for a convergence in law and justice is in the form of the proposed JusticeStack. 28

A key endeavour of this chapter is to map the contours of a fast-transforming law and justice landscape in India. This conversation cannot be limited to the practice of law or the delivery of justice in courtrooms. It is embedded in the scale and speed with which technology is changing our daily lives. Emerging technology is perceived as innovation, invasion, intrusion and infusion, all at the same time, based on the degree to which it disrupts traditional methods. The legal landscape exists in sync with India’s evolving digital public infrastructure, and the questions of how to build, regulate and finance it. The authors hope that the framework presented here will enable a comprehensive stocktaking and, where needed, transformation by leveraging appropriate technology.

Legaltech and its many definitions

In the middle of mass layoffs during the global financial crisis of 2008, Dr. Richard Susskind, one of the early thinkers on the evolution of legal services, wrote the book, ‘The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services’. In the book, he theorised one of the first models of legal evolution. This model, or a fundamental transformation as he termed it, followed the fast-changing nature of legal work. It progressed from bespoke or custom-made legal help to a standardised, systematised, and finally, a packaged and commoditised legal product. In the bespoke form, the work and fate of a lawyer are compared with tailors who custom-fit clothes and artisans who craft objects by hand. The book predicts a quick decline in their livelihoods in the face of a modernising market. At the heart of Susskind’s chain of transformation were gains from efficiency 2930 . Even before technology disrupted legal work, most of the routine demands of clients needed lawyers. The work included drafting contracts, agreements, wills and leases. These tasks did not need solutions to be bespoke, or designed from scratch. They were standard and relied on templates. But in defining packaged legal products, Susskind predicted what is now called cloud-based access or software-as-a-service. These services to be part of a law firm’s tool kit are pack- aged and provided to the client electronically, for use at their end, in return for a fee. In its most mature form, legal services become commoditised , available in the marketplace for purchase. A commoditised legal product for regularly repeated tasks such as drafting contracts, wills and leases, therefore, would not only be cheaper compared to customised solutions but also faster and less prone to human error.

In his 2013 book, ‘Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future’, Susskind took a more forward-looking approach. He outlined three factors that were radically disrupting the market for legal services: i) budget constraints since higher demand for legal products would mean more work to be delivered in less time and cost for law firms which could become cost-efficient by making cuts on spending and staffing, ii) liberalising legal sector, where the delivery of legal services was moving from being concentrated only among qualified lawyers to a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) model, and its archetype changing from law firms and partnerships to alternate business structures. Today, Alternative Legal Service Providers 31 (ALSPs), legal departments of corporates such as the big four (EY, KPMG, PwC and Deloitte) and start-ups, all form a part of this landscape, and iii) information technology, which has played a key role in liberalising the legal sector since large amounts of data can be generated, stored at low costs and this resource can be tapped into by entrepreneurs, engineers, developers and educators, who could automate paper-based legal processes for clients. Citizens accessing legal solutions built by emerging technologies would not require a middleman for process-oriented work like contract drafting or tax filing and lawyers themselves would not need to manually go through a dossier of documents to establish case facts, and could be assisted by software, web portal or machine. Susskind took the example of computerised accounting systems replacing paper-based ledgers, to define sustained innovation. But for disruption, he outlined 13 legal technol- ogies, ranging from document automation, electronic marketplace, e-learning, to machine prediction, and online dispute resolution.

In more contemporary definitions of legal technology, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), in 2016, provided a three-layered framework. 32 The first layer comprised enabler technologies such as a cloud server, a platform infrastructure and connectivity, serving not only the legal sector but also various industries. This level of technology ensured that routine tasks were digitised. Above this, a mid-level layer of support-process solutions included back-office management tools. These software created efficiencies in accounting, billing, human resource management, and employee or customer-relationship management. Software that could electronically store, organise, classify documents and track the workflow of cases fell in this category. The final layer on top of substantive law solutions included the two key tasks lawyers undertake – litigation and transaction. The skills required under both could vary from basic contract drafting to specialised research for judicial precedents.

In Susskind’s chain of events, bespoke solutions fade out as the sector becomes more commoditised. With more mature, artificial intelligence-based tools building on digitised resources, BCG’s framework of legal-tech predicts that this chain will reverse. In other words, technology would go beyond auto- mating standard legal tasks, and be able to provide made-to-measure solutions as a product.

With the understanding that each case may not be unique, the legal ecosystem moved from a monopoly to a marketplace. Like other goods and services in a globalised market, legal services were also bought, sold and priced differently. The market forces attacked two key asymmetries in the practice of law – billable hours and profit per partner. Traditionally, lawyers have been compensated for the number of hours devoted to working for a client. This created perverse incentives. The most efficient lawyer got paid the least. The laziest lawyer got rewarded the most. As legal systems became less opaque, clients preferred knowing the cost of legal services beforehand. This led to new pricing equations called the alternative fee arrangement, which emerged in the form of value-based or fixed-cost billing. Today, companies like Digitory Legal have developed an AI-enabled cost analytics platform that uses past data to predict future legal fees and costs. Such predictions can help companies and law firms create efficient pricing models. Legal Tracker developed by Thomson Reuters is another spend management tool that helps organisations monitor and control legal costs.

If the structure of a traditional law firm were to be visualised as a pyramid, it would go from law clerks and paralegals at the bottom, associates in the middle, and equity partners at the top. The sole function of this law firm and its employ- ees is to maximise profit per partner. Legaltech commentator 33 Mark A Cohen, in 2018, theorised that digitised, outsourced, consumer-centric legal practice would topple this pyramid and flatten the hierarchy. It would compel law firms to restructure and diversify.

In more attempts at defining legal tech, many companies, publications, blogs and research centres, globally, have categorised the explosion that the sector has witnessed. In 2019, US- based software firm Mitratech classified the products and services 34 into four suites. These were grouped based on functionality and stakeholders. The more conventional case management and business management tools were assigned to the law firm management suite and enterprise legal suite. Legal research and analytics were assigned to the attorney suite. Products that citizens could directly use to access the law, or educate themselves, were classified under the business to consumer suite.

Online information portal LegalTechHub, 35 has curated an alphabetical directory of legal tech tools by their global presence. Lawtomated, 36 an online blog, categorised the products on a timeline before and after 2011. Another blog called the Legal Geek, 37 made a distinction between tools that help manage work versus perform work. The frontiers of legal tech broadened a little when Legal Evolution’s 38 Jae Um included a social impact category along with tools in retail law and enterprise law. This category listed tools that would help get legal recourse in cases pertaining to social inequality or economic justice.

One of the largest databases of start-ups in the legal tech sector -- CodeX Techindex (comprising 1893 companies and growing), sits at CodeX, Stanford’s Centre for Legal Informatics. For India, Omidyar Network (ONI) and Agami have made attempts at mapping the sector. Both approaches document changes that are at the cusp. ONI’s classification 39 divides the legal-tech market into demand and supply. The demand side enables access to legal services by indi- viduals and businesses. The supply side enables practitioners to provide these services.

Susskind theorised ‘decomposing’ regular functions into smaller tasks as the modus operandi of this revolution. In the supply side of the legal market, both litigation and transaction cycles can be broken down into subtasks. Some of these subtasks are manual and administrative and can be outsourced – managed better by non-lawyers, computerised, subcontracted or even off-shored based on the cost of labour. Some others require human judgement and rely solely on the expertise of a lawyer. The pizza analogy posited by IBM architect, Albert Barron, is use- ful to understand the changing model of legal process outsourcing (LPO) and technology disruption. Much like in-house legal advice, a pizza can be prepared from scratch at home. This would include purchasing raw ingredients, kneading, baking, preparing the toppings, and cleaning up after. Compared to buying a semi-prepared frozen pizza, home delivery, or dining out, this process could take up more time and energy, and even turn out to be more expensive. In the alter- native models, the subtasks of the assembly line are outsourced. Barron draws a parallel of infrastructure, platform and software-as-a-service for each of these models. A readymade pizza requires you to only have the infrastructure of heat- and-eat at home. The experience at a diner does not even require that. You just have to show up and consume upon purchase.

Each of the models makes you, the customer, better off in terms of time and money, while satiating the pizza craving. Applied to the world of information technology, these models remove complexities for the provider and present choices to the client at each step. Readymade solutions are available at the click of a button. A complete dine-out experience is guaranteed to the consumer upon signing into the software. There are limited tasks that system administrators or developers perform in the chain. Breaking up the delivery of legal services into subtasks easily renders itself to this transition. Technology providers are constantly re-engineering the assembly line. Websites, portals, software and apps are empow- ering the end user, and enabling the DIY model of law.

A flurry of models and definitions makes it hard to point at one meaning of the term legal-tech. The etymology of the term does not have a date. Nor does it have a single person to whom its discovery can be attributed. The advances in the four V’s of big data: volume, variety, veracity and velocity, have transformed the legal sector 40 as much as any other business. The touch of technology in finance, insur- ance or education, for example, has led to the emergence of Fintech, Insurtech and Edtech as terms in common parlance. In ‘The LegalTech Book: The Legal Technology Handbook for Investors, Entrepreneurs and FinTech Visionaries’, Chishti et al call this the Uber-isation of law.

How big is the legaltech zeitgeist?

Many landmark innovations feature along the road that leads to the law and technology junction today. Of the early ones, the most notable were Lexis’ UBIQ terminal and Westlaw’s West Automatic Law Terminal (WALT). Short for ubiquitous, the red bulky UBIQ made computer-aided legal research a reality in the 1970s. The name itself prophesied the all-pervasive nature of technology in the future. Personal computing soon evolved into ‘ubiquitous computing’, 41 a catchphrase termed by Xerox PARC’s Mark Weiser in 1988. The software will be ‘everyware’, working in the background as invisible forces, Weiser predicted. And truly so! Functions of dictation, recording, indexing, calculating, scanning, faxing, and interconnecting computers, carried out by heavy-built machines of yesteryears, are all integrated into the small smartphones of today. Sophistication in operating systems and processing speeds enabled this metamorphosis. It further enabled the generation, storage and analysis of gigantic amounts of data. The spectrum of ‘jurimetrics’ (Loevinger, 1949), or the application of statistics in law today, can be expanded to include emerging technologies – empirical research, algorithms, computational law, machinesfeb2 reading, writing and executing contracts, and virtual assistance in the form of chat-bots and law-bots. IBM’s artificially intelligent attorney ROSS (2014) is a case in point.

Stanford’s CodeX database categorises legal tech companies into nine sub-sec- tors: analytics, compliance, document automation, legal education, legal research, marketplace, online dispute resolution, practice management, and eDiscovery. It also annotates the target client of each company to be an individual, other firms, the government or service providers. The size of the legal-tech market is hard to estimate even within this fixed outlook. Technology solutions are not just ubiquitous but are also difficult to contain within a geography or sector. Despite this, some estimates exist, globally and for India.

According to Tracxn, a database of start-ups, 6,041 new businesses were classi- fied globally as legaltech in 2021. The size of investments in the legaltech start-up ecosystem, worldwide, is estimated by Tracxn at USD 2.6 billion in 2021. Of this, the US alone accounted for USD 1.4 billion in investments, and India stood at 29 million. Overall, the data on investments in legaltech start-ups in India show that external funding has picked up only in the last seven years. The fintech sector in comparison is sized at USD 28 billion, 42 booming by a multiple of 1000 times when compared to the 29 million legal tech investments in India. Over one-third of the 6,041 newly founded start-ups are located in the United States alone, while their services are listed online, and can be purchased across the globe. This is not surprising, as the US is the biggest spender 43 on legal services in the world. In absolute numbers, this may be a large share.

However, the growth over the years in the US market has been steady. The number of legaltech start-ups in the US has expanded only by a multiple of three in the last decade. In contrast, the Indian market has exploded. As per Tracxn data, only 52 legaltech start-ups came up in the Indian market between 2000 and 2010, while 574 of them were founded in India between 2010 and 2020. This points to a 10-fold increase! The largest number of start-ups in Tracxn’s legaltech database focuses on lawyers and law firms. As a result, there is more innovation and invest- ment in workflow automation -- practice management, contract management, and intellectual property management. Courtroom solutions and dispute reso- lution are much less crowded sub-sectors in comparison. A more disaggregated analysis of the law and technology start-up space in India conducted by the CIIE. CO in this volume points to a similar trend. Combing through Tracxn’s broader classification of this space, CIIE.CO identified a subset of 336 Indian legaltech start-ups which are working towards ‘enabling or improving access and usage of legal and justice delivery services’ in India in 2021. Distribution of these start-ups based on the customers cater to gain points at the market being skewed towards the needs of legal professionals and businesses. At least 65 per cent of the start-ups in their sample, design workflow management and process efficiency tools. Just 32 per cent cater to the increased access to justice for citizens. The analysis also attri- butes peaks in the growth of these start-ups to policy changes such as the Start-Up India initiative in 2015-16, and COVID-19’s push towards digital alternatives in 2020. Geographically, most start-ups are concentrated in and around Delhi, followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka.

While a buzzing start-up space is an indicator of the mood in the sector, the bigger picture includes many other stakeholders. Beyond lawyers and law firms, courts, law-making and law-enforcement agencies, IT businesses, corporates, law schools and technical institutions, the government and an average citizen, every- one has a role to play in this transition. The use of technology in the domain, therefore, can be scoped in three ways – 1. The business of law, 2. Access to justice, and 3. digital transformation of public services.

In the nineties, firms such as Thomson Reuters and FTI technology providing legal, compliance, and accounting solutions, found their feet as publicly listed companies. Around the same time, the privately owned Big Four for accounting and audit, apart from tech giants Infosys, HCL, and Wipro, were emerging on the scene. Their global presence pre-dating the age of home-grown start-ups, led to the phenomenon of legal process outsourcing (LPO). India was both a market and a destination, especially for back-office legal work arising from bankruptcies and cost constraints during a global crisis. In 2010, just after the global financial crisis, the LPO market in India became the fastest-growing segment 44 and formed

17.5 per cent of the knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) market. Non-essential work such as patent support, litigation support, contract review, and compliance, was cheaply outsourced to India and allowed global corporate legal departments time to focus on core tasks.

Technology’s emergence in the business of law can also be gauged by its adop- tion among lawyers and law firms and the growth in budget allocations. A host of global reports and surveys indicate that the reality is not as theorised by the models of legaltech. According to the US-based consulting firm Gartner, firms spent about 3.9 per cent of their budgets on legaltech solutions in 2020. This proportion is projected to grow to 12 per cent of their budgets being allocated to legaltech purchases by 2025, 45 marking a shift from spending on in-house or outside counsels, and towards hiring non-lawyers in technical roles. 46

However, a survey 47 of legal departments across 30 countries and 71 industries conducted by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) in 2019, indicates that the shift to alternate legal models and technology has been slow. Apart from patenting, where outsourcing is rampant, and discovery which involves analytics, over 90 per cent of the work in contract management, due diligence, invoice review and legal research is still being performed by the in-house lawyer. Susskind’s ‘more-for-less’ challenge is at play here. Work volumes and tech budgets are expected to increase, 48 and the in-house workforce is shrinking. But spending on outside counsels has plateaued 49 and the flat-fee model is yet to breakeven. Over two-thirds of the lawyers surveyed by ACC in 2019 were still on hourly billing arrangements. Results of multiple other global surveys corroborate this divergence between the rise in budgeting for tech and the current use-case of tech in law. Elementary operational work – compliance (e-signatures), project and document management, workflow, and collaboration 50 (e-meetings) – has had higher adoption. Cloud-based services, AI and ML-based tech, block chains, robotic process automation, big data and predictive analytics solutions are less understood 51 52 or purchased. 53 54 55 This is reflective of a huge skill deficit among the legal community.

Firms and individuals are more agile than institutions in adapting to change. In the bigger picture, courts and governments globally have realised the need to be tech-savvy. GovTech and CivicTech 56 have emerged as terms that loosely translate into using data for improving efficiency and engagement in public sec- tor systems. The World Bank’s understanding of GovTech is based on the digital transformation of the public sector, where the government is not just a provider, but a platform. 5758 Progress in creating digital governments has been measured using indices such as the OECD digital government index 59 (2019) and the UN e-government development index (EGDI, 2020). The latter is a composite score of online services, telecom connectivity and human capital. In 2022, India ranked at 100 among 193 nations 60 on the UN EGDI, on which Denmark and Korea are top performers. 61 The UN also measures online citizen engagement using an e-participation index (EPI). The EPI scores citizens’ access to public informa- tion (e-information) and their engagement in policy making (e-consultation and e-decision-making) to arrive at a ranking. India’s rank of 29 among 193 nations 62 on the EPI, has dropped 14 points between 2018 and 2020. On both these indi- ces, India is also much below other emerging economies such as China (EGDI: 45, EPI: 9), Brazil (EGDI: 54, EPI: 18), and Russia (EGDI: 36, EPI: 27).

Compared to firms and digital governments, fewer attempts have been made at estimating the speed, scale and size of technological integration in the jus- tice system. There is no global database or index that ranks the digital- ness of courtrooms, police and prisons across countries. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology conceptualises access-to-justice technologies under justice as a platform 63 that has layers similar to those on which IndiaStack is built and JusticeStack is proposed.

DAKSH India’s ‘Next Generation Justice Platform’ 64 visualises virtual courts by mapping tech’s intervention every step of the way in the lifecycle of a case. This includes online solutions for alternate dispute resolution, filing and payment, notification, summons, discovery of documents, evidence and arguments, judgement and appeal. 65 Their assessment of how sophisticated the solutions currently deployed in digitising the judiciary ranges between basic to medium levels of technology. The use of advanced computational tools involves AI’s application in the administrative and decision-making processes of the judiciary. While India is at the early stages of developing these, cases of robot judges, real-time transcription of court hearings, and programmes that can predict the settlement probability of a matter, do exist globally. 66 In a more detailed analysis, the Hague Institute for Innovation in Law (HiiL), sampled 150 tech-in-judiciary innovations across 85 nations to find that just 15 per cent of them were built on AI/ML and only 6 per cent used advanced technology (defined as block chain/IoT).

Far behind the court digitalisation process, is tech reform in policing in India, where estimates indicate routine absence of access to computers, wireless networks, and forensic technology. 67 For the justice system to modernise using advanced technology, incentives need to align for private players to innovate. HiiL’s findings show that private solutions fail to scale, and often need the government’s support. This support could be in the form of resources or regulations that enable innova- tion. It could also be in the form of partnerships. So far, the authority to digitise government and public services has remained with the NIC alone.

Finally, the purpose of all technology in law – private, government or courtroom – is to reduce costs, and improve access to justice for the citizens. Data from DAKSH’s Approaches to Justice Survey, 2017 covering 50,000 households across India in 2017, revealed that time and cost remain the biggest deterrents to a smooth functioning justice system. About 26 per cent of the households surveyed felt that the cost of litigation was too high; 68 21.5 per cent found the legal system too com- plex, and 17.3 per cent said that cases took too long to be resolved in courts.

Mapping Technology for Law and Justice

This volume aims to go beyond the legaltech products developed by and for the private sector. As indicated in figure 2, we catalogue the universe of products and services based on, a) the interplay between the public and private sectors, and b) their use case. In doing so, we expand the current definitions of legal tech tools to include innovations in state functions of justice, governance and law enforcement. The second classification helps take stock of the state-of-the-art tools. The scope of every tool included in this exercise is of value to one or more stakeholders – lawyers, law firms, businesses, citizens or courts and the government. The technology component in our definition ranges from digitisation to automation.

The public sector products and services are sub-categorised into the delivery of justice (including courts and legislature), governance technology (regulation and service delivery), and law enforcement (prisons, police and defence security). On top of this are the private sector tools. The private side is classified into legal prac- tice management (including law firm workflow management), customer services (including dispute resolution and compliance), and support services (including cloud-based support). If the ownership of the service lies with the government, we classify it as public, even if the tool was built by a private vendor or in partnership with one.

These include products where the government is either, a client, a partner, or a donor. As an example, think of Aadhaar-based e-KYC or e-signature for identity and verification; data.gov.in website for open-data; bharatmaps for GIS; Co-Win app for healthcare; e-Shram portal for employment and labour; m-kisan for agriculture; Aaykar Setu for taxation; India Code as a repository of all Acts; NJDG for courts; MCA-21 database for companies, and the BHIM app for payments.

Across most sectors, private alternatives also exist. These would include, Veri5digital for identity verification, Indo ArcGIS for GIS, Practo for healthcare, Simpliance for labour compliance, Extentia for agriculture, Avalara for taxation, Indiankanoon, Manupatra and SCC for case laws and acts, Zaubacorp or The Company Check for business-related information and PhonePe, Paytm and Google Pay for payments.

The use case of all products in this market is to either bring in efficiency in sim- ple, routine work, or aid and simplify highly complex work. This holds true across law firms, judiciary and governance. An exercise in mapping firms and products in this space is prone to overlaps and double counting of the many features that are developed to cater to more than one kind of user. For example, certain legal practice management software like Sunsmart and Libra also offer service features like time and billing. Tools like Kira and Litera Transact can be used by both law firms and businesses to streamline legal workflow. Similarly, the e-courts services mobile app can be accessed by multiple stakeholders. For this reason, we take a bird’s eye view of the sector and make demarcations based on ownership.

Before diving in, some disqualifications would help fine-tune the contours of the map. Every sector in India today is brimming with digital goods – databases, portals, websites, apps and platforms. Technology emerging in any other sector such as finance, healthcare, insurance, or defence, whether owned privately or publicly, is outside the scope of this mapping. We confine ourselves to law, gov- ernance and the justice system, but we make an exception for land because of the disproportionate burden it puts on courts. It is estimated that two-thirds of all litigation in India is related to land or property 69 disputes. We endeavour to paint a comprehensive picture of this ecosystem. Our sub-categorisation may be all-en- compassing; however, the list of products selected per category is not exhaustive, only indicative. Its objective is to give the reader a flavour of the many products available in the market.

Private sector products and services

The private sector has done reasonably well in the diversity of its offerings. We elaborate, based on figure 2, on the various categories of products and services that have come up.

I. Legal Practice Management

Tools used by lawyers, law firms and corporate legal departments for a faster and better churn in core legal tasks. The core legal tasks are sub-categorised into four: contracts, knowledge, transaction and litigation.

II. Customer services

Privately developed solutions for consumers of legal services. These services cover legal aspects that businesses and individuals engage with, and may not necessarily be rendered by a court or lawyer. Functions of dispute resolution, regulatory com- pliance, intellectual property (IP) and legal training are clubbed here.

III. Support services

Tools that enable secondary functions of businesses and law firms. These tools target operational efficiency so that firms can focus on delivering core functions.

Modernising Law and Justice in the Public Sector

The public sector hasn’t been far behind. In fact, it has attempted to touch almost all major aspects of this broad space as described below.

I. Justice delivery

State initiatives that aid digitalisation of judicial and law-making processes. Tools considered in this category equip courts, judges, litigants, lawyers and lawmakers with the means to access and use digital judicial infrastructure.

II. Governance and civic engagement

This refers to the use of ICTs in the Indian government’s Digital Seva (also a portal’s name under Digital India) or serving citizens via the online provision of information and services. This category includes e-governance initiatives, portals, apps and platforms that are created for the public, for businesses and for govern- ments themselves.

III. Law enforcement

A host of tech initiatives targeted at reforming the criminal justice system are being deployed by state government agencies, with support from the Centre and with the help of technologists and start-ups. These are solutions which can be leveraged by the police and prisons, for investigations, maintain law and order, and increase citizen engagement.

Use-case based mapping

We further classify these products and services based on the core functions that they offer to lawyers and citizens, as in figure 3. The four broad stages in which technology interacts with individuals in this ecosystem are: a) digitised public information, b) self-service or do-it-yourself services, c) user engagement plat- forms, and d) value-added services. The public-private distinction is retained to ascertain the sector’s development across these stages.

◆ Information dissemination: This stage covers the dissemination of infor- mation relevant to, and important for, masses, via website, mobile or elec- tronic mediums. It includes the availability of statutes, cause lists, notices, notifications, and open databases, on a simple web search. Websites of courts, tribunals and legislative bodies make this achievable.

IndiaCode for instance, is a one-stop solution for citizens to access the latest acts and amendments. Government initiatives like Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP), which provide cit- izens with land record details, National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) that

outline statistics of cases in Indian courts, websites of legislative bodies, which provide citizens with information about the Indian Parliament, and state legislative bodies, are some examples on the public sector side. The MCA website also gives citizens access to company-related information. Independent organisations like PRS Legislative Research also provide legal and legislative information. Privately built repositories for court orders and judgements, such as IndiaKanoon, Manupatra, and SCC and databases of company-related information, such as Zauba Corp have also existed in this space, either as an open-access model or behind paywalls.

◆ Self-service or DIY services: Technology that lowers transaction costs by facilitating otherwise tedious tasks such as document filing, tax calculations and filing and grievance redressals are covered under DIY services. This category includes one-way engagement of the user with an online website or application. For example, the government’s Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance 77 (UMANG) app is an interface to access multiple e-government services. Another initiative is the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) which envisages simplified processes for citizens to apply for verifications, certificates and permissions, for grievance redressal, for tracking the progress of criminal cases, and for reporting and viewing unclaimed vehicles. Online filing of RTIs, e-filing of court docu- ments and e-payment systems for court fees on the e-courts website, online filing of tax forms and returns on the income tax website and Centralised

Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS), are exam- ples of services where technology eliminates the middleman. Here again, private entities offer DIY services.

Companies like LegalDesk, Wonder.legal provide standard templates of legal documents where users are required to simply fill in relevant infor- mation, removing the need for a lawyer to draft legal documents. Other companies such as Signeasy and Docusign equip users to execute legal doc- uments by affixing their electronic signature, and websites such as ClearTax allow users to calculate their taxes. There are also companies like Terra Eco- nomics and Analytics Lab (TEAL) that conduct property valuations based on information filled by users.

◆ User engagement platforms: Portals where citizens and lawyers can have a two-way engagement with service providers are covered under the user engagement stage. On the public side, they include citizen engagement platforms like MyGov and the website of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) where citizens can participate in discus- sions and debates, take polls and quizzes, and volunteer for various activities. This boosts civic participation and bridges the gap between the government and citizens. Private platforms such as Vakilsearch, MyAdvo, and LawRato act as a legal marketplace where the legal queries of users are answered and/ or users are connected with lawyers. Other platforms such as Presolv360 allow parties to file complaints and resolve them through online dispute resolution methods thereby reducing the need to file court cases.

◆ Value-added services: Non-essential services with enhanced value or benefits, for instance, solutions which ease complex tasks, or add value to existing legal processes are covered in the last and final stage. These include tools that usually rely on more sophisticated technology, such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, machine learning or tools that can be customised to suit the client’s needs. Practice management software, legal spend management software, and litigation analytics are examples of some private sector solutions. While the government is using advanced technology to provide a lot of citizen-centric services, it has not created a lot of value-added services.

The use case-based mapping keeps the user/citizen at the centre. The first three stages are important from the perspective of outreach, engagement and access to information among the masses. Products in this cohort are based on basic ICT tools. But their existence is a prerequisite for advanced technology to build value-added services mentioned in Stage 4. For exam- ple, databases yield themselves to analytics, and case laws can serve as a corpus on which case prediction tools are designed. While this list of tools is not exhaustive, their spread across stages of sophistication shows most public sector development is entrenched in the first two basic tech stages. However, private solutions tend to lean more towards creating platforms and value-added services.

Building and Financing Digital Infrastructure

Classifying the law and technology landscape into public and private segments raises questions of digital sovereignty. No single entity owns the internet. India has a history of internet shutdowns 78 and it is telling of the government’s authority over telecom companies and has warranted questions of constitutionality. State regulations can either shape markets or stifle businesses. 79 Being sensitive to the optimal level of state intervention in building digital infrastructure is difficult. On one hand, there are challenges of inclusion, financing innovation, and preventing monopolies. On the other hand, there are risks of state surveillance, data security and privacy. Either way, a view of law and technology that incorporates modernis- ing the public sector, cannot be insulated from the debate on who brings about this revolution.

Kitchin et al. (2015), 80 identify 14 ways of funding open digital infrastruc- ture. Some of these channels are institutional i.e. they leverage state finances or partnerships. Some others are endowments based on corporate sponsorship and research grants. Then, there are subscription models such as the pay-per-use ser- vice. Finally, there are open-source models which are maintained voluntarily and are free to access. An example of crowdsourced efforts at collating Indian legal and judicial data, for instance, is the JusticeHub (2019), created by the CivicDataLab and Agami.

Overall, three main views have emerged 81 on the source of financing digital initiatives. The first view posits innovation to be publicly funded. This model suggests that the government should be the key entrepreneur 82 and investor in developing technology for the welfare of society (Mazzucato 2013). State policy and resources must be directed towards the creation of digital goods, which may be riskier for the private sector to build.

The second view topples the state-led model and recommends reliance on private capital for building DPI (Ridley 2010). 83 It proposes that the state should lower licensing, compliance and taxation requirements so that the private sector can get a free hand in garnering the resources to innovate.

The third way is to rely on philanthropic financing, which mobilises private resources towards this cause without a profit-seeking motive. In the Indian context, Matthan et al. illustrate examples of these funding channels. Digital payments, for instance, gained momentum after the NPCI launched BHIM in 2016. iSPIRT, a non-profit think tank, for instance, helped build IndiaStack. The authors com- pare the efficacy of each of these funding channels based on principles of cost, accountability, equity and efficiency, and their ability to minimise market failures. They find government financing to be a more relevant channel for building infor- mation access portals. The private sector is best suited for developing marketplaces and data exchanges, and donor financing is ideal for creating open stacks. For data registries and other open digital ecosystems, a mix of the three channels is recommended. The adoption of a ‘blended approach’ (Kitchin et al 2015) is also a view that is echoed by international organisations 84 on this issue. This blend has come to the fore in many instances where the private sector and civil society have built to support governments, courts, legislatures and law-enforcement agencies. EkStep Foundation’s Project Anuvaad has assisted in building the apex court’s SUVAS; WIPRO Infotech has been the software agency for the development of CCTNs; SBL Corp has brought about digitalisation in parliament.

In the context of judicial digital infrastructure, Natarajan et al. take this con- versation further in this volume through their chapter titled “Sovereignty and financing of technology in justice”. They maintain that in the absence of a state’s regulatory oversight, justice may get commoditised as a service. They divide the private sector into businesses, academia and legal tech companies. Based on capacities of funding, talent, public commitment and risk-taking behaviour, the authors ascertain the suitability of each of these funding channels. Their results also indicate that co-developing solutions would allow for each sector to play to its strength. So far, the NIC has been the overarching regulatory body for public sector digital reforms in India. But the way forward may lie in digital ambidexter- ity, where digital initiatives grow without hampering already established business processes (Magnusson et al., 2020).

Despite the policy push towards digital alternatives, India’s last decade was headlined by the wastefulness of a 2012 case 85 involving a famous conglomerate, the Securities Market Regulator (SEBI) and the Supreme Court. Documentary evidence on money collected via the issue of debentures to the investors of the company was sent to SEBI in 31,669 cartons over 127 trucks. Reportedly, SEBI had to hire a godown to store these documents. The regulator spent close to INR 60 crore 86 on scanning, digitising and categorising this information into a database. In 2022, the firm’s bondholders are still awaiting justice in the form of refunds, which cannot be processed since the documents cannot be traced. 87 The pandemic has acted as a catapult in making technology indispensable and the coming decade will see the transformation of India’s law and technology revolution.

Plan for this volume

This volume aims to provide a state-of-the-art overview of research into, and the scope of current thinking and practices in the area of analytics and technology for law as understood in its broader framework that includes justice and key aligned elements of governance. It intends to contain a wealth of information to survey the issues surrounding technology and analytics in legal settings, as well as legal issues concerning their application in different domains. To cater to various inter- ests and user segments, chapters take a broad paradigmatic view of a particular domain or illustrate ideas through specific issues and case studies. Thus, they analyse both cases anchored in a particular legal setting and approaches relevant across multiple practice areas. Accordingly, the volume is a mix of the current state of affairs, envisioning a future in the medium term, and steps required to realise the vision.

It is divided into 4 parts. The first 3 parts deal with the three A’s of Access, Assistance and Analytics, and the fourth one provides ideas on how the three A’s can be leveraged for institutional transformation by providing pointers for Building Capacity (for Technology development through a discussion on financ- ing and caveats on sovereignty), Disruption (through startups), Effectiveness and Efficiency (through an illustrative case of a tribunal) and Future roadmap.

The first part, titled “The Big Question” deals with the first A of Access to Justice in chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 highlights issues therein, particularly the digital divide in the Indian judicial system. Providing a glimpse of an organic response, Chapter 3 deals with Justicemakers , a new class of groups or individuals who work with local communities and authorities to smoothen legal processes.

The second part, “Technology for Law & Governance” deals with the second A of Assistance to Law, Justice and Governance through technology. The first chapter in this part, chapter 4, narrates a story of technology hits and misses where it all starts: Indian Legislatures. Since land administration and taxation are key elephants in the room when it comes to justice and governance, chapters 4 and 5 respectively deal with technology assistance in these domains. This volume suggests that leveraging technology for land administration should be a key focus area, including for better justice. It has a high potential to improve system per- formance, as the use of technology in taxation shows notwithstanding the initial hiccups and ongoing iterations for further improvement. Chapter 7 presents an approach for avoiding disputes using smart contracts, thus strengthening the Rule-of-Law infrastructure. It is reflective of the promise of technology in reduc- ing the judicial burden and facilitating law enforcement.

Chapter 8 takes a different flavour and takes the reader through a journey on forensic technology, essentially digital forensics, and how it can play an important role in the criminal justice system as well as national security. It highlights that scientific breakthroughs in emerging branches of forensic sciences such as digital forensics, CCTV forensics, drone forensics, and multimedia forensics are a boon for the legal ecosystem. Chapter 9 follows it up with a discussion on technologies that determine guilt or innocence and thus help significantly in the law and jus- tice processes. It argues that forensic science and behavioural science are two sides of the same coin since the former scrutinises forensic clues at the scene of a crime, while the latter seeks to elicit stored crime scene information from the mind-body realm of the living. It also points to the use of technologies such as Vocal Stress Analysis (VSA) and Electroencephalography (EEG), including in high-stakes law and justice situations. Finally, this part concludes with another broad-brush analysis of emerging technologies and national security, especially in terms of the armed forces. The chapter not only makes the reader aware of this high-profile and high-impact domain but also offers suggestions on focus areas for the future in the context of the present preparedness.

The third part of the book is all about the third A of Analytics, and is titled “Data, Data & More Data”. Each chapter in this part presents a story of how data, through analytics based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Operations Research (OR) and other relevant disciplines, can be used to address the myriad challenges in the law and justice space. The first chapter here, Chapter 11, starts with the collection of data. It describes MCA21, a digital recordkeeping system introduced by the Government of India. It indicates its current success, and usage across sectors, and provides suggestions for its revamp to take it to the next level. The next two chapters, 12 and 13, provide a practitioner’s perspective on the use of AI for governance and law enforcement. While highlighting the strengths and possible benefits, they point to key issues that must be resolved for the solutions to be just and effective. These issues include standardisation and ratings of AI systems, privacy violations and lack of adequate regulations around the same.

The next couple of chapters deal more with the judicial side of the eco- system. Chapter 14 provides a thorough and conceptual description of AI for legal data mining that can be used by researchers and practitioners alike. Chapter 15 deals directly with justice delivery itself, presents how AI can aid the process, but also emphasises the caveats around biased, discriminatory or sheer incorrect outputs. Chapter 16 discusses the various ways in which the discipline of Operations Research (OR) can address the problems of this space, and chapter 17 a specific optimisation-based application of OR to the justice system. Chapter 18, the last chapter in this part, provides a much-needed reality check by bringing forth the key pitfalls of data analysis. It indicates how, unless one is careful, data analysis and by extension data-based solutions such as those from AI, can be misleading and just plain manipulative if that’s the intention of the analyst.

The fourth and final part of the volume gives an overview of how the three A’s can impact institutions. Aptly titled, “Institutional Focus”, it begins, in chapter 19, with the issue of building capacity for the introduction of technology in justice. It argues that while the private sector can build such capacity through innovation, efficiency and human resources, the accompanying sovereignty challenges must be addressed. The next chapter presents how startups can disrupt the legal tech space and play a crucial role in supporting the state to address the first A of this book, the big question of access. Chapter 21 deals more directly with the insti- tutions and, through the case of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), illustrates how scientific methods can make them more effective by supporting better capacity planning.

For the benefit of analytics and other technology to reach the masses, the institutions of the state need a transformative change. They need to enable the private sector to participate and unleash their power, while the state focuses on building the right infrastructure and regulations. How such a futuristic vision can be realised forms the subject matter of chapter 22 which concludes the volume.

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