AI in the Justice Sector: Practices, Operations, and Institutional Transformation

Dear Colleagues,

Aim and scope—Artificial intelligence is widely viewed as a transformative force in legal and judicial work. AI systems are now used in legal research, document review, drafting, litigation analytics, case triage, court administration, prosecutorial work, judicial support, and access to justice. Yet most academic literature on AI and law focuses on technological potential, ethical risks, legal regulation, predictive justice, generative AI, automation, and professional responsibility. While important, this work is usually prospective, normative, experimental, benchmark-based, or simulation-based.

This Special Issue shifts the focus from AI as potential to AI as situated practice.

We invite contributions that examine how AI systems are actually introduced, used, adapted, governed, resisted, normalised, or abandoned within law firms, prosecutors’ offices, courts, ADR and ODR systems, judicial administrations, legal departments, public legal services, legal-aid organisations, and other justice-sector institutions.

The central question is: what happens when AI becomes part of concrete legal, prosecutorial, and judicial work, as well as other forms of dispute resolution?

Rationale—Once adopted, AI systems become embedded in routines, hierarchies, rules, vendor relations, data, governance, cultures, and legal obligations. This embedding is often unpredictable. Systems deployed for triage, summarisation, research, drafting, or support may also aid workload management, quality control, oversight, and influence professional autonomy. Beyond these operational roles, AI systems influence how knowledge is produced and shared. They affect how tasks and accountabilities are allocated between humans and machines. They can also challenge the autonomy of the justice sector bodies and, ultimately, the separation of state powers.

The Special Issue invites submissions on how law firms, prosecutors’ offices, courts, and alternative dispute systems use AI applications; how AI-based working practices unfold; how these practices operate within legal, ethical, professional, procedural, and regulatory frameworks; and how such practices affect or challenge governance mechanisms.

Law firms, prosecutors’ offices, courts, and ADR share key features. They use rules, analyse facts, draft texts, manage documents, prepare cases, organise procedures, and exercise judgment. AI can support research, summarisation, drafting, case management, document review, translation, triage, evidentiary analysis, litigation preparation, and complex information organisation across these settings.

At the same time, these institutions differ. Law firms and ADR systems operate in professional-service markets, shaped by client relationships, competition, billing, duties of competence and confidentiality, and hierarchies. Prosecutors’ offices occupy a unique position at the intersection of investigation, accusation, legality, discretion, public interest, victims’ and defendants’ rights, and criminal justice. AI use here can shape case selection, prioritisation, evidence assessment, charges, disclosure, coordination with authorities, and bias safeguards. Courts exercise public authority with a distinct constitutional and institutional role. AI in courts is closely linked to independence, due process, fairness, transparency, equality, accountability, access, and trust.

By analysing the use of similar technologies in different contexts, the Special Issue aims to identify common paths and differences, enhancing understanding of AI’s impact across legal, prosecutorial, and judicial institutions.

Focus of the Special Issue

We particularly welcome empirically grounded papers on AI in:

• Law firms and legal-service organisations;
• Prosecutors’ offices and prosecution services;
• Courts and judicial administration;
• Alternative dispute resolution in person and online
• Legal departments, public agencies, legal-aid bodies, and justice-sector institutions.

We are interested in AI systems supporting the various functions performed within the justice and dispute resolution sector, such as:

• Litigation, legal research, drafting, document review, due diligence, compliance, and legal operations;
• Prosecutorial case management, prioritisation, evidentiary analysis, disclosure, investigation support, charging practices, and coordination with investigative authorities;
• Registries, case management, scheduling, triage, translation, summarisation, and judicial support;
• Case assessment, mediation and adjudication support, and automated or quasi-automated decisions in ADR and ORD;
• Access to justice, including support for self-represented litigants, victims, defendants, witnesses, and vulnerable persons.

We also welcome papers discussing the impact of AI on:

• Professional roles, delegation, supervision, responsibility, discretion, and quality control;
• Procurement, vendor relationships, governance, audit, certification, risk assessment, and human oversight;
• Resistance to, contestation of, adaptation to, or abandonment of AI systems in legal, prosecutorial, and judicial organisations.

Types of contributions

The Special Issue primarily seeks empirical papers, including qualitative, quantitative, comparative, and mixed-methods studies. Contributions may be based on interviews, ethnography, case studies, surveys, document analysis, institutional analysis, participatory observation, system evaluation, or studies of procurement, implementation, and governance.

We also welcome methodological papers that address how AI in legal, prosecutorial, judicial, and ADR settings can be studied. Relevant topics include research access, confidentiality, professional secrecy, investigative secrecy, technical opacity, evaluation, interdisciplinarity, and auditability.

Conceptual papers are welcome when clearly anchored in empirical analysis. The issue does not seek purely speculative or abstract accounts of AI and law.

Expected contribution

The Special Issue aims to:

1. Provide empirically grounded accounts of AI implementation and use in legal, prosecutorial, judicial institutions, and ADR;
2. Clarify how legal, ethical, professional, procedural, and regulatory principles operate in practice;
3. Develop methodological tools for studying AI as a socio-technical component of this empirical field.

In doing so, it seeks to contribute to an empirically grounded and institutionally sensitive understanding of AI’s role in transforming law, legal services, prosecution services, and justice systems.

Mr. Francesco Contini
Dr. Fabrício Castagna Lunardi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• uses of artificial intelligence in justice systems
• emerging technologies, digital tools, and law
• artificial intelligence, legal education, and legal professions
• ethical and artificial intelligence literacy
• generative artificial intelligence in the legal sector
• artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive systems
• decision-making algorithms in the judiciary
• digital governance and the impact of artificial intelligence on management
• big data analytics and construction progress management
• artificial intelligence, values of justice, regulation, ethical dilemmas, discrimination, and legal responsibilities
• legal judgment prediction
• AI, court hearings, and access to justice
• artificial intelligence, criminal investigation, combat crimes, and criminal procedure law
• text mining in court documents, legal language processing, and predictive ai in law
• developing AI tools and uses for legal systems
• artificial intelligence
• law
• courts
• prosecutors’ offices
• lawyers
• law firms
• judicial systems
• alternative dispute resolution (ADR)
• online dispute resolution (ODR)
• digital transformation
• criminal justice chain