Nestor Lim (News Media Nest; University of Makati) has posted A Legal Framework for the Allowance of Artificial Intelligence Systems to Practice Law in the Philippines on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Legal services in the Philippines are currently provided by lawyers who must be natural persons that have undergone training in law school and have successfully met the other qualifications, such as satisfactorily passing the Bar examinations, as set forth by the Supreme Court. However, the ever-increasing demand for more affordable, quality, and accessible legal services coupled with the limited number of people being admitted to the Philippine Bar each year is a perennial problem that is expected to get worse than better over the years to come. This situation is aggravated by the presence of unprofessional, unethical and corrupt practitioners of both the Bench and the Bar and the ever-increasing backlog in court and administrative dockets. On the other hand, the rapid advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology have offered a potential long-term solution to this problem. This paper discusses the possibility of allowing the use of such technology to perform the services of lawyers and judges as well as provide a high-level legal framework on how to make this legally possible in the Philippines. The paper also provides other researchers with a number of topics that can be expounded or elaborated on in subsequent studies.