Generative AI’s role in Nepal’s judiciary under scrutiny

The real challenge lies in determining how far AI integration in the judiciary should go.

In Nepal, the judicial system does not examine the authorship or draftsmanship of a legally admissible document, but it does examine the content, such as legal provisions, case laws and relevant reasoning and arguments. Conversely, a quiet revolution is unfolding in legal offices across Nepal, without oversight by any regulatory body or recognition from the country’s legal system. Lawyers, government attorneys, bench assistants, law students and researchers nationwide are increasingly adopting text-based generative artificial intelligence (GAI) to draft and craft their petitions, pleadings and other legal documents. Astonishingly, even the court orders and judgments are finalised with the assistance of GAI. Although these GAI can be advantageous, saving legal professionals’ time and money while generating documents that seem to have been crafted by a qualified attorney, their polished appearance does not necessarily reflect the quality or reliability of the content they generate.