Lessons for the Courts from AI’s Introduction into Arbitration

Welcome, everyone, to the next episode of the Court ODR podcast. My name is Colin Rule. I'm CEO of odr.com, and I am delighted today to be joined by my friend Stacy, who is a district court judge in the 23rd Judicial District, the state of Colorado. She is an experienced arbitrator and mediator, and she was a neutral since 2021. But she also is a proud alum of Stanford Law School, right up the road. So Stacy, thank you so much for being with me here today.

Thank you, Colin. It's my pleasure.

We should also say the way that we met each other in the first place is through your mom, Becky, who, many, many people know, not only from her time on the Supreme Court in Colorado, but as the founder of IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. And I think you've done some work with IAALS over the years as well, right?

That's right.

Yeah. So I wanna talk to you today about sort of the future of the judiciary and AI and everything that's coming together. You and I have had some really interesting conversations sort of about how technology is affecting the work of judges. So why don't you just talk a little bit about your practice and, and how you found your way to your judgeship?

Sure. So when I came out of law school, I did a clerkship here in Colorado, and then went to a law firm, a, an old, historic Denver law firm, had been around for about 100 years here in Denver. Since then, has joined forces with, um, national and then an international law firm, so it's much, much bigger. But I wanted to do litigation, and I had some sort of particular interest areas, but I was very attracted to the firm because it was general. So I got pretty diverse litigation experience at the firm, and a lot of courtroom experience, which was, you know, that cannot be taken for granted by a young lawyer. After having done that for a number of years, I then, helped to co-found an arbitration and mediation boutique based here in Denver, though we did arbitrations and mediations sort of region-wide and to a certain extent across the country. So also got pretty diverse experience in that field as well, doing all types of cases, primarily commercial cases, in both arbitration and mediation. And then I came onto the district court bench here in Colorado just a little over a year ago, where I have a civil docket

It's amazing because you've had your hands on so many parts of the legal elephant. You know, you have the cred 'cause you've been in the trenches as a litigator, plus you've seen it from the arbitration and mediation side, and now you see it from the judge side. So, one of the first questions I want to ask you is, you know, being an arbitrator and a mediator, you know, you take a certain perspective on some of these cases, and now you're a judge. And so what are your thoughts on the differences in, in the roles?

Ooh, the differences in the roles are, I mean, each of these sort of three roles, I will say generally, you know, one as a litigator, one as a private neutral, an arbitrar- arbitrator and mediator, and then one as a judge, are very, very different. I'm so grateful for the arbitration and mediation experience coming onto the bench because I think it was great training. However, the way that cases are handled are, it's just so different, in each role So, you know, in that respect, I suppose I'll let you guide me.

Yeah

the differences between- those roles do you wanna talk about?

So, you know, I think a lot of arbitrators, I mean, I work with a lot of arbitrators who were former judges, right? And I think, arbitrators who come from just the litigation practice, I think they don't think about disputes the same way that judges who become arbitrators. I mean, I, some of the judges who become arbitrators, the joke is that they, you know, they arbitrate with a gavel, you know, because you have a lot of credibility from your time on the bench. And I think obviously when you are a judge, you are imbued with a lot of civic responsibility. This is public service. Whereas an arbitrator, you know, you're being invited in by the parties to a certain extent due to your expertise and your neutrality. But the, the task of looking at a case and evaluating the evidence and rendering a decision is the same. So I, I, that was kind of what I was trying to get at, and the reason why I'm asking the question is because obviously technology is taking over in the dispute resolution- Yeah We now have AI arbitrators, we have AI mediators, we have AI ombuds, we have AI coaches, and they're growing, very, very quickly, and we haven't really yet seen that on the bench, but I think it's coming. So I kind of want you to talk about sort of what your perspective was as an arbitrator and what your perspective is as a judge, and then maybe we can glide that into the technology conversation in a minute.

Yes, absolutely. So I do think you, we make an interesting sort of observation here about the difference between arbitrators with judicial backgrounds and arbitrators who come directly from private practice- Right ... or are engaged as arbitrators while they maintain a private practice as litigators. Which is to say that, of course, you know, the, the place where they spent most of their careers significantly informs how they arbitrate. I think there are a lot of judges who handle arbitrations much like they would have handled cases when they were on the bench. and then there are, you know, there are arbitrators who are litigators who handle cases much like judges before whom they appeared handled their cases. But there are small groups on both sides, and I would say maybe more often litigators than judges, but, without any sort of derision to either side, because I do think there are really excellent examples of this in both of those camps. Which is to say, arbitration creates a lot of space for innovation.

Hmm.

The rules are a lot more flexible And the process, is much less rigid. That is, you know, when the arbitrator can sort of get with the parties and figure out what makes the most sense for this case, there is an opportunity to tailor-make a process in a way that is not available in court.

Fascinating ...

as a judge, I have some flexibility, but, you know, the, the civil rules are what they are, and also there's sort of rhythm that I need to follow because I have so many cases at one time, that, you know, I'm not as available to do these sort of handcrafted solutions for each case.

I'm sorry, finish what we were gonna say.

I mean, I think it segues very nicely into what you're talking about with respect to technology because, you know, what arbitrators and mediators and judges are doing, with technology in adjudicating cases, really depends on the individual arbitrators or the individual judges' willingness to innovate. In my experience so far, there has been s- no sort of top-down mandate on you shall, you know, use this kind of technology, especially cutting-edge technology. You know, you must use email, but other than that, you know, I have a, a software that I use to d- through which I receive my filings, as a judge. But other than that- You know, the technology is really what, what an o- a judicial officer or an arbitrator wants to use technology-wise is really up to them. So, how innovative they are has a significant impact on the technology that they're using case to case.

Yeah. This raises a fascinating point for me. I remember, I'm not an arbitrator, I'm a mediator. Everything I've been th- been, have done has been on the mediator side, but I built a lot of software for arbitration. I work with, obviously we're part of the American Arbitration Association, and when I first learned about the arbitration process, I learned about procedural orders at the- Mm-hmm ... sort of at the beginning, and I thought, "Well, this is boring," you know? "It's gotta be the same thing every time. It's kinda cookie cutter." But as you say, it is an opportunity for innovation.

Yes.

the beauty of dispute resolution is we can be very creative in designing a process. I mean, I think as a mediator, I'm there to assist the parties in their negotiation, and if they decide they wanna play a game of checkers and whoever wins gets the money, you know, c'est la vie, right? We can- It, it, it's, as long as they're bought in and there's transparency and, you know. And I think the same is true somewhat in arbitration, and I, I, there were a lot of things that I assumed were set in stone about arbitration, and the more I learned about it, the r- more I realized, no, all of this is negotiable. You know, a lot of people presume that arbitration is confidential. Well, it is if the parties agree that it is. But again- Mm-hmm ... it, it has to do with their agreement. Now, I can see from a judge perspective, you don't have that same level of, you know, blank piece of paper. Like, how do you guys wanna resolve this, you know? Like, let's come up with a process. You know, you're sort of locked into a process that's prescribed, by the court. So, and, and also your volumes are so much higher, too, right? I mean, I, I think, I, like, what do, how does your case volume as an arbitrator compare to your case volume as a judge?

Oh, I mean magnitude, huge magnitudes. Right. You know, I carry hundreds of cases, as a civil judge and, you know, the triple A would absolutely not allow that in arbitration.

So now let's get to the technology piece, 'cause you did allude to that. So there are certain technology tools, that you're provided in the court to manage your caseload, but again, I imagine they're pretty much set in stone as the process is kind of set in stone. So, talk about that a little bit.

Yeah. So I mean, there, there are some things like in any workplace where, you know, that's a sort of entity-wide piece of software that we use to communicate information. You know, I have an email account, that I use for internal communications and, but most of the external, information that I'm getting for a given case is coming through our e-filing system. And that is, you know, it is statewide for every case. Mm-hmm. That is how things are filed. Whether that- that's a, a self-represented litigant who is taking a filing to the help desk downstairs and giving it to the clerk's office, you know, that's being uploaded into the system, or whether that's an attorney who's e-filing because the attorney has a login to this particular system and, they can just sort of input documents directly into it.

Right.

That is and has been, the sort of way of things in Colorado, though we've, progressively increased to more and more e-filing, and now that's really all we do.

Right.

But that is, you know, every judge in Colorado has the same system that I have. And then we all have, access to Westlaw, including some of Westlaw's AI features, though not all of them. Mm-hmm. Those are really the sort of staples of the software that we're provided, you know, in addition to Microsoft Word and, you know, basic things like that.

Office

but in terms of, you know, technological communication and, and more advanced processing, those are the three buckets.

Well, I just, finished a project working with, an arbitrator who's a good friend of mine who's based in the US, but she recently just moved back to Europe, and, we used AI and vibe coding to build a new case flow for her, because she was dealing with certain kinds of cases and she wanted to gather the information in a certain way and then share it with the parties progressively, where she could come in and sort of vet it first and then open it more widely. The power of these AI-assisted coding tools, it, you know, it's almost like jazz. You can just say, "Well, how about we make it work this way?" And then you go wave your magic wand, and then it works. I- that is a very, very difficult thing to do when you're building technology tools, A, which are public funded, B, which are for the entire state. So making changes, you know, is, is, is quite, quite difficult, to do to a big system like that. I mean, it's a huge multi-year project. So that I'm, that I imagine is another difference between being a private practitioner and a judge.

Yes. Huge difference. You know, as a private practitioner, you know, when I was an arbitrator and a mediator, that's what I was doing when, you know, ChatGPT sort of came onto the public scene and all of us- Right started thinking about AI in a very different way. So I don't have a lot of experience as a litigator, though I try to make it my business to understand at least some of what's going on with respect to AI in law firms.

Right.

When I was in the mediation and arbitration shop, it was... We were experimenting with a lot of AI. We were piloting different software. We were using it in different ways. We were really trying to be pretty cutting edge- Mm ... in terms of how we could do it, and that was facilitated by two things. One is, you know, there was no bureaucracy. I had a couple of partners and, we all worked together to try to figure out what solutions made the most sense for us. But also because, in, within an arbitration or within a mediation, you know, those are creatures of contract. And so when I went to the parties and said, "Here's what I want to do, and here's why I think it benefits you and it benefits me, and I'm gonna be transparent about it," we could, I could then, you know, feel comfortable moving forward using AI in a thoughtful way, in- Right in compliance with a variety of guidelines that existed at the time and continue to persist. Um, you know, I certainly don't mean to diminish any of that, but it was feasible. Within the judiciary, of course, there are much... A lot of the considerations are the same, right? What we care about is quality of the output, we care about confidentiality, but then on the logistical side, There are, it is, it is night and day because, you know, the, the amount of, data that we deal with and the platform on which we receive that data is... I mean, it's, it's a little overwhelming.

Right.

Right. And, and then, you know, you have judicial officers statewide who are all trying to do different things. So trying to figure out a platform that, that serves so many different functions all at the same time.

Well, and I- obviously we live in a society that's being transformed by AI, and I know your years, in the litigation trenches were all pre, really, the LLM revolution. But certainly- Mm-hmm ... that's changing law big time, right? You see all of these huge multi-billion dollar efforts to bring, AI and technology into, into, law firms, and it's transforming dispute resolution, obviously, and I'm kind of on the front line of that in terms of arbitrators and mediators trying to wrap their heads around, well, what's the appropriate role of AI in these processes, and what are, what do parties expect, and what guardrails do we need to put on it? But both of those fields, the law and dispute resolution, as you say, are in the private sector, so it's subject to competitive pressure. And obviously practitioners wanna be on the bleeding edge 'cause you don't wanna get left behind. And, and I think- Mm-hmm ... you know, the ABA has put out professional rules that say, well, you know, lawyers have to be smart about how to utilize these tools, because eventually you're not gonna be able to charge parties, you know, for 10 hours of work to write a prenup if you could do it with AI in an hour. You know, it's professionally irresponsible not to understand that. But obviously the courts are a different beast, right? The courts are not subject to the competitive pressure. If you don't like the service you're getting from the courts, you can't storm out in a huff and go to the other comp- go to the other court. You know, there's really one system there. And, and I spent a lot of time working with judges, working with court administrators, working with clerks, and I have yet to meet anyone in the courts that has a malevolent bone in their body. Everyone is engaged in public service. But they don't, they aren't subject to the same competitive pressures of trying to stay ahead of the competitor that's nipping at your heels, so you have to continually innovate. I think about some of these courts, it's sort of like drinking from a fire hose. I mean, every day there's new cases that are pouring in the door, and the legislature is continuing to cut budgets, and it's like, wow, how are we gonna deal with this? Now especially when the filers are using AI and technology to file these cases. So their ability to file cases is being streamlined by AI, but the courts haven't yet put the technology in place to respond with technology. It's a very human-powered process.

Yes. I think you have some really interesting insights there because I, I agree so much that, you know, you're exactly right. There is no sort of commercial competition that incentivizes courts to keep up as technology goes. However, I think you are also right that, like you, you know, the people that I have met in the judiciary are extremely public service minded. They really wanna do a good job. Right. And so, you know, the level of pressure that I feel and the level of pressure that I think my colleagues feel to do a really good job is certainly, you know, it is m- as much as, if not more than I've felt in my previous roles. You know, that pressure may have resulted from some commercial competition in other- Mm ... places, but, you know, the pressure exists nonetheless within the judiciary, and it really is pressure to do a good job, but it's pressure to do a good job under, to sort of do more with less. Mm-hmm. Because as you know, filings, and, and certainly my jurisdiction is no exception, civil filings have been increasing a lot here in my jurisdiction. Mm. And as I understand it from the National Center for State Courts and some other sources, there are other ju- jurisdictions experiencing the same thing. But you know, we are not getting, you know, new judges by the day . Right ... so trying to figure out how to do a really good job, give each case the attention that it needs, not, you know, increase the backlog and increase the time to disposition, has certainly motivated me to think a lot about what resources we have or what resources we could have. Mm-hmm ... and you know, that, like I say, the pressure comes from different sources, but I think the result is the same, that there is a lot of thought going into what does this mean, and it's, is technology part of the answer?

Well, I actually have had conversations with judges who have said to me that, you know, delay is actually part of the court process. You know? It's not, it's not like we're trying to, you know, make widgets, you know? And I think they say 98% of civil cases filed in the US courts resolve before they actually get to an actual hearing in front of a judge, you know? So- Mm ... part of that is strategic delay. And, but technology, you know, I think in the private sector too, and I think a lot of litigants, a lot of customers of the judicial system, you know, they want it wrapped up. It's like, "Come on, let's go. Let's, you know, why can't I res- you know, 24/7." They're having expectations that are set for them based on their interactions with other service providers. So when they come to the courts, they bring that in, you know? "Well, why can't I file this at midnight? Why," you know, "why isn't there a 1-800 number?" You know? "Why can't I get an AI to analyze my filing and tell me if it's incomplete?" So it's, it's a tricky thing when the courts are not designed to work that way.

And, you know, as much as I think that there are certain forms of delay, that can be beneficial to parties, you know, I think about the litigation process, you know, sometimes the ball's in my court and sometimes it's in their court. And for, for the duration of discovery, you know, unless something is going sideways, right, the ball's kind of in the litigant's court, and they need- Right ... some time to do that. And giving them maximum pressure by setting the earliest possible trial date is not necessarily in the party's best interest there.

Right.

You know, even if I could set trial within mere months of filing, I'm not sure that that would, be better for anybody. That said, I am very cognizant, and I fear that you could ask any of the parties before me, that a lot of the delay that my docket creates is bad for the parties. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I think sometimes it incentivizes settlement, but sometimes for the wrong reasons, right? When I was a mediator, you know, I was... I, I came to mediation in part because I was working, very closely with a former judge, but also with a, a very experienced trial lawyer, who had, you know, is, has had a long career with the, with the legal system. You know, we would hear a lot of lawyers counsel their clients, "Well, you should settle because this case is gonna take a year and a half, and you're gonna be- Right ... miserable the whole time." And also, you know, they would say stuff like, "You never know what the judge is gonna do. The judges are unpredictable, or the juries are unpredictable," or, you know, "Here are the problems with the legal system and all of those, because the legal system is bad, that should incentivize you to settle." Mm-hmm. And I always hated hearing that. I am very cognizant that the legal system is not perfect. I hope that we will continue to make it better, and meanwhile, I really am concerned about things that I am doing that create the wrong kind of pressure for litig- litigants to settle.

Right, right.

I am hopeful that, I can decrease my time to disposition so somebody isn't sitting before a mediator thinking, "Oh my gosh, we're gonna file motion after motion and not get an order for month on end, and we're not gonna go to trial for 18 months," and all of the things that I heard said in mediations. Right. I am very conscious, all of this to say, I am very conscious that the fact that I have so many cases, despite the very long hours that I work, I create delay for the parties that is not good for them.

Yeah, yeah, you raise so many interesting points. I mean, again, as someone who's mediated a bunch of cases, like, in judges' chambers, you know? Like, I'm in small claims and the jud- judge or the magistrate says, "Go with that guy." And I am, I mean, I must say I do play up the, the lack of satisfaction that can come out of the formal court process because I wanna incentivize the parties to settle. So, you know, like, I, I had cases where parties would come in with a big manila file folder filled with, you know, timestamped photos of the neighbor's dog pooping in their rose bushes, and they're like, "Well, when the magistrate sees these photos..." And I would say, "Look, let me break this to you. They're not gonna look at your folder. This is a small claims court. They're gonna ask you three questions. They're not even gonna give you a decision today, you know? It's gonna get mailed to you in two weeks. So, like, sitting in this room, we all have the information here. We can come up with a resolution that's gonna be much more informed." I, and I, and I, I don't think, you know, those, those, the bad old days of, uh, dispute resolvers kind of badmouthing the courts and saying, you know, talking about all the delays, I, I do think it's hand in glove, and I think there's a synergistic relationship between dispute resolution and the good work that judges do. But there's just a practical consideration in terms of how much bandwidth a judge has to pay for each individual case, and I think that is something that we, I play up as a mediator to say, "Hey, we can sit here as long as we want to try and work this out, and we'll look at all the photos in your file folder," but that's not gonna happen in the judicial process.

Yes, you're exactly right. And, you know, making an informed decision in a mediation is so important. And, you know, having somebody understand that the judicial process, as much as I hate to say it, is slow. And, you know, we have, uh, finite resources and, you know, I do, I have to be very conscious when I'm spending time with a case about how much time I can spend. I was, you know, no- I- it was probably been a judge for maybe a week. I had an, a wonderful mentor and judicial colleague, and he worked with me closely in my first week and, and until he retired, and I hope he will continue to do so yet still. But within my first week he said to me, "I know what your problem's gonna be, Stacy." He said, "Your problem's gonna be that you want to write an appellate opinion about everything." And it's true. I, I'm getting better, but given my way, I would spend huge number of hours on every single motion- Right ... and to make 105% sure that it's right. I would, you know, pour through every line, you know, many times of every exhibit. But the reality is that if I do that, a whole bunch of other cases suffer. Right. A whole bunch of other cases get delayed. And net-net- The perfect is the enemy of the good. Yeah ... exa- exactly. Net-net, I cannot justify doing that. So you're not wrong to say, you know, the court can't go line by line on every single exhibit that's filed. The court's relying on counsel to highlight what's most important and, in small claims court, the court's gonna ask the parties to try to figure out efficiently what really the issue is- Sure ... without turning over every stone, because we can't.

Well, and this is a great segue into the topic where that I want to wrap up on, which is obviously, AI does have the time to do that, right? You can have a, a $5 dispute and an AI will happily write you a 20-page reasoned award, you know, and evaluate every single piece of evidence. The humans just simply can't do that. You can't find an arbitrator who would be willing to do that, you know, at, at an appropriate price point, and certainly judges don't have the time to go through and, and provide that level of analysis in a low-dollar value civil case. So, you know, now, as I say, the, the rules of professional conduct for lawyers are evolving in response to the capabilities of AI, and we, we both know that that's happening on the judge side as well. You know, there are new tools and conversations happening all the time. How can we bring these tools into the court? Plus, we also have, as I say, AI-generated filings, and AI-generated evidence, and AI-generated motions, and, you know, to have humans evaluating the product of AI is just an unfair fight, because a- an AI can turn out 100 pages in two minutes, and it takes two hours for a human to read through all of that. So what's your kind of sense of where this is all headed?

I think especially within the judiciary, when I think about, I used to travel all over and talk about, AI and arbitration, and in that context I got to work with other arbitrators, but I also got to work a lot with businesses. And when I think about, the progress that even a year ago those businesses had made in integrating AI into so many of their processes, including in the legal departments, when I compare that to, where the judiciary is, the judiciary is just starting out on the AI journey- Right In my experience. And so, I think the factors that have clearly revealed themselves are that you're exactly right. We are... I- I as a judge personally, I think I can speak for more judges than myself in saying this, we are seeing AI-generated filings. And some of them are very well done and you'd never know the difference, and some of them, it's very obvious that they were AI-generated.

Sure.

I feel

that way as a professor when I get my papers.

That's right. In a certain way, I see AI as a potential tool to increase access to justice. You know, when I think about a self-represented litigant, do I think that there are self-represented litigants in my courtroom who feel more comfortable proceeding through the process because they have an AI tool at their disposal? Yeah, absolutely I do. And sometimes that AI tool helps them, and sometimes that AI tool confuses matters, but, you know, these tools I think are going to improve as well. But even now with user knowledge about how to employ them and where their shortcomings are and what tools serve which purposes, there's a lot of opportunity for litigants, whether self-represented or whether litigators, ca- they can use those tools to improve their work product or improve the efficiency of their work, you know, in huge numbers right now. And I think as a result what we're going to see is just more filings. I don't see a way around that personally. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think, you know, a lot of the, the- Reading that I have done has revealed to me that I think there are some smart people out there who are saying lawyers aren't going anywhere, it's just that they may have to have more clients in order to make the same amount of money because, you know, they're just gonna have to do less on each case. Mm-hmm. Simply because assisted by AI they can be a lot more efficient. And that, you know, like I say, from, from an access to justice perspective, that's potentially a great thing. There's huge unmet legal need in term- b- by, you know, people who have legal problems but they can't afford a lawyer. Right. You know, if lawyers, if there are lawyers, and, you know, maybe it'll be all lawyers, maybe it'll be a specific section of, sector of lawyers, but who can provide some of those services less expensively because they're using AI to create efficiencies, from an access to justice perspective, that's very promising. But it means that, you know, there's likely more litigation or more filings per case or whatever it may mean, and the resources in the judiciary, as far as I can see, are going to remain pretty static-

Hmm ...

in terms of human capital. So then the question is, how can those humans in the judiciary decide more cases and, and decide more motions, with the same number... You know, there are judges who are gonna work harder and all of this thing. You know, there's a little bit of play here. Mm-hmm. But generally speaking, with the same amount of resources I think that we as a judiciary, are gonna have to do some really good thinking about how to leverage some of these tools to improve our efficiency without sacrificing the quality of our work product and without sacrificing some of the privacy, that, you know, we have baked into the system. And I, I don't see another solution myself, and maybe- Mm-hmm ... I'm missing something. But it would seem to me that in order to do that much more with the same number of person hours, we are going to have to really think deeply about how to leverage some of this technology. To a certain extent, some of that is already happening. Mm-hmm. But I think, you know, where this is going is, okay, what tools and how? What tools make sense? What kind of training do the judicial officers and do the staff in the judiciary need to have in order to use those tools wisely? Mm-hmm. You know, where are the guardrails so that we're not sacrificing the quality of our decision-making, we're not delegating our decision-making to the machine? That I don't think would be a good thing. That's not what people sign up for when they come to court, and there are machine decision-makers, and that's fine, but, you know, opting into that I see as a

pretty important feature. Yes. Transparency, you know, I, I, I, I- Exactly ... could not agree with you more. I think about this, again, from the dispute resolution field. If my goal, my mission statement at ODR.com is to resolve the world's disputes through the use of information and communications technology, so then AI appears, it's a new technology. Well, just thinking about achieving the mission that I have, AI is an incredible asset because- Yep ... we can expand the reach of what we do. We can, you know, reach many more people and a- at prices that were, are, are possible for them, as opposed to what we could do before. So you'd think that's a good thing, but of course, there's a lot of possible downsides, and obviously from the judicial context, it's the same thing. If you think the objective is providing fast, fair, and just resolutions to citizens, because that's an important part of civ- civil society, well, AI, you can see how that would be a great thing, right? And expanding the reach and opening the doors of the legal system and having many, many more people get access to justice. But we have to be cognizant of all of the potential downsides, and that's why I agree with you 100%, we gotta put guardrails in place to make sure we use these tools. But in terms of achieving the objective of the justice system, hopefully when we learn to civilize this technology, it will become a huge boon to achieving the same objectives we had even back 100 years ago. You know, the objectives haven't changed. It's the what hasn't changed, but the how has changed.

That's exactly right, and I see enormous opportunity in the new how I think that, you know, given what I do, so much of what I do is information processing . And some of that is on the case management side. You know, I see huge opportunity for more automation on the case management side in a way that would not, you know, involve any substantive decision-making. It's just how do we get to me the information that I need to know when I sit down at my desk, you know? What, what am I gonna do today? Who needs me the most? What are the cases that are coming up, and what do I need to do in those cases? How do we get the filings to me that have been input in the system without spending an enormous amount of person hours doing that? And then on the substantive side, research is something at which AI is properly trained can really excel. And so how can I get my hands on the best possible information quickly, about what other judges have done in order to make my decisions? And those to me seem like we... AI could make huge positive impacts.

Well, and to think about, you know, you as a judge sitting in your chair, if there was sort of a, a cloud of AI assistants who were doing all of that work, you know, sorting through all the information that was coming in, doing the research, and then posing to you, providing all the information that you require to do the most human and important task of actually making the decision- Mm I think everybody would be comfortable with that vision of a future of where things are headed with these AIs. But, uh-

Well-

Yeah

And that's, you know, that's the hard... I think there are sort of two things that come to mind. You know, one is how do... You know, what information do I need and what information are we screening out? You're exactly right. That's gonna be a huge piece. The next piece is gonna be, you know, security and privacy and the things that, the private sector worries about, too, and our- Sure ... courts worry, too. And the last piece, I think, which is somewhat unique to j- the judiciary is going to be public trust and confidence in- Mm-hmm the legal system. Mm-hmm. It's so important and, you know, I spend my time... The, the thing I think about the most during the day as I'm making my decisions is I, I need to create and implement a process that- That assures all of the parties before me that the process is fair. They might not like the outcome, you know- Yes j- judges declare winners and losers. That's part of my job. But it's so important to me that I am doing everything I can, to help people believe and see that the process is fair. That's something that I think AI could undermine if we don't do this well, and so then that from my perspective is pretty unique to the judiciary.

Well, Stacy, I think that's a great place to leave it, and, uh, your commitment to your public service in your role, uh, shines through in everything that you're saying. So Colorado is very lucky, uh, to have you on the bench. But I, I can't thank you enough for taking this, the time today, and hopefully this is the first of many conversations. It'll be interesting to see five, 10 years out, maybe we can, we can set a date in our Outlook and look back and see how the judiciary was changed by all of these tools. But I, I really appreciate you taking the time for the conversation today.

Oh, Colin, I'm so grateful to you. I'm so pleased that minds as great as yours are devoted to the problems of our legal system, to making it better and fairer and more efficient and getting people the resolutions that they need.

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