Legal profession should make better use of technology

China's law professionals should make better use of technologies, including artificial intelligence and big data, to modernize the justice system, according to industry insiders.

Zhou Youyong, vice-president of Southeast University, said more efforts are needed to integrate forefront technology into the law system to promote justice and transparency in the country.

"Applying new techs in promoting justice is no doubt a critical way to facilitate litigation. It is also an important method to make the law really serve people," Zhou said.

Big data has already played a role in the judiciary process in some provinces in intelligent judgment, said Li Yusheng, vice-president of the Jiangsu High People's Court.

The local case management system, for instance, can offer judges a well-rounded judicial process and standards throughout the history of a case, he added.

Zhou and Li made their remarks during a symposium on big data and the law held by Chinese artificial intelligence company iFlytek and the School of Law at Southeast University.

"As a leading AI company, iFlytek will continue to beef up its presence in the law system. We will combine some real needs from the justice process with our technologies to make innovations," said Zhao Zhiwei, co-founder and senior vice president of iFlytek.

For the time being, though AI cannot fully understand legal instruments, it is already qualified for some routine procedures, according to Wang Lusheng, deputy dean of the School of Law at Southeast University.

"One of our practices is to form a large data base, in which several hundreds of judges summed up their risks points during their judiciary process. It can recognize easily some systematic mistakes during a trial," Wang said.