At London Tech Week, deputy prime minister David Lammy announced the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) legal assistants for use in Crown Court cases, alongside an AI tool for judges to identify cases ready for trial.
At the end of December 2025, the Crown Court backlog was 80,200 cases in England and Wales, the highest level recorded since 2016, according to Minstry of Justice (MoJ) figures. The backlog in magistrates’ courts was 379,400.
The MoJ said in a statement that AI legal assistants will be developed “in partnership with the UK’s top legal experts and leading AI developers”. It is said that the assistants will support legal professionals with routine casework, including research and case analysis.
Before being used in the Crown Court, the technology will be trialled to ensure the software meets the standard required by judges and lawyers before being considered for roll-out in the courts system, the MoJ said.
Lammy said: “Artificial intelligence has the power to transform how we live, work and govern for the better. This impact for good can be seen in our justice system – with thousands of days of admin work saved for our probation staff, and the advent of new tools which aim to cut court backlogs and deliver swifter justice for victims.”
He will also announce that every probation officer in England and Wales has been equipped with Justice Transcribe, described as an AI tool that automatically records and transcribes conversations with offenders.
The MoJ said the tool could free up the equivalent of 18,750 calendar days of time every year, allowing frontline staff to spend more time monitoring offenders. A similar tool is being trialled in the Immigration and Asylum Tribunals, the department said. It is one of the projects forming part of the prime minister’s “AI Exemplars programme”, which are examples of how the government wants to use AI across the public sector.
In August 2025, the MoJ announced it had hired a chief artificial intelligence (AI) officer as part of a three-year action plan to deploy AI. The plan included setting up the Justice AI Unit, described as an interdisciplinary team comprising experts in AI, ethics, policy, design, operations and change management.
The unit’s website, ai.justice.gov.uk, is used to provide updates on what the MoJ is looking at in terms of AI. On the site, Lammy is quoted as saying: “Trials in the probation system with Justice Transcribe had helped record meetings between offenders and officers, saving 25,000 hours of time by helping transcribe more than 150,000 meetings.”
A probation officer said: “For once, I feel that I actually have time to look at the person in front of me and they feel that they’re being listened to”.
Lammy was appointed deputy prime minister and secretary of state for justice in the 2025 cabinet reshuffle on 5 September 2025, following the resignation of Angela Raynor. In February 2026, Lammy vowed to reform the justice system with AI. Speaking at the Microsoft AI Tour, Lammy said the justice system is in “desperate” need of renewal.
This week, the government also announced testing environments called AI Growth Labs. These might enable the UK’s “lawtech” sector to develop and refine AI products in “secure, controlled settings” before bringing them to market.
