OUR courts are in crisis: buildings are crumbling; serious delays are endemic; legal rules are labyrinthine; very few citizens without means are eligible for legal aid; and the judiciary in dress and thought is old-fashioned and hierarchical, its often ill-judged attempts at self-reform and modernity distorted by long-entrenched class privilege.

Is artificial intelligence part of the answer to these and other pressing legal problems or part of a dystopian future?

In Samuel Butler’s 19th century novel Erewhon, the citizens of his imaginary country were concerned that evolution in humans is gradual but in mechanics rapid, concluding that machines would soon surpass and supplant them.