This chapter focuses on how AI influences arbitrators’ core tasks and decision-making – a development often described as ‘centaur arbitration’ – while recognising that, for now, the widespread use of AI by counsel is the main driver pushing this evolution forward. We address three central questions: (a) How do arbitrators currently use AI, and how might this develop in the future? (b) What challenges arise, and how do emerging guidelines seek to address them? (c) How does the use of AI by all arbitration participants affect the tribunal’s role and the balance between party autonomy, due process, and efficiency? By examining current practices alongside likely future developments, this chapter offers insights for practitioners and policymakers navigating the rapidly changing intersection of AI and arbitration. It shows how AI may redefine the tribunal’s responsibilities and reshape relationships within proceedings, highlighting the need for proactive regulation and thoughtful adaptation. Rather than advancing a normative conclusion, we aim to encourage reflection on how technological progress may influence our understanding of fairness, justice, and procedural integrity in arbitration.

Access to justice is a critical element of the rule of law, ensuring individuals can exercise their legal rights and resolve disputes through formal and alternative mechanisms. In the Netherlands, the judiciary plays a vital role in facilitating this access, but challenges remain, particularly for vulnerable groups. This paper introduces voorRecht-rechtspraak, an innovative online dispute resolution platform designed to address three key barriers to access: the presumption of citizen self-reliance, limited accessibility of legal aid, and the high costs of legal proceedings. Through a user-centred design and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), voorRecht offers tools to support self-resolution of disputes while also providing structured human assistance for more complex cases. AI-driven features, such as simplified case-law summaries and semantic search functionality, improve the accessibility of legal information for non-experts, empowering citizens to engage with the law more effectively. While voorRecht is still in an iterative phase of development, early insights highlight its potential to reshape access to justice in the Dutch legal system.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) represents a major shift in technological innovation, capable of transforming daily life and professional sectors, including the law. GenAI leverages advanced models to create new content, from text and images to music. In legal practice, it offers opportunities to streamline tasks like legal research, document drafting, contract review, and client communication. However, widespread use of general-purpose GenAI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) not designed specifically for legal contexts introduces significant risks. These include factual inaccuracies, breaches of confidentiality, privacy violations, and potential copyright infringements. Some US court cases have already revealed the misuse of AI, citing fabricated case-laws. In response, there is growing demand to regulate AI use in the legal field through revised codes of conduct and specific guidelines. This study focuses on the mentioned national and international guidelines issued for legal professionals using GenAI. Using content analysis methods, the research sheds light on shared policies such as the necessity of client consent and confidentiality protection and risks forecasted as intellectual property violations and the reinforcement of cognitive biases, highlighting how bar associations and similar bodies are shaping responsible AI use in legal practice.

The adoption of AI in arbitration practice has increased significantly in the past few years. Even though AI has not been adopted to date for the purpose of arbitral decision-making in international commercial arbitration, questions arise regarding its use in the decision-making process by arbitrators. There have been new regulatory developments on this in the past year with the publication of several guidelines on the use of AI in international commercial arbitration and the promulgation of the EU AI Act. The chapter carries out an analysis of these instruments and the current arbitration framework in order to provide a clarification on the evolving position of the law on this matter. The chapter namely explores the extent to which the regulatory framework considers that the use of AI tools in the decision-making process by arbitrators could lead to influencing the arbitrators’ decision, which could lead to delegation of justice. The chapter argues that the international commercial arbitration framework does not expressly prohibit the use of AI in decision-making by arbitrators but that this use can come under breach of the arbitrator’s personal mandate and due process.

Access to justice is a fundamental right, yet for millions of people around the world resolution of legal problems via both formal and informal means is not available, affordable, accessible, or understandable. This chapter explains how artificial intelligence (AI) is making a practical difference in the problems of everyday people through the exploration of three case studies: two expert systems, including both an eviction defence system and a tool to help with a high-volume immigration clinic, and a conversational AI tool that incorporates a large language model to provide legal information to tenants in Illinois. Ultimately, this chapter shows the range of impacts that AI will have on the legal profession, from methods of legal service delivery, to replacing routine legal tasks, or by offering significant support by freeing up resources and providing essential legal assistance to those who might otherwise go without. Through concrete examples and discussions of both benefits and challenges, we invite legal professionals and policymakers to consider AI’s role in creating a more just global legal system.