Source: Legal Futures

The use of AI transcription tools by social workers is said to be affecting the integrity of written documents in family proceedings, with legal charity JUSTICE warning of “significant risks” for family justice. Deputy legal director Ellen Lefley contends some tools have “integrated a hallucination risk as a design choice” by filling gaps in poor-quality audio or long silences, while other providers routinely delete original audio records within 30 days, potentially removing authoritative evidence needed for courts to verify or challenge account accuracy. Lefley warned this combination could prevent courts from properly exercising fact-finding functions where evidence has legal consequences and could enable litigants to make spurious claims of inaccuracy (the “liar’s dividend”).

The dossier cites research by the Ada Lovelace Institute that identified harmful hallucinations in real-world social work cases, including an AI-generated summary stating a person had expressed suicidal ideation when they had not. JUSTICE argued that such hallucinations would be difficult for a family court to identify if the original audio has been erased. The police and Crown Prosecution Service joint operating procedure’s emphasis on retaining original audio where AI transcription is used in criminal contexts is referenced as relevant precedent. JUSTICE recommends system-wide discussions to determine appropriate standards for family proceedings—balancing audio preservation against data-limitation and practical storage constraints—and called for input from judges, practitioners, social workers, those affected by care processes and regulators; Lefley also expressed scepticism that vendors alone would change tool design.