AI, Holograms, and Law: The Cutting Edge of Courtroom Tech with Prof. Fredric Lederer

In this episode of Barely Legal in Web 3, we’re joined by Professor Fred Lederer from William & Mary Law School, a leading voice in the intersection of law and technology. Professor Lederer, the Director of the Center for Legal and Court Technology, takes us on a deep dive into the future of the courtroom.

We explore groundbreaking innovations like AI-driven court records, 3D holographic testimonies, and the crucial role of technology in enhancing the administration of justice. Whether you're a legal professional looking to stay ahead of the curve or a tech enthusiast curious about the future of law, this conversation is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.

Key Takeaways:

• The evolution of courtroom technology from the early 90s to today
• How AI and holography are transforming the trial process
• The importance of tech-savvy lawyers in the modern legal landscape
• The ethical considerations of integrating advanced tech in the justice system

Join us as we uncover how technology is not just changing the way we practice law, but also how justice is served.

🔗 Join the ByteBao community and stay connected with the latest in legal tech and Web3: ByteBao Community

Transcript

Jamilia Grier (00:04.754)
Today I am joined by Professor Lederer from William and Mary Law School. Professor Lederer welcome to the show. Welcome to Barely Legal in Web 3.

Fred Lederer (00:14.68)
It's a pleasure and honor to be with you.

Jamilia Grier (00:17.914)
I am super excited for today's conversation, which is really all about technology for lawyers and certainly technology in the courtroom. And I guess to kick it off, I wanted to talk about your role at the Center for Legal and Court Technology. If you could tell our listeners a bit about what the organization is, the initiative is, and why it exists.

Fred Lederer (00:46.071)
I'll try to make this relatively short because it's a very long topic. The Center for Legal and Court Technology began in approximately 1991 as the courtroom 21 project, the courtroom of the 21st century today. We are part of William and Mary Law School, which is the oldest law school in the United States, notwithstanding Harvard's occasional claims.

And we describe ourselves as a joint initiative of the law school and the National Center for State Courts, which is physically right next door to the law school. Our mission statement is to improve the administration of justice through appropriate technology. And the word appropriate has always been key to that. In the earlier years, we did entirely courtroom and related technology. And then,

We have expanded from there. Starting about eight years ago, we became heavily involved in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. So today we are dealing with the entire area of courtroom technology, including innovations such as being the courtroom in the world, the only one that we know of, to have remote life -size 3D holographic testimony and

exhibit display.

court record based on artificial intelligence, automated speech to text, and matters such as that. And we are heavily involved in educating courts, law firms, lawyers, judges, certainly law students, about the nature of artificial intelligence and its potential use, good and bad, in the legal system.

Fred Lederer (02:43.576)
As an organization, we have roughly seven or eight, we can argue over how to count it because we have volunteers, permanent staff, and we are assisted by roughly 32 extraordinary law students.

Jamilia Grier (03:00.71)
This is, you know, I think for people who are thinking about how technology intersects with law, the use of technology in the courtroom for the purpose of making the justice system more effective certainly is a very focused approach. And it is, you know, something that I think most people really don't think about when they think about the intersection of law and technology. How did you, how did you stumble into this problem?

Were you a litigator and then you realized that everyone was using paper and it was snail mail? How did this come to be?

Fred Lederer (03:40.6)
That too is a very long story and my best effort at making it short is that I joined the William & Mary Law School's faculty in 1980. I am now dating myself rather terribly. Coming to it from the Pentagon where I was and to some degree remain an Army lawyer. I am a retired Army officer.

at this point. And I joined Wayman Mary to go ahead and teach evidence, criminal procedure, and also trial practice, trial advocacy. And without going through all the details of how it came to be, we agreed to be a demonstration project.

with courtroom technology back in roughly 1991. Now when the court, when the law school was built in 1980, that was the current building, federal funds were used to create a high tech courtroom. And it was probably for at least a month the highest tech courtroom in the United States with no plans on how to keep it that way. We had funding.

in 1991 from among other companies, the Stenograaff company that produces court reporting equipment. And then we asked ourselves how and what we ought to do with the courtroom. And we thought we might best be a demonstration site. So we invited companies around the world to loan us their technology, which we then installed.

and we then showed to visitors from around the world. We were

Fred Lederer (05:45.004)
We were very naive. It never occurred to us that there might be a massive interest in the subject. And at our height, we were running seven two -hour demonstrations every week. We have had judges, court administrators, and others from almost every country in the world. Our standing attempt at inadequate humor is that we've had judges

and others from every country in the world except Malta and Liechtenstein. We know that's incorrect. We once had a judge visit us from Malta and we've never had a North Korean. Beyond that, however, we have had people from all over the world. And as we have evolved, we support courts directly. Currently in the United States and Canada, we have 44 state, federal, Native American and

Canadian courts and indeed it was only roughly two weeks ago I was in Vancouver visiting with the Vancouver court which is our principal Canadian affiliate and we do our best to support them in many different ways both directly by doing conferences by doing educational programming and the same as best we can and Beyond that

I'd rather not just continue to meander on, although I can if you really want me to. What can I say that's for use?

Jamilia Grier (07:14.855)
Well...

Well, there are I mean, there are hours and hours worth of content we can discuss about the technology being used in the courtrooms that your organization is involved in. But I think one of the things that we like to talk about on this show is the fact that lawyers

you know, really should be tech savvy and to overcome that myth. And before we get into the specifics about the technology that is used in the center, I'd like to talk a little bit about this idea for many years that lawyers are just not tech savvy. We are not good at technology. We should be focused on drafting and the content of briefs and arguments.

and not focused on the effectiveness of how that information is presented or communicated. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that and your thoughts on that premise there. I guess I'll put you in a courtroom setting if you were to attack that argument, what would you say?

Fred Lederer (08:34.562)
Well, the dilemma is that argument is factually accurate insofar as we know. The American Bar Association, as I believe you previously commented in other circumstances, has amended the model rules of professional responsibility in comment eight to indicate that being competent, which is an ethical requirement, includes

understanding technology, at least insofar as it's relevant to the individual matter. Our expansion at the Center for Legal and Court Technology into cyber security, artificial intelligence, and all things cyber took place when Cisco Systems sent an executive to us and said the following.

It's our understanding that most judges and lawyers know very little about technology, and worse, they're proud of it. Can you help us? We said yes, and that launched a number of years of financial support, which resulted in our current activities, as that's concerned. I have spent some time talking to our law students.

It's always possible that our students at William & Mary are different from everyone else's in the world, or at least the United States. I think that's rather improbable. But I can tell you that very, very few of our students have had any significant background in science, mathematics, statistics, technology, and so on.

And on average of once every semester, I ask my students how many of them can explain how email works to me. On average, I get one response per class. And right now, they're running approximately 50 % of them have been wrong.

Fred Lederer (10:47.202)
This ought to be troubling to us in the profession because it means that a huge portion of the world in which we work and the problems with which we do our best to help our clients seem to be beyond our understanding. And the assumption has been perhaps as classic travelers have been used to, I'll learn about it when I need to.

That doesn't work particularly well for any number of different reasons. And that doesn't even come remotely close to how can I use technology in a courtroom in order to be competent to trial. It suggests that we as a profession face a fundamental disconnect between how the world works and what we assume we ought to know about it.

Jamilia Grier (11:44.646)
That really is very troubling. You know, in the work that I do at ByteBow, besides trying to introduce Web3 and blockchain to lawyers that have already been practicing for a number of years, we work with blockchain companies that really want to be compliant.

They want to follow the law. They want to make sure that they're doing things right and ethically. And they rely upon lawyers to guide them. And as you've mentioned, there is that disconnect between our ability as a profession at times to really understand what the business is creating in terms of their product and to align that with how it should

uphold its obligations to consumers. And so as technology evolves and as we come up with new things such as real world asset tokenization, right, we come up with different ways of using artificial intelligence and chat bots to respond to medical and health requests for patients online. And we have obligations of data privacy.

and the list goes on and on and on, it becomes a stark reality that there is no way to get around the fact that lawyers absolutely need to have more of an understanding of how technology works in order to be able to craft creative solutions for clients. And certainly the work that you're doing in really bringing technology into the courtroom, but also getting

students and regulators and those in courts to embrace technology is really, it's imperative.

Fred Lederer (13:45.642)
Obviously, we agree what you just said. We would suggest that the problem with the bar at times goes far beyond what you've suggested. And while I wish I could pose what I'm about to say as humor, it's too often not. When a client consults a lawyer, obviously the client is looking for assistance. What is the lawyer's?

Most important task, might I ask, from your opinion as a highly experienced practitioner. If I may be permitted to ask you a question.

Jamilia Grier (14:25.67)
I would, that's great, that's great, I love it. I would think that if a client is coming to a lawyer, the lawyer first has to listen and the lawyer has to understand whether the problem is what was actually stated. I think sometimes clients come forth.

Fred Lederer (14:41.548)
Now, I fully agree with that, but I'm asking a more basic question. What do most of us as lawyers consider our single most important duty when trying to assist a client?

Jamilia Grier (14:58.801)
to make the client happy if you're trained in the firm.

Fred Lederer (15:03.858)
I would suggest that while that's clearly true, you're ducking the point just a little bit, it's to keep the client safe.

It's to keep the client from harm. So of course, what is the single simplest best advice? I shouldn't say best, except in quotes, for a lawyer to give a client who's asking lawyer difficult questions, particularly those dealing with technology. And of course, the short answer is don't do it.

So long as the lawyer advises the client to avoid the risk, nothing bad is going to happen to the client. Nothing bad is going to happen to the lawyer. And nothing will ever happen. And one would hope that what I've just said is absurd beyond the need for commentary. I'm not so sure it is so absurd. And when the lawyer is burdened

with lack of knowledge about technology. I think it becomes all too easy to caution the client who may be seeking advice about being a startup or whatever. The number of risks you face here are truly impressive and, and,

Jamilia Grier (16:35.526)
You know, I went, no, go ahead.

Fred Lederer (16:36.0)
And I might add.

Fred Lederer (16:40.584)
And I don't think, to be fair, law schools do a very good job of avoiding this particular approach to life.

Jamilia Grier (16:51.002)
You know, I think experience is the only thing that will prepare a lawyer for a situation where the business, if you're in -house, or the client, if you're in the firm, wants to do something that is extremely risky and you have to stand up. And in the business sense, you have to figure out how the objective can be met in a way that minimizes risk.

And then for a client, you have to really understand what are the long -term risks of my relationship with this client. That's a whole other, there are so many different angles to this. And I would even go a step further, which I really do appreciate the fact of keeping the client safe, is with this emerging technology, I at times, even since there is a further obligation,

keep humanity safe because we are really pressing upon use cases that are unexplored and the long -term impacts of certain use cases we simply don't know. And who is the one to judge to say that large language models that are picking up

billions and billions of units of data in periods of time is really in all of our best interests, we don't know. And so then we get down the path of ethics beyond the law, but it's certainly an interesting situation to be in.

Fred Lederer (18:33.026)
We have conducted two conferences thus far under the general title of problematic AI. If all goes well, we'll have our third this February, and it will focus on an aspect of what you just emphasized. Everyone agrees that AI badly used can cause harm, potentially huge harm. And therefore, we ought not

to use AI to do bad things. We unfortunately haven't done a very good job at defining bad things. I once had the pleasure last spring of listening to a speaker who clearly suggested, or stated I guess I should say, we ought not have AI in a decision -making mode for launching nuclear weapons. That seemed clear. Beyond that, however, we don't seem to be very clear in what it is that we ought to be avoiding.

So hopefully we'll be talking about that in February in Williamsburg and in hybrid mode in case you or your listeners have any interest in debating the topic. I agree there are larger ethical and moral questions. Perhaps we get credit, some of us, for attempting to at least engage with them. Whether we'll have useful answers remains to be seen.

Jamilia Grier (19:59.41)
We've spoken a lot about our role as lawyers in this, and I always like to give a bit of pushback and think about the regulator's role in the responsibility to kind of be ahead of the curve and to draft out regulations where necessary. Do you see that the U .S. is on top of this challenge? I mean, of course we are in a very delicate time now right before elections.

But the United States hasn't really rolled out national or federal, rather, regulatory framework with respect to certain emerging technology. would say digital assets first and foremost. And we haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg for artificial intelligence.

Fred Lederer (20:49.154)
The executive order obviously doesn't do it. We certainly are looking into regulation in numerous ways and to some degree have been.

Fred Lederer (21:04.608)
I'll not use the term I was going to use a second ago, but certainly we have perhaps been overtaken by the European Union to some degree. The problem of course, and I think it's a fair criticism, is before you regulate, you ought to know what's good and what's bad. What are the risks we are trying to protect ourselves against? And I suggested a few months ago,

Although anyone can create a hypothetical suggesting disaster, including the end of humanity as we understand it, that's not particularly useful. What is it that we're worried about? And of course, in the world of technology, if we over -regulate, we will of course stop technical advance. But it's not quite clear that that's realistic in the real world anymore, since the very companies that were

stating their commitment to morality, ethics, and so on, appear to have veered in favor of the profit motive when faced with reality. So, no, I don't think we've done especially well. In all fairness, I'm not sure that we could have done much better. I do hope we will do much better.

Jamilia Grier (22:25.678)
Absolutely. I'm in that same boat with you as well in terms of looking forward to the future for more comprehensive regulatory frameworks around not just our artificial intelligence, but namely just a better process for when emerging technologies come out. How do we understand what's good and what's bad and then make determinations on how to control that?

I want to shift gears a little bit and go back to the center and talk about, you know, we've talked about the bad sides of technology, potentially what they could be used for. I want to talk about the good sides and I want to talk about some of the wins that the center has had in terms of making justice more effective through the use of technology. Which one of these wonderful technological capabilities do you want to explore? Because I know you have a few.

Fred Lederer (23:23.296)
I think back in the early days of the development of the personal computer, we occasionally would talk about, you know, we had various different phrases, the software application of the moment, the killer app and such, which in the old days was basically a spreadsheet. I think the killer application

that has been accepted as such and spread widely, at least in the United States and to some degree the UK, has been the visual presentation of information. Besides talking at judges and juries, we now show images. And I'm careful in my phrasing because this is not just the presentation of evidence. It's part of opening statements, closing arguments.

even the way the judges can go ahead and instruct juries in jury trials. And everything that we know suggests that people learn best by a combination of hearing and seeing. Law students apparently are particularly good auditory learners, but the real population tends to be both.

And the ability to show pictures, even if it is simply pictures of text, we will freely concede that PowerPoint has been abused beyond recognition all too frequently, as have its computing products. And that's yet another story. But nonetheless, this works and it works well. It also saves time. One of the things that we determined was that a

Trial done with visual means can be vastly shorter than the same trial without, which has interesting impact on the trial lawyers themselves because usually we've grown up, we're familiar with the pace at trial and that all changes if you try at high tech and it takes a while to get used to all those changes. Nonetheless, it works well.

Fred Lederer (25:44.78)
The irony I might add is that we know very little scientifically about what is particularly useful in the trial courtroom context because there's very little money in the United States to do experimental work. might add Canada is vastly better as far as that's concerned. So what we think we know is either anecdotal, which is sometimes terribly wrong, or it's based upon

work that's been done for things like marketing. We just hope that we're right in applying it in a courtroom context.

Jamilia Grier (26:23.07)
Now before I ask this next question, I just want to say that I am not a litigator. But I'm still going to brave it and ask it anyway. When I think of the costs of a trial and I think of the time involved, if those can be reduced, if the costs can be reduced and the length of the trial can be reduced, how does that impact one's decision to go to trial?

or not, or does it not? Maybe that doesn't necessarily come into account at the early stages.

Fred Lederer (26:59.956)
think the first question is always the same. Does this enhance my likelihood of success?

Secondly, what's the impact of the time change? As any number of practitioners have pointed out, if what I'm saying is correct and we believe firmly that it is, it means you're going to have less billable hours charged against your trial. And the response to that is the increased probability of success, we hope, outweighs that.

And of course, any number of clients have been contesting hourly rates now for a number of years in favor of alternative billing process. This is a particularly good argument perhaps for changing traditional billing practices on that.

Jamilia Grier (27:57.446)
for sure, and hopefully that will move the entire practice of law towards something that's more client -centric and less of the focus on the billable hours themselves. I think we all do need to look at efficiencies in that way, and that's really the role of technology is to create efficiencies. Professor, I want to ask one final question in terms of looking forward ahead. We've talked about some of the various technologies in the courtroom.

Is there something that you're particularly interested or excited about to see happen this year or next year, a particular technology or use of a technology that you think we should all be looking out for?

Fred Lederer (28:40.288)
think there are two answers to that. The first, as I've referred to, is the use of holography. Our equipment is loaned to us by the proto -company from Los Angeles. And potentially, it means that we could have a witness testified remotely who appears effectively to be pretty much the same as being in the courtroom, which would

resolve Sixth Amendment confrontation issues in remote criminal prosecutions. However, for that to become important legally, we'll have to have it used in a real case, not us, and eventually have to go through the entire appellate system all the way to the US Supreme Court. So nothing's gonna happen quickly there. The other area of rapid change is in the area of court record.

as we move incredibly quickly to the use of artificial intelligence based automated speech to text. There are a number of companies in the space. In our particular example, we're using FTRs for the records and we have helped do some experiments with the technology. And that presents an interesting and conceivably painful example of what's likely to be AI based.

technology -based unemployment. If we're correct, there will be no justification for human court reporters in a few years. The technology is extraordinarily accurate, and when done as it often is, it's connected to the digital audio and video so you can actually listen and watch the original recording if there's any doubt about accuracy and such.

Court reporters in our experience are utterly wonderful people. They're perfectionists quite often. They're very responsible. And notwithstanding the efforts of organizations and individuals to stop the oncoming onslaught of technology, I think they'll be replaced by technology very quickly.

Fred Lederer (30:58.582)
So if all goes well, sometime in this coming academic year, you'll forgive me, we're on academic years, we will begin training people in general and court reporters in particular on how to become what we call courtroom technologists. So their jobs will not finish, they will just simply change. Because they're wonderful people, we need them, we just need them in a different way.

And I think that may be one of the most interesting technological matters, certainly affecting the legal professions in the next few years.

Jamilia Grier (31:36.85)
Well, I've always been a firm believer that as technology evolves, we need to evolve with it and we need to re -skill. that example of the courtroom reporters needing to sort of learn the technology that is being used to transcribe and work with it is just a great example of that. I think in terms of how we as lawyers interact with technology,

whether it's in the courtroom or whether it's working in -house, there certainly is a lot to learn. after this conversation, I'm even more convinced that now is the time to really dig deep into this and understand how you can use technology to be more effective and more efficient in the courtroom and communicating, and then also how to better serve your clients.

this is really what this is all about. And what would you say to a lawyer that's listening now that probably thinks that, well, I've had my career and, you know, I don't want to learn. It's too late now. I'm at the end of my career. maybe what would you say to that hesitant lawyer that maybe doesn't think that they should learn about technology right now?

Fred Lederer (33:00.67)
simply say it's never too late. And I could introduce that lawyer to a colleague of mine. Let's say I've never officially asked his age, but it's somewhat advanced and he's one of the country's leading pioneers and he's a trial lawyer.

Jamilia Grier (33:19.57)
That's amazing. That's amazing. Professor Letter from William and Mary Law School. Thank you so much for joining us today on Barely Legal in Web 3. I totally appreciate your time and your insights.

Fred Lederer (33:33.836)
Thank you for having me and thank you for the work that you do.