Chief Justice of India Surya Kant has called upon India’s National Law Universities to move beyond merely adapting to technological change and instead assume a leadership role in determining how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies reshape the legal profession and justice delivery system.
Addressing the Second Edition of the Vice-Chancellors’ Conclave at National Law University, Jodhpur, on the theme “Legal Technology and its Roadmap,” CJI Surya Kant said technology was no longer knocking on the doors of the legal fraternity but had already entered its core domains, transforming legal research, contract drafting, due diligence, evidence management and dispute resolution.
He said the legal profession could no longer afford to remain technologically sceptical or defer engagement with emerging tools until their impact became fully apparent. According to the CJI, the response to this transformation must begin in law schools, since the intellectual habits, professional judgment and ethical standards cultivated during legal education ultimately shape the lawyers, judges, policymakers, regulators and other professionals who will operate within an increasingly technology-driven legal ecosystem.
CJI Surya Kant observed that a law graduate entering professional life today would encounter a workplace substantially different from that of even a few years ago. Lawyers would increasingly work with tools capable of processing thousands of precedents within seconds, while professionals in corporate offices, public institutions and policy organisations would encounter systems designed to identify and flag legal and regulatory risks before they come to human attention.
The judiciary and dispute-resolution mechanisms, too, are witnessing growing technological integration in the management of evidence, information and procedural processes, while technology-enabled mechanisms such as Online Dispute Resolution are increasingly complementing traditional adjudicatory structures.
The CJI stressed, however, that technological familiarity alone would be insufficient. A graduate who understands only the output of a technological system, without appreciating its limitations and potential for error, could become dependent upon the very tool intended to enhance professional efficiency. Conversely, a lawyer trained to interrogate assumptions, independently verify conclusions and exercise sound legal judgment could harness technology without surrendering professional responsibility.
CJI Surya Kant therefore called for legal education to cultivate not merely technological proficiency, but the judgment to determine when technology can legitimately assist legal reasoning, when its output requires rigorous scrutiny and when human reasoning must remain paramount.
He also cautioned against a blanket prohibition on emerging technologies, particularly generative artificial intelligence, within law schools. While acknowledging legitimate concerns regarding academic integrity, over-reliance on automated assistance and the possibility of students mistaking plausible-sounding outputs for legally accurate propositions, the CJI said prohibition could not constitute a sustainable institutional response.
Students prevented from encountering such technologies in a controlled academic environment would inevitably confront them upon entering law firms, corporate legal departments, public institutions, policy organisations and technology-driven workplaces. Keeping such tools outside the classroom, therefore, could leave graduates inadequately equipped to understand technologies already transforming professional practice.
The CJI advocated instead for their structured, transparent and supervised integration into legal education, accompanied by clear ethical and academic safeguards. Students, he said, must understand when technological assistance is appropriate, where independent verification is indispensable and where reliance on technology risks crossing the line between supporting professional judgment and replacing it.
These questions, he observed, constitute not merely technological concerns but matters of curriculum design, pedagogy, academic integrity and professional ethics. Legal education must consequently subject them to the same intellectual rigour with which foundational disciplines such as constitutional law and evidence are taught.
CJI Surya Kant further urged law schools to move from adaptation to leadership. Adaptation, he observed, necessarily follows technological change, whereas leadership requires institutions to anticipate developments, assess their ramifications and participate in shaping their trajectory.
For legal education, this entails transforming law schools into centres of serious interdisciplinary research on the legal and constitutional implications of emerging technologies. Areas such as algorithmic accountability, data protection, digital access to justice and the evolving relationship between technology and dispute resolution, he said, would increasingly demand sustained scholarly attention.
Such inquiry cannot remain confined to conventional legal doctrine. It would require meaningful engagement with technology, data governance, ethics, public policy and institutional design, enabling legal scholars to understand not merely the consequences of technological systems but also the architecture underlying them.
The CJI also placed equity and access to justice at the heart of the technological transformation of the legal system. While technology in the hands of well-resourced institutions may substantially enhance efficiency, the more difficult and consequential task is ensuring that its benefits extend to litigants in smaller towns and communities with limited access to legal resources.
Technological advancement, therefore, cannot be measured solely by speed, efficiency or automation. Its legitimacy must also be assessed against the foundational requirements of fairness, equality and access to justice. Greater technological capability in courts and legal institutions, the CJI emphasised, must never come at the cost of the procedural and constitutional safeguards that give the justice system its legitimacy.
Reflecting on NLU Jodhpur’s 25-year institutional journey, CJI Surya Kant said the University’s Silver Jubilee was an appropriate moment to consider the future trajectory of legal education. The institution, he noted, represented an earlier investment in the future of legal education in India, and the present moment similarly demanded courage to confront the technological transformation ahead.
The Vice-Chancellors of the National Law Universities, he said, have a profound responsibility in preparing the next generation of jurists, advocates and legal thinkers for this changing landscape. Their mandate extends beyond producing graduates proficient in conventional legal doctrine; it encompasses cultivating professionals capable of engaging critically and ethically with technologies that will increasingly influence legal practice and institutional decision-making.
The CJI’s overarching message was that technology must enhance the capacity of legal institutions without displacing the constitutional values that govern them. Innovation may make justice faster and legal services more efficient, but it must never make justice less fair.
The ultimate measure of technological progress in the legal domain, he suggested, should therefore not be the sophistication of the tools deployed, but whether their use brings justice closer to those who need it most while preserving the rule of law, fairness and human judgment at its core.
Concluding his address, CJI Surya Kant called upon the country’s leading law schools to take ownership of this transformation and ensure that legal education does not merely prepare students to function within a technology-driven legal system, but equips them to shape its ethical, legal and constitutional contours.
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