Provide precise and inclusive public legal services?, How to handle the relationship between technology and legal services well
On the morning of September 5th, the International Forum on Legal Services, hosted by the Ministry of Justice and hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice and the Shanghai Institute of Political Science and Law, was successfully held in Shanghai. The forum theme is "Deepening Legal Service Cooperation to Assist Regional Economic and Trade Development", divided into two topics: "Legal Services and Economic and Trade Cooperation" and "Using Modern Technology to Promote Modernization of Legal Services".
Recently, "smart legal services" have become a hot topic, and the application of cutting-edge technologies such as deep learning, intelligent interaction, and blockchain is profoundly changing the pattern of public legal services. Data shows that the number of legal technology patents has grown threefold from 2013 to 2019, with China accounting for almost half of the world's applications. The theme shared by Han Qiang, Vice President of East China University of Political Science and Law, is: Technology Empowerment - Building a Smart New Model for Public Legal Services.
"But technology is a double-edged sword. The emergence of new problems such as insufficient humanization, widening digital divide, and prominent information silos has lowered the level of public legal services and affected the public's trust in legal technology." Han Qiang said, "How to handle the relationship between technology and legal services well, provide accurate, inclusive, and convenient public legal services, has become a practical issue we face.".
In 2021, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed in the "Rule of Law China Construction Plan" that modern technology should be used to comprehensively build a "smart rule of law", and public legal services are showing a trend of data-driven, networked, and intelligent development. With the dual support of policies and markets, smart public legal services have made considerable progress. In terms of integrating legal resources, technology promotes the application of "big data", which can not only open up channels for information transmission, but also effectively integrate legal resources such as lawyers, notaries, and mediators. Public legal services have shifted from decentralization to intensification. In terms of improving legal literacy, technology has built a convenient intelligent auxiliary platform for law enforcement and judicial personnel, promoting the improvement of professional level; At the same time, the people can obtain legal knowledge and services at a low cost. In terms of promoting legal publicity, technology promotes the optimization and integration of legal publicity content, precise promotion, and achieves wide coverage, deep implementation, and strong effectiveness.
Han Qiang believes that the governance dilemma of new public legal services in the era of technology includes: it is difficult for online legal services to engage in in-depth discussions on issues, nor can they solve relatively complex legal problems, which cannot be compared to the effectiveness of face-to-face services; The existence of the digital divide will lead to new inequalities, and the poor and vulnerable groups who are the main targets of public legal services are less likely to use digital service tools; Although data sharing can be achieved within the judicial administrative system through the "data collection project", data processing is still carried out by departments with segmented sections, reducing the effectiveness of legal big data systems.
He proposed the basic idea of technology empowering the reform of public legal services: adhering to the people-centered approach and achieving digital inclusiveness; Persist in data empowerment and strengthen overall collaboration; Adhere to the guidance of reform and develop new forms of legal services. On the one hand, we need to create new forms of "legal+digital" services, encourage legal technology, legal new media, legal think tanks, etc. to play an innovative role as a source of policy. On the other hand, we need to form a public legal service industry cluster, play a radiating and driving role in the upstream and downstream industrial chains, and improve the service level of accounting, asset evaluation, intellectual property and other legal enterprises; Adhere to the principle of putting talents first and cultivate versatile legal talents.