How AI is reshaping the legal landscape: What does this mean for practitioners and judges?

Across society, AI is rapidly changing how we generate, use and analyse information, and the Irish legal landscape is no different.

Since 1 September, Ireland's courts, legal professionals and litigants have been operating with a new ‘Practice Direction on the Responsible Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Court Documents’ issued by the President of the High Court Mr Justice David Barniville.

These directions follow the Court of Appeal in March 2026 setting out general principles for the use of AI in litigation in Guerin v O’Doherty and 2024's ‘Guidelines for judges on the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence’ published by the Office of the Chief Justice. 

Against this domestic backdrop, the EU AI Act (Regulation EU 2024/ 1689) entered into force in August 2024. This risk-based, EU-wide regulation governs the development, deployment and use of AI systems, including AI systems used by the judiciary, litigants and law enforcement. Specific rules around their use flow from their risk classification.

Taking these developments together, we hope to consider some of the following questions at our CPD event: 

• How is AI used in court? What are the harms? 
• What are the rules? What obligations do they place on judges, solicitors and barristers? What obligations do they place on lay litigants who represent themselves? 
• Do the rules go too far or not far enough? Do these rules and practice guidelines address all the types of AI that can be used in proceedings? 
• Do the rules robustly address the risks around bias, misinterpreted probabilistic outputs and breaches in the protection of sensitive data? If they don’t, how could AI affect criminal justice proceedings and people’s fundamental rights?

This event will be a panel discussion with an opportunity for Q&A. Speakers will include

• Prof. Brian Barry, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin; and
• ICCL's AI Expert Louise Hooper.

About Prof. Barry

Brian Barry is a Professor in the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. Brian's research is primarily concerned with understanding and improving decision-making in justice systems. His research is empirically-focused and interdisciplinary, linking areas such as the psychology of judicial decision-making, the operation of courts, and technologies for judging, particularly AI tools and systems. He was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2025 for JUDGEASSIST, a project to investigate the appropriate and principled development of AI for assisting judicial decision-making. Before joining Trinity, he lectured in law at Technological University Dublin, was a visiting scholar at Columbia University and the University of Toronto, and qualified and practised as a solicitor in a large Dublin law firm for some time.

About Louise

Louise Hooper is Enforce's AI Expert. She joined Enforce from Garden Court Chambers, where she practised as a barrister for over two decades. She is an internationally acknowledged expert whose insight has been sought by the Council of Europe and other international organisations and national authorities. She has advised widely, and co-authored and contributed to several legal textbooks. In 2025 she was named one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics. She is a member of the European Commission's expert advisory group on AI. 

This event is held in partnership with the Bar of Ireland.