AI Justice - A Class War Win?

Imagine a court not of robed barristers and darting clerks, but of humming servers and blinking terminals - Artificial Intelligence dispensing justice in binary code.

Bill Gates recently proclaimed that within the next decade, algorithms will replace human lawyers. As soon as I read it, my first thoughts were "ffs please be right". For many, the very thought conjures dystopian fears of cold machines deciding human fates. But what if, instead, it marks the dawn of liberation for the working class - long patronised and belittled by a self-styled legal elite?

Would you like me to sweep your chimney sir? I only asked for a quote note to be patronised with your "Yes, but where is the money coming from?" in a phone call to a law firm where a working-class accent commands disrespect.

For centuries, the law has been wielded as a cudgel by society’s upper echelons. Fancy Latin maxims, six-figure retainers, and velvet-lined chambers have kept the scales of justice firmly tipped in favour of the propertied class. Blue-collar workers, single parents, small-business owners - they’ve all been subjected to the slow grind of a legal system that treats them like a nuisance, not a client.

“Learned” counsels talk circles around them in jargon, demanding fees that rival a month’s rent. Now, with the vision of AI lawyers, a radical inversion looms: democratised counsel, accessible to all, so we can fight the discrimination in the system, built not in secretive boardrooms but in open-source code.

Traditional law firms are pyramids of power: junior associates grind out hours for senior partners who answer only to profit. Clients pay to climb that structure. AI, by contrast, offers flat, transparent pricing and instant access to legal knowledge - contracts, precedents, and advice - at a fraction of the cost.

A factory worker facing eviction could use the same AI tools a corporate CEO uses to broker billion-pound deals. The gate is gone. Power no longer resides in mahogany chambers but in open code.

And perhaps best of all: AI doesn’t sneer or look down its toffee nose at you because you didn't scoff Eton Mess with them at their private school. Nothing stings like being talked down to by a lawyer who squints at your understanding of “force majeure”.

When a plumber says "Yeah, but did you pressure-test the 22mm feed with the RPZ valve isolated, or are you just trusting the secondary return's balancing valve to compensate for thermal lag across the manifold?" he doesn't then follow through with "are you stupid?" when the lawyer doesnt understand. Lawyers are not superior to anyone; it's an illusion in the minds of many of them.

It’s a performance of superiority designed to confuse, intimidate, and charge more. AI doesn’t care about your accent or your postcode. It gives you answers, not attitude. It’s not a patron or a snob - it’s a tool. And a tool, in the hands of ordinary people, is power.

Beneath the glow of silicon circuits is an unmistakable anarchist promise: the decentralisation of legal authority. If knowledge is power, then open-access AI legal tools are a Molotov cocktail through the stained-glass window of the justice system. No more paying to petition a licensed gatekeeper. Just log in. It echoes the ethos of 19th-century mutual aid - communities helping each other outside hierarchy and control. Where justice has long been privatised, AI could actually reclaim it for the people.

Think of a care worker fired without cause. A plumber sued into silence. A delivery rider demanding overdue wages. Right now, legal help is too expensive to pursue justice. AI could change that - providing letters, risk assessments, and negotiation scripts at near-zero cost.

Why hire a £300-an-hour barrister when you can use an algorithm trained on ten thousand case files? Collective action could shift from dusty union halls to blockchain petitions, enforced by smart contracts - justice not from above, but from within.

Of course, AI isn’t perfect. It can replicate bias if trained on biased data. It can amplify inequality if left unregulated. But let’s not pretend human lawyers are bias-free saints. Many uphold the same structures they pretend to critique. The solution? Open audits, transparency, and human-machine hybrids - systems where communities oversee the tools, not the other way around.

The forecast may rattle the old guard, but for those of us long shut out of power - those belittled, overcharged, and patronised by privately educated, middle-class snobs - it’s a spark of hope. The anarchist thread woven through this technological shift is real: the dismantling of the elitist legal hierarchy and the birth of a truly egalitarian justice system. In ten years, the law might no longer be a fortress built to keep us out - but a community workshop where every working-class voice is heard, respected, and defended.

Because for too long, our so-called “human rights” have been just that - so-called. Symbolic, performative, conditional on whether you can cough up £200k for a lawyer to argue them for you.

And even then, that lawyer might violate those rights with elitist condescension due to your class [Section 6, Human Rights Act 1998; Article 14, European Convention on Human Rights (prohibiting discrimination on grounds of “other status,” including class)].