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03 April 2026
Issue: 8156 / Categories: Legal News , Artificial intelligence , Arbitration , Procedure & practice , Technology , ADR
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NLJ this week: AI arbitrators on the horizon—but law lags behind

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Litigants may soon trade courtrooms for code, but is the law ready? Writing in NLJ this week, Daniel Kessler of 4 Stone Buildings explores whether artificial intelligence (AI) can act as an arbitrator, concluding that English law still assumes a human decision-maker

While AI promises disputes that are ‘materially faster and cheaper’, awards made solely by machines are unlikely to be enforceable under the Arbitration Act 1996. Concerns remain over fairness, transparency and the ‘opacity’ of large language models, which cannot easily be challenged.

Yet banning AI arbitration could backfire, encouraging covert use behind nominal human arbitrators.

Reform may be inevitable: ‘the real question… will be whether it will arise transparently or covertly’.

Issue: 8156 / Categories: Legal News , Artificial intelligence , Arbitration , Procedure & practice , Technology , ADR
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