Sara Chen

It is true that the impact on SMEs is significant, but the fact remains that this vision remains partial because it does not take into account the institutional limitations which, at times, make legal advice unnecessary. For example, if a small claims court in a province has a cap of 15,000 for disputes, companies with claims of 20,000 are not technically "unsatisfied" due to lack of access, but because of a too restrictive definition of justice itself. The precision of what is called "unsatisfied need" is therefore essential.

It is true that the lack of direct funding is a legitimate concern, yet the assertion that the research priorities of the Ministry of Justice are only a weak "possibility" underestimates their essential role in legitimacy.
Recognizing the importance of unregulated legal services and access to justice provides a strategic framework that makes a roundtable on AI not only relevant but necessary.
Without this foundation, any proposal for a roundtable would lack the political justification required to attract attention and resources, even limited.
Consider the example of an initiative on judicial digitization: if it does not align with the Ministry of Justice's priorities on access to justice, it will struggle to gain support, regardless of its merit.
Research priorities are the roadmap indicating where to direct decision-makers' energy, even if funding remains the driving force.

Let's reduce this to mechanisms: claiming that predictive analytics is merely a sub-part of legal process automation masks the intrinsic constraints.
Automation executes defined tasks; prediction models probabilities within an inherently open and dynamic system.
The causal mechanism of predictive analytics relies on recognizing patterns in past data, which is fundamentally different from executing a workflow.
For example, an automated document filing system follows fixed rules, while a predictive model attempting to anticipate a judge's decision must incorporate human uncertainty and subjectivity, making the local hierarchy unstable.
The nature of this relationship is conditional, not decisive, depending on the ability to isolate sufficient conditions for predictability.

Pushing towards the peak: a government roundtable on legal AI is not a coincidental event, but the optimized manifestation of strategically defined research priorities. The Ministry of Justice, explicitly targeting unregulated legal services and access to justice, does not just "prepare the ground," it establishes a clear mandate for regulatory excellence. Ignoring this influence means misunderstanding the strength of such a ministerial mandate which, by its very nature, imposes a coordinated response to achieve the full expression of its objectives. The absence of such a roundtable, after establishing these priorities, would be perceived as a glaring failure to capitalize on intellectual investment, creating an imperative institutional pressure to act.