There are some great ways which Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help personal injury lawyers run their practice and help their clients.
But, there are some major pitfalls to leaning too heavily on AI.
Lawyers who use artificial intelligence the wrong way will get punished. I am reminded of the decision of Ko v. Li, 2025 ONSC 2965 (CanLII) where the lawyer included in her factum references to several non-existent or fake precedent court cases. In her oral argument in open court the lawyer relied on two non-existent precedent cases from her factum.
The problem came to light during the hearing when the Judge could not find any reference online to the cases relied upon by the lawyer as applicable precedents to state the law.
When questioned by the judge, the lawyer was unable to advise whether her factum had been prepared using generative artificial intelligence or whether the cases she listed in her factum and relied upon orally were “hallucinations” fabricated by an AI platform.
This is a bad use of AI. There will be no substitute for a lawyer reviewing the work being submitted to the Court. The lawyer is ultimately responsible. “The Buck Stops Here“.
Lawyers can use AI to prepare all sorts of pleadings and documents, but, if those lawyers don’t check the work being submitted, they are doing so at their own peril.
AI cannot make oral submissions to a Judge. AI won’t be able to conduct examinations for discovery, communicate with a client, or negotiate with an insurer. Sure, an AI Bot can be programmed to do all of those tasks, but the accuracy, personal touch and tact simply aren’t there or at a professional level. And when the AI Bot makes a mistake, says something inappropriate, or relies on hallucinations (made up data), who’s to blame? Will the client sue ChatGBT or Google Gemini; or will they sue the lawyer and make a professional complaint against their lawyer for relying too heavily on AI, or simply not being as present as they ought to be.
But, not all AI is bad.
Here’s an AMAZING use of AI: Quebec City is the First City in Canada to use Google Traffic AI (Green Light Program) to better synchronize traffic lights to improve the flow of traffic and safety. This program is offered by Google is FREE to all municipalities and is being used in 19 cities worldwide. I LOVE THIS! Do you want to know why I love this so much?
Think about how much your City, Town, Community has grown over the past 10-20 years. There are more people, more cars, more bikes, more buildings, more schools, more of EVERYTHING! But, with the more of everything, our roads have changed very little. And do you know what’s changed or what’s been updated even less? The sequencing/timing of our traffic lights! Many traffic lights operate on dated technology, based on dated traffic flows and dated traffic studies. They all need to be updated to reflect what’s happening on the roads today, as opposed to the volume of traffic we saw decades ago. Those updates are very expensive and time consuming.
AI can keep these costs down, and reduce the time for these studies as well. It’s a way great way to get traffic to flow faster, more efficiently, and most importantly; safer in our communities. Best of all, the roll out of the Green Light Program introduced by Google is that it’s FREE, which is remarkable. Google claims that their program can reduce frequent stops and starts by up to 30% and reduce CO2 emissions by 10%. This will also help public transit buses operate faster, and more efficiently.
The City of Quebec made a telling admission in a press release. They noted that during the afternoon rush hours, that their traffic lights were out of sync near some of their busy intersections which caused delays and traffic jams. The goal is that using AI and the Green Light Program, it would reduce the gap between traffic lights so that they are better aligned with other intersections which should lead to less traffic, safer streets and fewer CO2 emissions. The fact that the City of Quebec has come out and basically admitted that their traffic lights were out of sync tells you all you need to know about municipal traffic these days. If it’s happing in Quebec City, chances are that it’s happening in your City or Town as well.
But, does adopting AI replace humans? Not at all! This is an example of AI complementing the work of municipal experts and politicians by using data driven adjustments in order to make cities work better and safer. This is a smart and responsible use of AI. As oppose to the examples highlighted earlier in this edition of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog.
Congrats to Quebec City on being the first Canadian City to adopt this program. I’m not sure why other Canadian Cities aren’t doing the same thing. Perhaps they’re late to the game because of all of the red tape involved when dealing with governments in order to get things done. Or, maybe they’re just sitting out on the sideline to see how this AI project performs. They don’t want to be first adopters. Nor do they want to be seen as putting all of their faith into a flawed AI system. Perhaps they don’t want to see some sort of doomsday scenario where the AI systems have taken over the streets such that all of the traffic lights are out of order thereby creating chaos such to facilitate robots taking over the world. But really. How much worse can traffic possibly get, particularly in Canada’s largest cities? Would it really hurt some larger cities to follow Quebec City’s lead and give the AI project a try? I bet you that all of the Premiers, Mayors and other elected officials use AI to navigate around town; whether that’s via Google Maps, Waze, or some other navigational tool which uses real time traffic data (AI) to get you to your destination the most efficient way possible.