Wednesday, 21 May, 5.00pm for 5.10pm start
Court 18C Federal Court ,
Law Courts Building, Queens Square,
184 Phillip Street, Sydney NSW 2000

Light refreshments will be served at the conclusion of the lecture. The lecture will also be available online.

Please register by 16 May latest: 

https://coat.asn.au/events/2025-whitmore-lecture/

The lecture, titled ‘Artificial Intelligence and Tribunals’, will be delivered by Professor Tania Sourdin BA, LLB, LLM, PhD FAAL. Following on from the twilight seminars referred to below, this lecture explores how AI can enhance tribunal operations.  Through a consideration of the user journey, the use of supportive, replacement and disruptive technologies are explored with the identification of opportunities and risks. The seminar touches on regulatory requirements, governance arrangements and draws upon international developments in AI to consider how Courts and Tribunals can change to meet the needs of their AI engaged communities.

Professor Sourdin is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Newcastle. She is the author of more than 160 publications including books, articles and papers, that are focussed on justice reform issues. She has presented on a range of topics including justice innovation, AI and technology and law.

She has had a number of projects that have explored the use of AI in the justice system since 2003 and the role of a human judge. Her book “Judges, Technology and AI” was published in 2021.

She has recently focused on regulation and AI with a number of articles that consider governance as well as risk assessment and she is retained by a number of professional organisations and often presents her work to judges and lawyers internationally and within Australia. She is currently an expert advisor on the Victorian Law Reform Commission Artificial Intelligence in Victorian Courts and Tribunals project and has also been involved in the Human Rights Commission project on Neurotechnology and Human Rights. She has maintained a busy practice and undertakes work for both the Commonwealth and State governments as a mediator and adjudicator. Since 2014, she has also been the NBN Industry Dispute Resolution Advisor and a Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney.

Please join us for this signature event in the COAT NSW annual calendar. 

Our second twilight seminar in the AI Revolution in Law series, titled ‘Artificial Intelligence: Practical Applications and Professional Impacts’ was held on 10 April.

Senior Member Christopher Matthies of NCAT facilitated a thoroughly engaging discussion on the practical impacts of AI on tribunal work with our panel of distinguished speakers – Professor Daniel Ghezelbash (Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW) Deputy President Shahyar Roushan (Administrative Review Tribunal), Dr Erika Penney (Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, UTS) and Ms Alisa Kelley (Registrar, NSW Mental Health Review Tribunal).

Participants joined us in person at the NSW Personal Injury Commission and online from around Australia and New Zealand.

The discussion touched upon a range of issues and perspectives, including:
• The opportunities to use AI to enhance efficiency by automating routine and analytical tasks, e.g. in analysing data, as a procedural assistant, as a legal reference tool, in summarising documents (like a ‘virtual associate’), in note-taking and in health diagnostics
• Risks around hallucinations, bias and data security, and concerns regarding equitable access to the technology, as well as its potential to expand access to legal and complaints assistance, particularly for self-represented individuals
• The treatment of AI in court and tribunal practice notes and practice directions, and the need for tribunal members to familiarise themselves with the available tools to follow these kinds of guidelines and directions
• The challenges for tribunal members in dealing with potentially AI-generated material
• The difficulties in identifying whether AI has been used to create a document and the corresponding shift in focus in academia towards teaching students to use AI ethically, accurately and responsibly
• The business case and costs for adopting AI, including the cost and effort in training an AI system to do work currently done by humans, and a shortfall in Australian workforce AI capability.

We look forward to seeing how the themes explored by the panel in this seminar, as well as those covered in the first twilight seminar with Caryn Sandler, are carried forward in the upcoming Whitmore Lecture.

The COAT NSW AGM has been confirmed for 2 June 2025 at 5pm. All COAT NSW members are welcome to attend and nominate for positions on the Committee.

The Committee usually meets every 3-6 weeks and organises a range of locally based activities and resources for members and staff of tribunals operating in NSW, including the annual Whitmore Lecture, other professional development opportunities and this Newsletter for members, as well as contributing to COAT National initiatives.

Formal notice of the meeting, as well as nomination forms, will be sent to members soon.

Please ensure you renew your membership if you have not yet done so for 2025. You can check your membership status and renew here: https://coat.asn.au/join-renew/

ART members and staff should note when logging in to your COAT account that former AAT email addresses have automatically been updated to ART email addresses in our system.

The 2025 COAT National Conference will be hosted as a hybrid event on June 5th and 6th in the city of Melbourne. The conference theme is ‘Staking Our Claim – Defining Tribunal Values and Embracing Our Role in a Modern Justice System’. The conference will highlight and celebrate what distinguishes tribunals from courts, and how those differences enable tribunals to offer more efficient, cheaper and accessible justice.

Registrations are open, and further information is available at the conference website: https://coatconference.com.au/