COAT NSW Newsletter March 2025
In this edition:
AI REVOLUTION IN LAW SEMINAR SERIES – NEXT SEMINAR 10 APRIL
2025 WHITMORE LECTURE – 21 MAY – SAVE THE DATE
2025 COAT NATIONAL CONFERENCE – 5-6 JUNE – REGISTRATIONS OPEN
Convenor’s message
As we continue into 2025, I am delighted to report on the success of our recent activities and look forward to the exciting events ahead.
The first seminar in our “AI Revolution in Law” series, titled Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Courts, Tribunals, and Lawyers, was held on 19 February. Presented by Caryn Sandler, the session was well attended and provided valuable insights into the evolving landscape of AI in legal practice. I would like to extend my gratitude to all who participated in our first seminar. The engagement and discussion among attendees underscored the importance of exploring these emerging technologies in our field and fostering a community that is both informed and equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in law.
We are now eagerly anticipating the second seminar in the series, featuring a panel discussion on the practical applications of AI and its ethical implications. This session, now scheduled for 10 April 2025, promises to be both informative and thought-provoking, setting the stage for our upcoming Whitmore Lecture on the evening of 21 May 2025. More details about the second seminar can be found in this newsletter.
Finally, my sincere thanks to Jason Cabarrus for putting this newsletter together.
I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.
Shahyar Roushan
COAT NSW Convenor
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AI Revolution in Law seminar series
Report from 1st Seminar
Our first twilight seminar in the AI Revolution in Law series, held on 19 February, was a tremendous success. Caryn Sandler shared her valuable insights about artificial intelligence and its impacts on the legal profession with attendees in the room and online.
Caryn explained how generative AI works in predicting text based on the extensive data it has been fed, and situated the recent AI boom in its historical context. She talked of the rapid pace of developments in this area, with increased funding, growth and improvements in the technology. She also spoke about the risks inherent in the technology, particularly around security and confidentiality, and also the risks of AI hallucinations and bias, highlighting the importance of guardrails such as AI policies and governance, and the benefits of carefully curated prompting, guiding and fact checking. She discussed industry responses and the various tools available, including from legal publishers. She showcased the technology with a demonstration of its use in preparing summary information from complex documentation. She speculated on likely future impacts on the nature of work in the legal
profession, and took questions from a rapt audience.
The seminar laid an excellent foundation for further exploration of the issues in the upcoming second seminar and Whitmore Lecture.
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Artificial Intelligence: Practical Applications and Professional Impacts
Second seminar – new date 10 April*
The seminar will feature a panel of distinguished speakers discussing the practical applications and professional impacts of artificial intelligence, particularly concerning how it affects the work of tribunals.
Date: Thursday 10 April 2025 @ 5pm
Location: Personal Injury Commission, Level 8, 1 Oxford St, Darlinghurst (and online)
The panel consists of the following speakers:
• Professor Daniel Ghezelbash is a Professor and the Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW Sydney, and an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow. He is an internationally recognised scholar of international and comparative refugee and migration law and one of Australia’s leading experts on legal technology and access to justice. He is the co-founder of Hear Me Out, one of the world’s first direct-to-consumer Generative AI powered legal self-help tools, which aims to harness the power of complaint making to combat systemic discrimination in Australia (built in
collaboration with the National Justice Project). He is also a founder and board member of the Access to Justice and Technology Network, which promotes and supports the uptake of legal technology in Australia's not-for-profit legal sector. Through his work at the Kaldor Centre Data Lab, he has pioneered computational and data-driven approaches to studying administrative and judicial decision-making in refugee cases. Daniel is Special Counsel at the National Justice Project, and sits on the boards of Refugee Advice and Casework Service and Wallumatta Legal.
• Deputy President Shahyar Roushan is a Deputy President and List Leader at the Administrative Review Tribunal. Previously, he was a Senior Member and National Practice Leader at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and prior to that a Senior Member of the Refugee and Migration Review Tribunals. Until June 2024, he was also a Senior Member (Legal) of the Guardianship Division at NCAT.
• Dr Erika Penney is a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Health at the University of Technology Sydney. She is part of the UTS GenAI ENHANCE team, enabling networks of health professionals to create and evaluate opportunities in GenAI, and was awarded two UTS Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Awards for interprofessionalism and digital technologies in mental health. She is a Board Director and the Ethics Chair of the Australian Clinical Psychology Association (ACPA), and Clinical Chair of the NSW-ACT Psychology Placement Consortium (NAPC), and is a nationally recognised educator and leader in Artificial Intelligence in mental health.
• Ms Alisa Kelley is the Registrar of the NSW Mental Health Review Tribunal. Her professional background is in general management and operations, specialising in systems and process improvement. She has held senior management roles across a variety of industries including construction, logistics, education and recycling. She has also worked extensively in the charitable sector, providing finance and operational support to The Ethics Centre and holding a key role in the establishment and growth of Primary Ethics, an organisation created to delivery ethics classes to primary school children in NSW. She brings to the Tribunal a broad range of skills including strategic planning, property management, HR, governance and in particular, IT. She is a data nerd and
has a particular passion for systems analysis.
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BOOK HERE
If you would like to submit any questions for the panel to consider ahead of the seminar, please email nswchapter@coat.asn.au with the subject heading 'AI-2 Q&A' by 7 April latest, and please note that bookings will close 7 April.
* This session was originally scheduled for 26 March but has now been postponed to 10 April.
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2025 Whitmore Lecture – 21 May – Save the date
As mentioned in our previous Newsletter, the 2025 COAT NSW Whitmore Lecture will be held on the evening of 21 May 2025. Professor Tania Sourdin, a distinguished academic and tribunal member, will be speaking on the subject of artificial intelligence as it pertains to the tribunal context. This will follow on from the twilight seminars referred to above.
Please mark the date in your calendar and keep the evening free. Invitations for the event will be sent closer to the date.
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2025 COAT National Conference 5-6 June 2025 – Registrations open
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.
The preliminary program for the conference has now been released, and registrations are now open, with early registration discounts available until 1 May. More information is available at the conference website: https://coatconference.com.au/
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