39th Annual James Wood Lecture - Sir Colin Birss - AI and Legal Reasoning
Join us on 20 November for the James Wood Lecture 2026. Sir Colin Birss, Master of the Rolls and Lead Judge for Artificial Intelligence (England & Wales), will speak on ‘AI and Legal Reasoning’.
College of Social Sciences Hub
Date: Friday 20 November 2026
Time: 17:00 - 19:00
Venue: Senate Room, Main Building
Category: Public lectures,
AI is dramatically changing how courts and the law operates. Litigants routinely use it to prepare cases, sometimes substituting for professional representation. The leading law firms require advanced AI skills from graduate recruits. Legal research will not return to the old ways.
Sir Colin Birss has been a proponent of the potential usefulness of AI, for example in producing summaries, spotting inconsistencies or redacting content to anonymise details. In 2023, Sir Colin was the first UK judge to admit using AI in preparing a judgment.
As Lead Judge for Artificial Intelligence (England & Wales), Sir Colin was behind guidance issued for judges that focuses on taking personal responsibility for all uses. For example, AI is well known to make errors or hallucinate (such as inserting false case references). AI systems reflect bias in their training data.
Sir Colin also has spoken about the nature of legal privilege, and if it should be extended to exchanges between litigants and AI bots. He warned about dangers in the use of data submitted to public AI interfaces. No prompt in such systems should be considered private.
On legal analysis, judicial guidance qualifies that “the current public AI chatbots do not produce convincing analysis or reasoning”. This lecture will reflect on whether that will remain the case.
About the James Wood lecture
The James Wood Lecture is the principal public lecture hosted annually by the University of Glasgow School of Law, having first been delivered by Lord Fraser of Tullybelton in 1987. Recent James Wood lecturers have included Lady Rose, Eleanor Sharpston QC, Professor Dame Hazel Genn, Lord Sumption and Ian Forrester QC. The lecture is generously supported by the James Wood Bequest Fund.
Speakers
Sir Colin Birss
Sir Colin Birss was appointed Master of the Rolls from 1 November 2026, having previously served as Chancellor of the High Court and Deputy Head of Civil Justice (England & Wales). He was appointed to the Court of Appeal in January 2021 and has played a leading role in exploring the implications of artificial intelligence for the judiciary, becoming Lead Judge for Artificial Intelligence in 2023. Sir Colin has written important decisions in most areas of intellectual property law, after starting his judicial career as a Deputy Chair of the Copyright Tribunal in 2009.
Sir Colin Birss went to school in Largs (Ayrshire), graduated from Downing College, Cambridge in 1986 with first-class honours in Metallurgy and Materials Sciences, and initially worked as a computer programmer at Arthur Andersen. He completed his legal training and was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1990, developing his practice in Intellectual Property Law at Three New Square Chambers (taking Silk in 2008).