AI in the Courts: What Uganda Can Learn from China

What the report says

Nile Post published an opinion piece by Ugandan legal researcher Sandra Amongin following her participation in the China Forum on International Legal Cooperation in Shenzhen, held from September 21 to 23. The event gathered legal scholars, officials and other stakeholders from 38 jurisdictions to discuss China’s foreign-related rule of law and the wider effects of technological change on legal systems.

Amongin says she visited Tencent and the Shenzhen Municipal Intermediate People’s Court, where she was shown the “Shenzhen Court AI Enhanced Adjudication Assisting System.” According to the article, the tool is intended to assist judges from case preparation through judgment drafting. The system was conceived in 2023, implemented in 2024 and later expanded in 2025 with an “agent case management” function for scheduling, summons and service tasks.

The piece describes the system as helping with evidence organisation, legal research, precedent access, drafting and standardising court documents, while leaving final decisions to judges. It also presents reported operational gains from the Shenzhen experience, including more tasks completed each day, more cases closed per judge and a lower appeal rate. Those figures are attributed to the article’s account of the Chinese court experience.

The author uses the example to argue that Uganda could explore a carefully governed, human-supervised approach to AI in courts, building on existing digital initiatives such as electronic filing, virtual hearings, ECCMIS and a planned judgment-writing tool. She also notes that any move toward AI-assisted justice would require reliable infrastructure, data protection, cybersecurity and clear judicial guidelines.