India’s courts handle vast volumes of paperwork, and even recording witness testimony can create bottlenecks. "It's writing, writing, writing, all day," Kerala judge Suresh Babu is quoted as saying in the annual report from nonprofit Adalat AI, illustrating the administrative burden judges face. The inefficiency has real consequences: in 2024 nearly three-in-four people imprisoned in India were being held without a conviction while awaiting processing.
Adalat AI develops speech-recognition software trained specifically on India’s legal system, together with AI tools to manage cases and court documents. Co-founder and CEO Utkarsh Saxena describes his team as the "plumbers of the court system," focused on fixing and unclogging procedural bottlenecks so the system runs more smoothly.
In practice, the platform lets a judge dictate what should be recorded when a witness answers a question. Both parties then review the transcript on screen before the hearing continues. Those transcripts become the court’s official record of the testimony. "We aren't automating decision-making, we're automating the administrative processes to give judges back time to do the things that actually matter," Saxena says.
The key test is whether faster paperwork will shorten case durations. In internal studies, Adalat reports substantial increases in the number of witnesses heard and orders issued at courts using its tools. The technology is now in use in more than 6,000 courtrooms across 11 Indian states. A randomized evaluation carried out with research center J-PAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab) is currently underway to measure impacts more rigorously.
Some jurisdictions have already mandated use of Adalat AI for recording witness testimony. A parallel shift is under way in Singapore, where courts introduced AI-powered transcription tools in December 2023.
Adalat’s approach focuses on reducing judges’ administrative workload; the coming results from the J-PAL trial and mandated rollouts will show whether that reduction translates into materially shorter trials and fewer people held without conviction.
