For years, legal tech has focused on helping us better navigate the laws we already have—AI for contract review, analytics for case law, and blockchain for smart contracts. But a new shift is emerging: instead of tech adapting to law, the law itself may begin evolving to suit technology.
Traditionally, statutes are drafted for human interpretation, leaving courts and agencies to fill in the blanks. But what if lawmakers began writing laws in a machine-readable, code-like structure from the start? Imagine statutes crafted with precise logic, standardized definitions, and minimal ambiguity—designed to work seamlessly with AI and automated compliance tools.
Courts With Less Room for Interpretation
Courts today spend significant energy unpacking vague statutes. If laws were written more like decision trees, judges would still rule on facts and constitutionality, but much of the interpretive heavy lifting would vanish. Their role would shift from deciphering meaning to verifying whether a situation fits clear-cut criteria.
Agencies With Narrower Discretion
Agencies currently thrive in gray areas, filling gaps in vague laws through rulemaking. Hyper-structured statutes would limit that flexibility. Instead of crafting nuanced policies, agencies might focus on straightforward execution, with compliance systems automatically testing transactions against preset conditions.
A Question of Separation of Powers
Does this diminish the role of courts or agencies? Not exactly. Congress has the constitutional authority to legislate with clarity. Courts and agencies would retain their functions, but within tighter, more deterministic boundaries. This could enhance predictability and accountability—though at the cost of flexibility in addressing complex, evolving realities.
From Vague Rules to Machine-Readable Law
Take anti-money laundering (AML) regulations as an example. Today, terms like “suspicious” or “unusually large” require human judgment. In a future machine-friendly version, suspicion might be defined by strict thresholds—transactions double the account’s average, payments to blacklisted jurisdictions, or multiple small deposits just under reporting limits. These conditions could be codified as Boolean logic, with reporting automatically triggered via API.
The Road Ahead
This transformation won’t happen overnight. Just as legal writing evolved from narrative to bullet-point structure, statutes may gradually shift toward algorithmic precision. The upside is transparency, predictability, and efficiency. The risk is rigidity—laws that can’t flex with human complexity.
The bottom line: if technology and legislation begin “writing each other’s code,” the legal system will face a profound rebalancing. Lawyers, judges, agencies, and compliance professionals will need to adapt to a world where the boundary between legal code and computer code all but disappears.