You can’t ignore evidence just because it ruins your argument!

As AI produces more and more of today’s content, humans may find it harder to read and digest it all.

‘AI slop’ is the term that’s been coined.

It’s almost ironic that pages and pages of words can now be produced at the touch of a button, at a time when our attention spans are narrower than ever.

Reading and comprehension skills are exponentially lacking - I see this in almost every Battle of the Barristers session I run.

In a court of law, every word carries weight. Interpretation and context can swing a whole outcome.

Take one courtroom trial I ran. The evidence referred to possible names that had been discussed between the defendant and his mistress for a future child they planned to have. The prosecution team didn’t read this piece of evidence thoroughly and assumed that the couple already had a child. They conjured up an entire family situation that didn’t actually exist, embellishing and assuming detail after detail.

This wasn’t picked up until one of their team, in their role as barrister for the prosecution, confidently described this fictional offspring and family set-up in his evidential argument. The defence team wiped the floor with him. It was a memorable demonstration of how much difference a couple of words can make.

I love facilitating Battle of the Barristers’ experiences. Participants are divided into prosecution and defence teams before being given evidence from a real criminal case. They must examine it, decide what supports their assigned position, and build an argument that can withstand the scrutiny of the other side. By the time the debate begins, most participants have become surprisingly invested in securing the outcome they believe their evidence deserves.

That evidence doesn’t always say what they think it says.

In relation to the same case, another defence team repeatedly referred to an open ground-floor window, but they never once considered that this may have offered an alternative entry point for a perpetrator. The possibility was right in front of them and would have added a lot of weight to their case, yet they left it untouched. They’d become so focused on their version of events that this important, real-life detail just didn’t register.

Another team developed a firm relationship between a defendant and a police officer living on the same street. In their version, conversations had taken place and information had passed between them. Unfortunately, the evidence contained several references confirming that the men had never spoken to each other directly.

Another Battle of the Barristers’ case produced a defence argument that the accused could have removed all his clothes before bludgeoning his wife to death. This was offered as an explanation as to why he had no visible blood on him when seen fully dressed in public only seven minutes later. It was certainly creative, but it left the team with a fairly unrealistic turn of events. Their defendant not only had to have committed an extremely violent murder, he also had to have cleaned himself and the bathroom extremely thoroughly, without dampening a towel, and get to a tram stop within that same timeframe.

We’ve all missed a word that altered the meaning of a message, or read the beginning of something before deciding we already knew the rest. Battle of the Barristers simply creates an environment in which those habits are exposed.

Skimming is useful when the task genuinely requires an overview. The trouble begins when it follows us into situations where one qualifying word can change the context of the narrative.

Consequences can reach well beyond workplace confusion. For example, terms and conditions are accepted without being read, medical instructions are half-remembered, and online posts are shared because the headline confirms something we already believe.

AI adds another layer to this, although it didn’t create the habit. We can now generate summaries of documents we might once have read ourselves, which is useful until the summary becomes a substitute for understanding. If something important has been omitted, we’d be blithely unaware. It could well be that this lost clause or definition is never needed or referred to, but if it is, it will be when something has gone horribly wrong.

The answer isn’t to insist that every document must always be read from beginning to end. It’s to retain the judgement to recognise when a summary is sufficient and when original wording deserves our full attention.

Battle of the Barristers makes the cost of getting that wrong entertaining. Outside of these sessions, however, the consequences may not be something we can laugh about.