The legal expert, a remarkable antinomy

HUMOR : In France, expert preceded by judicial constitutes a remarkable antinomy, that is to say that there is a contradiction, an opposition, an impossibility of reconciling the two terms.

It is as contradictory as socialist and honest or more generally politician and reliable (in whom one can trust). To say of a politician that he will keep his promises, that he will always respect his commitments, that he will only act in the general interest, constitute remarkable antinomies.

It's a bit like saying a cop is smart or a prosecutor is fair. No! A cop is stupid by definition (otherwise he would do something else); a prosecutor is not fair; he is just there to accuse you.

And what about the soldiers who love to march in step, in tight ranks, behind a horrible fanfare playing what they call "military music", another remarkable antinomy! And even worse ("worse is bad enough, but even worse" Coluche), these soldiers are sometimes forced to sing. A horror, an incongruity, an artistic nonsense.

As Albert Einstein said, "Those who love to march in ranks to music: it can only be by mistake that they were given a brain; a spinal cord would be more than enough."

But let's get back to our experts . Experts do exist! But they don't make a career out of it. In the past, I myself was an expert in real-time, multitasking embedded systems, trained in Palo Alto, California. I was the operational director of a profit center in an industrial IT consulting company in the Paris region. In this capacity, I sold a real-time OS (Operating System) and advised my clients in various industrial fields, including the aeronautics sector. I never claimed to be an expert, but in this restricted environment, my know-how was known and I was consulted by an aeronautics equipment manufacturer who had serious problems with the architecture of critical-level embedded equipment on aircraft. Many incidents had been reported by pilots and several fatal crashes had occurred. I earned a very decent living and never had the crazy idea of becoming a "legal" expert. However, I would have agreed to testify for free if I had been asked, which was not the case.

The problem with the so-called "judicial" expert is that there is no entrance exam or diploma. The pay is derisory and those who agree to exercise this function are quite few in number and very often, they are people who struggle to live from their profession and accept the little pay they are given, in order to survive. All you have to do is declare yourself an "expert", put together a file and presto! that's it! No continuing training, no updating of knowledge (science evolves very quickly) and especially no control and supervision of these experts. And the cherry on the cake, no sanction in the event of an error!

However, the legal consequences are terrible because the judges take into account the results of these so-called expert reports to decide on the guilt of the accused. They have nothing else to establish their verdict when the expert report is essential.

This system must therefore be reformed in the interests of justice.

There are two solutions that can be combined:

- Call on real experts, recognized by their peers and their clients,

- Call on Artificial Intelligence, the results of which are increasingly impressive in their

relevance.

The advantage of AI is that its knowledge is always up to date and when it doesn't know, it recognizes it and says so clearly.