By Ghazi Saddem | Startup Accompaniment Expert, Digital Transformation Member of the College of Startups
On November 18, 2025, I had the honor of speaking at the Tech the Justice Gap: Justice for the Economy forum, organized by The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) at the Tunis Convention Center. This event opened an essential debate: how to make justice no longer a brake, but a lever of economic growth for very small, small, and medium-sized Tunisian enterprises (SMEs). Through these lines, I wish to share the conviction I defended on stage: artificial intelligence represents a historic opportunity to make justice more accessible, efficient, and transparent, and thus fully release the economic potential of Tunisian SMEs.
Why SMEs Need More Accessible and Faster Justice
For SMEs, justice only truly exists when it is accessible and practical. When procedures are complex, processes are unclear, deadlines are excessive, or costs are prohibitive, the law remains theoretical. This situation has immediate economic consequences: it slows down the formalization of activities, complicates contracting, delays recruitment, and discourages the defense of rights. These difficulties do not affect all entrepreneurs in the same way. In certain sectors and in more fragile regions, access to information, support, and justice mechanisms is even more limited, reinforcing inequalities and further weakening the local economic fabric. Making justice effective and accessible for all SMEs is therefore not only a legal issue, but an economic and territorial imperative.
AI as a Structural Response to Economic Justice Challenges
Artificial intelligence provides a structural response to these challenges by making access to the law simpler, faster, and more readable. When deployed responsibly, it allows the justice system to evolve from a primarily reactive system to a more preventive, user-oriented, and inclusive system. AI can translate the legal framework into clear language, automate repetitive procedures, and streamline interactions between businesses and institutions. In this perspective, it complements existing efforts and supports the roles already in place. The goal is to support justice actors in evolving their practices, serving a more performant, inclusive, and user-centered system. And this is not at all a matter of replacing humans, but of assistance, support, and evolution of professions.
Concrete Examples of Useful Applications for SMEs
Concretely, several categories of AI-based solutions are currently operational and meet specific needs of SMEs. Some focus on access to legal information, offering interfaces capable of interpreting legal, regulatory, or contractual texts and restituting their content in clear, contextualized, and understandable language for non-lawyers. These tools clarify social and fiscal obligations, explain administrative procedures, or guide entrepreneurs in their daily obligations. Other solutions concentrate on the automated production of legal documents, such as employment contracts, commercial agreements, or internal policies, based on models conforming to current law. This automation reduces deadlines, limits compliance errors, and decreases the costs of accessing essential documents, particularly for small structures with limited resources. Specific applications also integrate mechanisms for analyzing and preventing legal risks. By examining the content of contracts or commercial relationships, these tools can identify risky clauses, inconsistencies, or situations likely to generate disputes, allowing for intervention upstream rather than managing conflicts a posteriori. Others are involved in the creation and formalization processes of businesses, accompanying administrative procedures step by step, verifying the completeness of files, or signaling missing elements before submission. This type of solution contributes to reducing deadlines, administrative back-and-forth, and uncertainty for entrepreneurs. Among others, there are also tools supporting amicable dispute resolution mechanisms, helping to structure exchanges, clarify the positions of parties, or highlight potential areas of agreement. Without replacing mediators or judges, these solutions facilitate a faster and more peaceful approach to conflicts. All these examples do not emanate from theoretical reflection calibrated to technology; they are factual, exist, and are in use.
The Essential Role of Tunisian Institutions in this Transition
In Tunisia, emerging initiatives demonstrate that these uses can be adapted to the national context, both linguistically and regulatory-wise. They illustrate the potential of tools designed to strengthen the effectiveness of economic justice, provided they are part of a clear governance framework, data protection, and human supervision. This transition cannot succeed without strong and structured involvement from public institutions, particularly on the essential issue of access to data. Without reliable, secure, and legally accessible data, it is impossible to design, train, or deploy AI solutions useful for economic justice. Institutions and legislators have a central role to play in creating legal and operational clarity around the use of public data, defining clear governance rules, and ensuring both the transparency of deployed systems and the protection of sensitive data, as well as effective human supervision. They also bear the responsibility of experimenting with these solutions, progressively scaling them, and coherently integrating them into existing public services. As such, they act as an arbiter between innovation and the general interest. A technology-enhanced justice system can only be sustainable if it remains fair, understandable, and responsible, respecting the fundamental principles of the rule of law and the specificities of the national context.
A Unique Opportunity for Tunisia
Tunisia has a real and strategic opportunity today. Its growing entrepreneurial ecosystem, the quality of its technological talents, and the existence of a reform framework constitute a favorable basis for reinventing the experience of economic justice. This opportunity is, however, set in a context marked by persistent administrative slowness, which continues to weigh on business activity and the quality of life of entrepreneurs. When procedures are long, uncertain, or unclear, the impact goes beyond the economic sphere and affects confidence, the ability to project, and the attractiveness of the country, contributing, whether we like it or not, to talent mobility. In this context, artificial intelligence can support and accelerate the digitalization efforts already underway, improving the efficiency of public services and the effectiveness of access to the law for SMEs. By making AI a tool at the service of economic justice, Tunisia can strengthen the competitiveness of its economy, restore entrepreneurs' confidence, and consolidate the anchoring of local skills. More accessible and efficient justice is thus a durable lever for creating value, employment, and dignity.
