By Peter Riley
Legal aid organizations have long managed to make the most out of limited resources in order to provide access to justice, a promise from our Constitution’s preamble and protected for the last 50 years by Legal Services Corporation (LSC). These dedicated professionals operate in a resource-strained environment that has seen only a $160 million budget increase for LSC over the past 30 years. Despite a bipartisan LSC Board calling for nearly four times the allocated budget to effectively address the need of the American people, dedicated legal aid advocates have been enlisted to provide exceptional service with the resources available.
The dire need for civil legal aid and commitment to public service have led legal aid professionals to utilize advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI). They have leveraged AI to begin closing the gap between civil legal challenges facing low-income communities and their right to access justice, or, the “justice gap.” Many living in this country face civil legal issues that could adequately be addressed by a short call or intake meeting with a lawyer. However, many cannot wait on hold on a hotline, pay for transportation to a free clinic, or manage childcare, accessibility issues, and much more that make accessing referred legal resources a viable option.
In 2022, there were almost 2 million requests for support with civil legal problems, which does not even begin to capture the millions more who do not realize that the challenges they face are legal in nature.[1] For example, in Rebecca L. Sandefur’s article, “What We Know and Need to Know about the Legal Needs of the Public”[2], she notes that one study found that of people’s with civil justice issues, only 8% involved contact with a lawyer; one of the most important reasons is that many do not take the issues they face to be legal in nature. In effect, that means that the 2 million requests for support mentioned above is truly just the tip of the iceberg.
Yet, of even that 2-million-person tip of the iceberg, LSC-funded organizations were unable to fully address roughly half of these civil legal issues,[3] a turn-away rate that has not improved since the first Justice Gap Study in 2005.[4] Furthermore, in 2023, of the cases closed by LSC-funded organizations, 79% were deemed closed by “counsel and advice.”[5] This, “counsel and advice” or, Sateesh Nori, a leader in the legal AI innovation space, describes it “Actionable Legal Information” is ripe for AI augmentation. If that 79% rate is applied to the approximately 1 million people in America seeking legal support who are “turned away” due to insufficient resources, Legal Aid could support almost a million more of those who already come to Legal Aid organizations for help by providing appropriate information. This impact that would dramatically reduce the justice gap. Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC), an LSC-funded organization at the forefront AI in legal aid, has already seen this in practice, with a client-facing tool that helps address hundreds of thousands of intake calls, tens of thousands of which LANC would otherwise be unable to answer.
LANC and other organizations committed to closing the justice gap have already begun to unlock the impossible, through providing the counsel and advice to those in the “intake-based justice gap” with AI technology. These tools are in the early stage of development and require significant resources, investment and collaboration to create systems that provide not just adequate — but exceptional — services to those in need of such information.
The three organizations described below, among many others, are in the process of plugging AI in to different points of the “justice pathway” as Conor Malloy, Director of Innovation at CARPLS, calls it. For those organizations considering entry into the development of AI tools, see the recent “Justice Rising” providing a Step-by-Step Guide.[6] For those organizations that have successfully developed or implemented AI tools for legal aid organizations, we would love to hear more here and for you to join us, as LSC’s Technology Innovations Office convenes an AI working group seeking to build a collaborative community focused on implementing AI for Justice.
Legal Aid of North Carolina
Scheree Gilchrist, Chief Innovation Officer of LANC, and Helen Hobson, Chief Communications Officer of LANC, set out with a simple goal: “make access to legal information simple, easy, reliable and convenient.” That north star guided their team to think innovatively, adapt quickly and execute on development of a tool transforming the legal services delivery model. The result? LANC’s legal information assistant (LIA), a legal chatbot that leverages the vast database of information published by LANC, to provide clients and potential clients with information, resources, and guidance in civil legal matters related to Domestic Violence, Child Custody, Landlord-Tenant, Consumer and Disaster Relief.
Since its inception a little over a year ago, LIA has had over 21,000 conversations, or approximately 1,500 conversations per month, with individuals in need of legal support. As Gilchrist notes, LANC receives hundreds of thousands of calls each year, and has the resources to assist 55,000 to 65,000 people. Yet, many who call the intake hotline don’t know whether their issue is legal in nature, if they require representation, or they simply need information. In an easy-to-use manner, LIA “listens” to the narratives or questions that the potential clients have, in their own words, and provides helpful responses in non-legal jargon. Not only is LIA allowing LANC to service more people in North Carolina, but also providing helpful data to LANC about areas of demand. Further, LANC attorneys have even benefitted from leveraging LIA’s knowledge in areas outside of their specialty when they are engaged with a client who may be navigating compounding legal issues. LIA’s development, driven by a human-centered framework, has led to ripple effects impacting the lives of people across North Carolina, as it assists LANC to remain on the cutting edge of closing the justice gap.
Law Center for Better Housing (LCBH)
In 2019, LCBH developed an AI chatbot called Rentervention (rentervention.com), which serves to provide tenants facing civil legal issues in housing with on-point support. With a large language model drawing from vast research and writing done by legal aid organizations, Rentervention can provide 24-hour access to justice for those who may have otherwise fallen into the justice gap. According to Malloy, of those who accessed the Rentervention, 90% of their informational needs were addressed via engagement with the technology. The remaining 10% required further support from a live professional at the helpdesk. Of the 10% of users who accessed the helpdesk, only 10% of those advanced to requiring resources in a virtual clinic offered by LCBH. Finally, of those 10% who received support in a virtual clinic, only 1% or less led to full scope representation.
What does this mean? If 10,000 users had used Rentervention instead of flooding the LCBH hotline, 9,000 would have received ample support through the Chatbot. As such, only 1,000 users, would require service by a professional at the helpdesk, who would have background information on the issue leading into the conversation. Of those 1,000 users, 100 would be funneled to a virtual clinic for live professional support and legal counsel, and only 1 of those users would ultimately be deemed to require long-term legal representation. This demonstrates the incredible and multifaceted impact AI tools can have on closing the justice gap. Not only would all of those 10,000 individuals receive some form of legal support, whereas previous resource-constraints would mean that a vast percentage would not, but the time and resources this would free up for legal aid professionals could multiply their reach and impact by orders of magnitude.
In a country where less than 1 in 10 low income Americans receive the help they need for their civil justice problems, expanding this emerging technology could exponentially impact the reach of legal aid — to a point where achieving “equal justice for all” is actually within reach. Rather than requiring a 10x increase in LSC funding, legal aid attorneys, and capital resources across the board, expanding models like those already proven to be effective could achieve that promise of justice with more modest and realizable investment in legal aid.
CARPLS
While Rentervention provides support at the top of the intake funnel in the justice pathway, CARPLS is an organization with technological development underway to support individuals in need of legal services after they hang up the phone. This effort is a continuation and extension of the work at LCBH, by developing AI technology impacting different stages of the justice pathway. According to Malloy, CARPLS found that a significant number of people would call back the legal aid hotline after initial consultations, stating that they needed additional support or had follow-up questions; however, the inefficiencies in requiring a callback, explaining the issue to a new professional servicing the hotline, and adding to the bottleneck, were apparent. As Malloy noted, “the impossible ethic is not to be reactionary, but to be preventative, to accompany people on their legal journey.” CARPLS is in the process of developing a tool that, in place of a handout or a static email following up a call, gives clients a partner to direct them along an appropriate justice pathway, with follow-up supports and check-ins, aligned with a client’s objectives and the ultimate solutions. Ultimately, this tool seeks to leverage the vast knowledge management of CARPLS, and provide users with the information, workflows and training of an attorney that has practiced housing law for 30+ years. In doing so, not only will those in need of legal services be accompanied throughout their journey, but, similar to the case of Rentervention, alleviate the burden on intake hotlines so that attorneys servicing those hotlines can leverage their time for new cases or for providing legal assistance on complex legal matters.
Next Steps
In addition to the efforts underway by LANC, LCBH and CAARPLS, those like Nori at JustTech and Housing Court Answers have further collaborated to develop Roxanne, an AI chatbot, that provides human-centered tool that can support navigation of housing repairs in New York City. Among this growing and changing ecosystem, there is a parallel, concerted effort to ensure that support can reach all communities (e.g. whether through development of technology to engage beyond text to accommodate individuals with disabilities or varying levels of literacy) ethically and effectively. Margaret Hagan, Executive Director of the Legal Design Lab at Stanford University (LDL), has undertaken the effort to determine what “good” looks like in the realm of AI in legal aid; Hagan and the LDL’s research and development efforts provide guidance and develop solutions in AI to meet clients where they are, leverage the decades of expertise of legal aid paraprofessionals and provide specific, accurate and actionable information for users in complex scenarios and specific locations.
While this dynamic legal aid ecosystem continues to change, two truths remain clear: (1) Civil legal aid for underserved communities is at crisis levels, with those living in America unable to access their right, as afforded by Congress, to receive necessary legal support in civil legal issues that pervade and impact all areas of their lives; and (2) legal aid organizations continue innovating in incredible ways to resolve certain pain points along the justice pathway for clients.
By leveraging innovation to address the justice gap, legal aid organizations serve, and will continue to serve, more and more people in this country; through such technological developments, the most valuable resource of legal aid organizations, their dedicated, compassionate and brilliant professionals, can be further unlocked to provide excellent legal services to those facing complex civil legal issues. While AI may serve to help narrow the justice gap, the significant underinvestment in legal aid in the United States must be rectified in order to ensure that (1) legal aid organizations can serve the broadened base of those requiring legal services, and (2) development of the technology tools will be both expansive and sophisticated — as is required and necessary to truly provide communities with the promise of access to justice.
[1] LSC 2022 Justice Gap Report.
[2] Rebecca L. Sanderfur, What We Know and Need to Know About the Legal Needs of the Public, 67 S.C. L Rev. 443 (2016).
[3] LSC 2022 Justice Gap Report.
[4] https://www.webjunction.org/news/webjunction/new-justice-gap-study.html
[5] https://lsc-live.app.box.com/s/zsplht4zazdna3bo6muoohrvta8itlsx
[6] https://medium.com/justice-rising/ai-for-legal-aid-a-step-by-step-guide-e2efe6190280
Peter Riley is a Managing Associate at Sidley Austin LLP, and focuses his practice on complex business transactions, including M&A, private equity investments, and corporate governance matters. He is a member of LSC’s Emerging Leadrs Council. Prior to joining Sidley, Peter worked as an investment banking analyst and as a public sector consultant. He also serves as a Local School Council Community Representative for his neighborhood’s Chicago Public School.
A Pathway to Justice: AI and the Legal Aid Intake Problem was originally published in Justice Rising on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.