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AI for Justice

Putting people first: Leveraging AI to support human interaction and close the justice gap

Natalie Runyon  Director / ESG content / Thomson Reuters Institute

· 5 minute read

Natalie Runyon  Director / ESG content / Thomson Reuters Institute

· 5 minute read

AI can help close the access to justice gap by streamlining processes and augmenting human capabilities by enhancing and expanding meaningful interaction between legal service providers and their potential clients

The access to justice gap in the United States represents one of our legal system’s most persistent challenges, with millions of Americans unable to access adequate legal help due to financial constraints, geographic barriers, and systemic inequities. Indeed, 92% of civil legal problems reported by low-income Americans receive inadequate or no legal assistance, according to the Legal Services Corporation.

Now, as AI-driven tools and technologies rapidly evolve, they offer unprecedented opportunities to scale solutions and bridge this divide through automation, information retrieval, and process optimization.

However, the promise of AI in reducing the justice gap lies not in replacing human connection but in enhancing it. While technology can expand reach and efficiency, the human elements of empathy, trust, and contextual understanding remain irreplaceable in legal assistance.

Amanda Leigh Brown, Executive Director of Lagniappe Law Lab (LLL), says she this fact over her eight years of working at the intersection of the justice gap and technology. By combining AI with human-centered design principles, Brown and her peers are providing efficient referrals to enable legal aid organizations to connect with humans faster.

Leveraging AI to expand human capacity

The most effective AI implementations recognize a fundamental truth: People in legal crisis crave human connection. “We hear constant feedback on our tools along the lines of ‘I just want to talk to someone,’” says Brown, adding that this insight is driving a shift in focus in LLL’s work toward answering how the organization might best maximize meaningful human interaction between potential clients and legal service providers.

Across Louisiana, Brown is undertaking innovative projects that seek to expand awareness around legal issues, open access to self-resolution pathways, and provide more sophisticated referrals, working toward a future-state in which there are more high-quality interactions between service providers and those seeking legal help.


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At the current moment, Brown acknowledges that there is a lot of work required to leverage technology and reduce administrative burdens in order to pave the way for a future in which human-to-human interactions are paramount. LLL is is doing its part by using AI as a force multiplier for existing services, including:

Creating civil justice content — LLL is using AI to accelerate the production of written articles, video scripts, brochures, translations, and social media content that can be used to help build awareness of tools and resources available for civil justice needs.

Offering sophisticated referral systems — LLL is developing an AI-powered referral function that can take complicated intake rules and case acceptance guidelines from Louisiana civil justice organizations and match those seeking legal help with the appropriate resources. The organization is also building AI-supported content-retrieval functionality within its web site that will issue relevant spot-and-select information guides, self-help tools, and referral resources from the organization’s database.

Modernizing traditional processes — Brown and her team are working on another innovation: Paper-to-digital intake workflows supported by AI, which can reduce the time needed to input data and leave more time for a conversation with a potential client. Less tech-savvy individuals or those that have lower access or awareness of resources still will be able to use a paper-first approach to connect with service providers that can help.

AI tools are beneficial, but a cohesive strategy is essential

The true potential of AI tools to maximize human-centered approaches in legal services can only be realized when such approaches are incorporated into a comprehensive and unified strategy to close the access to justice gap for good, explains Brown. Right now, this is lacking, she says, adding that we need a strategy “that firmly orients our community around a broad vision with specific outcomes and goals, but still encourages experimentation and innovation from a place of clarity about where we are going. We ultimately have to get very clear on who’s doing what, what capacities we have or don’t have, all the various inputs that make up the system as a whole, and importantly, how all of it relates to each other.”

In addition, the assessment process of gaining clarity regarding goals, outcomes, and existing capacities is a key requirement for legal aid’s success in deploying AI tools with empathy-driven design. The most effective implementations are built upon established processes and use AI to enhance rather than replace existing frameworks. And Brown’s initiative to transform paper intake forms into hybrid workflows while preserving familiar client experiences is a notable example.

Until an integrated approach is realized, Brown and her team at LLL will keep working to embrace technological advancements to better streamline administrative processes and foster a future that emphasizes the importance of close human interactions. This reflects her current ethos around AI — and around technology in general — that lawyers and access to justice professionals should be working to maximize human interaction wherever possible.

“You cannot replicate compassion and understanding for those in crisis with a decision tree or a chatbot,” she says, noting that AI can expand our capacity in ways that leave time for these crucial, personal interactions, and allow us to “thoughtfully design experiences that make our humanity the centerpiece in a very highly automated service.”


You can learn more ways that AI-driven technology is impacting access to justice here

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