AI And Tools For Expanding Access To Justice

Quinten Steenhuis (Suffolk; Google Scholar), AI and Tools for Expanding Access to Justice, in The Cambridge Handbook of AI in Civil Dispute Resolution (Cambridge University Press 2025):

Access to justice is a fundamental right, yet for millions of people around the world resolution of legal problems via both formal and informal means isn't available, affordable, accessible, or understandable. The high cost of legal help, now between $200 and $400/hour across the United States, and the limited number of attorneys providing free legal aid, is just one of these barriers. This chapter explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is making a practical difference in the problems of everyday people by automating legal processes and making legal systems more affordable and accessible. This chapter discusses generative AI, traditional expert systems, and computational approaches each as tools that can help legal aid and private lawyers, and as tools that can help unrepresented people.

Each section demonstrates specific tools in action, showcasing how they reduce the need for direct legal intervention while maintaining the accuracy and integrity of legal processes. Integrating AI into legal practices isn't without its challenges. Traditional rules-based systems can be inflexible, and statistical systems can introduce issues such as algorithmic bias. Through the lens of 3 case studies: Massachusetts Defense for Eviction, The Resurrection Project's Migrant Work Authorization Clinic, and Rentervention, we will discuss the need for human oversight and co-authoring with human review when using generative AI. This part of the chapter will highlight the importance of developing AI tools that are fair and transparent to ensure they help rather than hinder access to justice. We will discuss inappropriate use cases for AI and ways to mitigate risk when AI is employed in Access to Justice solutions.

Ultimately, this chapter shows the range of impacts that AI will have on the legal profession. In some cases, AI enables new methods of legal service delivery. In others, AI will replace routine legal tasks, and in other cases AI will offer significant support by freeing up resources and providing essential legal assistance to those who might otherwise go without. Through concrete examples and discussions of both benefits and challenges, we invite legal professionals and policymakers to consider AI's role in creating a more just global legal system.

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