The AI Access to Justice Initiative

Issue 7

Today I’m excited to announce the AI Access to Justice Initiative.  

The AI Access to Justice Initiative invites the companies that offer AI-related services and tools to lawyers to make a public pledge to improve access to justice with AI.  

While researching what would become A Lawyer’s Practical Guide to AI, I started a file to collect encouraging stories about AI and improvements to access to justice. After more than a year, there’s not much I’ve been able to put in that file. 

In fact, there’s reason for concern that AI may be doing more to harm than help access to justice. While many initially voiced optimism that AI could increase access to justice as a legal self-help tool, the researchers of a January 2024 study by Stanford RegLab and the Institute for Human-Centered AI believe that large language models’ present limitations, including hallucinations, could deepen legal inequalities rather than improving them.[1]  Others have also raised concerns that AI could amplify existing power imbalances between those who can afford legal representation and those who cannot.[2] And the possibility of using AI tools for legal self-help cannot bridge the gap to the millions of Americans lacking reliable internet access, or those who lack the skills to make use of available technologies.[3]   

Another often-repeated optimism has been that public interest lawyers will be able to use AI to broaden the number of clients they can help. While the concept of using AI to scale the impact public interest attorneys can make is promising, cost is a key barrier to adoption of AI tools created for lawyers in public interest organizations.[4]   

It’s clear that there is much work to be done. We all can and should do more. So, I’ve decided to do what I can to improve access to justice.  

My company Good Journey Consulting pledges to provide free access to my educational resource A Lawyer's Practical Guide to AI to 1,000 lawyers working in public interest/access to justice careers. Law schools and big law firms are investing in AI education and training because lawyers need to develop AI competence. The lawyers doing critical public interest/access to justice work also need to develop AI competence, just like all other lawyers. If you are a lawyer working in public interest/access to justice who would like free access to A Lawyer's Practical Guide to AI, please email [email protected] to request access and include a screenshot of your bar association registration or organization staff listing as documentation of your public interest/access to justice employment.   

Additionally, I invite all the companies that have created AI tools and services for lawyers to make their own public pledge for how they will improve access to justice.  

Please email [email protected] to join The AI Access to Justice Initiative, make a public pledge, and be featured on the AI Access to Justice Initiative page.  

Thanks for being here. 

Jennifer
Good Journey Consulting

[1] Matthew Dahl, Varun Magesh, Mirac Suzgun, and Daniel E. Ho, Hallucinating Law: Legal Mistakes with Large Language Models are Pervasive, Stanford HAI (Jan. 11, 2024), https://hai.stanford.edu/news/hallucinating-law-legal-mistakes-large-language-models-are-pervasive. 

[2] Drew Simshaw, Access to AI Justice: Avoiding an Inequitable Two-Tiered System of Legal Services, 24 Yale J.L. & Tech. 150, 170-71 (2022), https://yjolt.org/sites/default/files/simshaw_-_access_to_a.i._justice.pdf. 

[3] Ashwin Telang, The Promise and Peril of AI Legal Services to Equalize Justice, Jolt Digest (March 14, 2023), https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/the-promise-and-peril-of-ai-legal-services-to-equalize-justice. 

[4] Nicole Black, Will Generative AI Actually Expand Access To Justice? Above the Law (October 31, 2024 15:42 PDT), https://abovethelaw.com/2024/10/will-generative-ai-actually-expand-access-to-justice/