For lawyers working to close the rule of law gap, generative artificial intelligence could be a real game changer.
According to a 2022 study by the Legal Services Corp. 92% of low-income Americans’ civil legal problems—including access to safe housing, health care, and child custody—were not fully or even partially addressed. ChatGPT, Google Bard, and other chatbots built on large language models could narrow this gap by helping legal services providers speed and simplify their work.
While its application to access to justice is still in its early stages, Kristen Sonday, co-founder and CEO of pro bono management platform Paladin, says more organizations could soon use large language models to improve vetting and intake processes. improve. of clients and the completion of their files.
As an example, she cites the California Innocence Project’s early use of Casetext’s CoCounsel to streamline efforts to exonerate incarcerated individuals who have been wrongly convicted. (See “California Innocence Project Uses Generative AI to Free Wrongfully Convicted People.”)
“Lawyers could complete their pro bono cases much faster by using AI to analyze the cases, conduct research, compile documents and file them much more efficiently,” says Sonday, a 2017 researcher. ABA Magazine Legal rebel. “Ultimately, I hope that they can also help more customers en masse.”
Kimball Dean Parker, CEO of SixFifty, a software subsidiary of law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, envisions SixFifty using generative AI to translate legal documents into Spanish or other common languages. “It’s incredible in translation, like top-of-the-line,” says Parker, a 2019 ABA Magazine Legal rebel. “We put a caveat on it and say you want to have someone read it to make sure the translation works. But it offers people that first step.”
Lawyers working to close the rule of law gap hope that generative AI will empower more individuals to meet their own legal needs. This may include using generative AI tools to identify legal issues or locate legal sources; it may also mean using them to help automate documents needed for the pro se process.
While David Colrusso, director of the Legal Innovation and Technology Lab at Suffolk University Law School, says the technology is not advanced enough to allow litigants to fully draft their own briefs, it could give them clues to relevant fill in facts and stories. they hope to share this with the court. “These are the kinds of things that add up when you think about the tens of thousands of people handling forms in the legal system,” said Colrusso, a 2016 researcher. ABA Magazine Legal rebel. “How many people don’t file with the court because it becomes too difficult, and they just never get over that first hurdle?”
One tool in the works, which Colarusso likens to “a flight simulator for pilots,” would allow law students and lawyers to practice working with a range of scenarios and problems. He envisions this tool going beyond traditional advocacy exercises with human actors by allowing participants to return again and again and adapt their approach each time.
He adds that the simulator can increase access to justice by helping people get better services and allowing students to better understand legal issues.
“You never learn something as well as you do when you teach it,” Colrusso says. “Imagine how well you have to know something to be able to teach it to a computer.”
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This story was originally published in the February-March 2024 issue of the ABA Magazine.