Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: AI’s Potential for Access to Justice
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Carl Rauscher
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WASHINGTON–Experts discuss the potential impact of generative AI on legal services on the latest episode of LSC's “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. Talk Justice Co-host Cat Moon is joined by guests Sam Flynn, COO and co-founder of the no-code automation platform, Josef; Natalie Anne Knowlton, founder of Access to Justice Ventures; and Tom Martin, CEO and founder of the no-code AI platform, LawDroid.
The buzz around rapidly evolving generative AI tools is sparking conversation about how the technology can be leveraged to expand the reach of legal services and promote access to justice.
“This is an incredibly exciting moment in time—and you can accuse me of being a techno-optimist—but in this instance, I think I am,” says Knowlton. “Seeing the applications for increasing information, for people navigating the system without attorneys [and] potentially increasing some components of advice, I'm just blown away when I think about the potential for this on the access to justice front.”
Knowlton foresees many uses for generative AI in legal services, including creating first drafts of external communications of legal information, performing intake and triage, and providing translations and referrals to community organizations.
The thing that makes AI so game-changing, Martin explains, is that it dramatically shortens the time it takes to develop new legal services platforms and resources, while also increasing the reach of those services.
“I think when we look at the principles of what comes up in access to justice, there's definitely the need to scale services,” Martin says. “So that ability to meet the demand, which is impossible through human lawyers alone, is something that AI can do well—it can scale to meet the immense demand for legal services.”
Flynn’s team at Josef has been testing ChatGPT’s use for accessing legal information and has been impressed by the results. Static resources like web pages of legal information can be difficult for non-lawyers to navigate and find what is relevant to them, he explains. Flynn describes how simple it is to give that information to ChatGPT, and with a small amount of training, the AI can quickly and accurately answer user questions.
“I think one of the most powerful parts of this is how quickly you can build really successful, easy to use, easy to understand, consumer facing tools,” says Flynn.
Many in the legal industry have not been so optimistic about the use of generative AI. The guests all share in the hope that rather than simply dismissing these tools because of what they can’t do, people can focus on developing user-centered solutions for access to justice. Additionally, Knowlton says that lawyers do not have the final say here.
“I see articles and conversations about whether lawyers think that consumers should use these tools, [but] that's completely irrelevant to this conversation because they are going to use these tools and they are using these tools,” Knowlton says.
Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple and other popular podcast apps. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.
Upcoming episodes of the podcast include a conversation with ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross and a discussion of whether child removals, particularly by the NYC Administration for Children’s Services, are being used excessively.