Legal Aid of North Carolina launches AI tool to help close the 'justice gap'

For more than 90% of low-income Americans, getting sufficient legal help for civil disputes can be out of reach. The nonprofit law firm Legal Aid of North Carolina recently launched a new AI-powered tool to help bridge that justice gap. 

In criminal court every American facing the loss of their freedom has a constitutional right to an attorney, and along with that access to the courts, legal advice, and information. Not so for civil cases like loss of housing or child custody battles, and the need is great. Roughly 400,000 North Carolinians contact Legal Aid’s helpline every year. To help meet that demand, the nonprofit has created LIA, a Legal Information Assistant, that lives on the nonprofit's website and uses AI to virtually steer people to the information and resources that reside there.

Chief Innovation Officer Scheree Gilchrist led the research effort. "When you’re somebody who’s facing crisis or you have maybe literacy challenges, that dense information is really hard to wade through to figure out," says Gilchrist. "‘What do I need to answer the simple question that I might have?’ or, ‘What do I need to then move forward to determine what’s the next step in this process for me?’"

Gilchrist cautions that LIA does not offer advice tailored to a person’s specific legal matter. But visitors can use the service to ask questions using plain, non-legalese language, and quickly receive answers. Long-term goals for LIA include guiding people to Legal Aid’s online application, connecting them with attorneys, and eventually partner organizations that can provide additional services.