
JusticeBench
An R&D Community Platform for AI and Access to Justice
How to Use JusticeBench
JusticeBench is an open platform for legal leaders, technologists, researchers, and community members working on AI to advance access to justice.
Projects
Look at prototypes, pilots, and proposals others are building to find inspiration, collaborators, or models.
Tasks
Explore specific use cases where AI can help improve access to justice. Scope what to work on — and where you fit in.
Data & Eval
Share or use data to train, evaluate, and improve legal AI projects and performance standards.
Guides
Step-by-step playbooks and templates for planning, evaluating, and rolling out AI in justice institutions.
New to the Access to Justice Domain?
Are you a technologist, researcher, data scientist, or professional who is new to the world of legal aid, courts, and civil legal problems?
Learn the basics of what a person's journey looks like, as they deal with a legal problem like eviction, debt, divorce, reentry, employement problems, or more.
Also explore the common workflows of service providers who assist people in resolving their legal problems.
Learn More about Access to JusticeProjects
What kinds of AI projects are already in the works to advance access to justice? Explore AI projects organized by the legal need / service area or team that the project relates to. Each card notes the project's status -- whether it's a pilot, prototype, or proposal. If you know of other projects aside from those here, please tell us about them!
Housing Legal Services AI Projects
Housing legal services help people navigate landlord-tenant conflicts, respond to eviction lawsuits, fix unsafe conditions, get utility access, deal with possible foreclosures, and maintain stable housing through advice, filings, and negotiation.
Getting Brief Help
AI tools that give consumers brief legal answers and guidance, helping them understand their problem, choose a path forward, and make informed decisions at key moments in their justice journey.

Tenant First Aid
An AI-powered chatbot for Oregon renters facing eviction or landlord disputes. Developed by Code PDX and Qiu Qiu Law, it helps tenants understand their rights and take action.

JusticeBot
An AI-powered chatbot from the University of Montreal that helps the public in Quebec understand landlord-tenant rights and responsibilities, using trusted legal information.

Roxanne the Repair Bot
Roxanne is a chatbot that provides NYC tenants with general guidance on how to get housing repairs, based on trusted information from Housing Court Answers.
Service Onboarding
AI tools that assist service providers in intaking, screening, and triaging clients, helping assess legal needs and match them to the right services once they reach out for assistance.

Lease Data Extractor with AI
A research prototype to extract structured data from images of Tenancy Agreements (typed, neat, and sloppy) using AI

Eviction Warning Notice Analyzer
An AI-powered tool to scan notices from landlords, especially to look for legal defects that can be used to build a tenant's defense in eviction proceedings.
Work Product
AI tools that help people & providers create legal documents, file them, conduct research, craft narratives, and negotiate or review settlements, supporting both document preparation and in-person representation stages.

Motion to Set Aside Drafter
Helping tenants rapidly and correctly draft a Motion to Set Aside after an eviction judgment—to re-open their case before they are forcibly set out from their home.

Demand Letter assistant
An AI assistant that drafts reasonable accommodation demand letters for tenants with disabilities, based on structured interviews and attorney-approved templates.

Jury Instructions Copilot for California Tenants
An AI copilot that helps tenants and legal aid teams generate, review, and finalize court-compliant jury instructions and trial documents for eviction cases in California.

Eviction Settlement Reviewer
A language-accessible AI assistant that reviews proposed eviction settlements to flag burdensome terms, explain how the settlement can play out, and support informed, strategic decision-making.

Depositron
An AI-powered platform that generates legally grounded, evidence-backed demand letters to help New York City tenants recover illegally withheld rental deposits quickly and without costly legal intervention.

Lease Analyzer for Tenants
An AI-powered tool that helps tenants review residential leases before signing—spotting harmful or unenforceable clauses, translating legalese, and helping them make informed choices.
Reentry Services AI Projects
Reentry legal services help people who have been involved with the criminal justice system to clear records, restore rights, and reconnect to housing, work, and benefits.
Service Onboarding
AI tools that assist service providers in intaking, screening, and triaging clients, helping assess legal needs and match them to the right services once they reach out for assistance.
Work Product
AI tools that help people & providers create legal documents, file them, conduct research, craft narratives, and negotiate or review settlements, supporting both document preparation and in-person representation stages.
Admin and Ops of Legal Organizations AI Projects
Admin teams of legal organizations run operations like conflict checks, scheduling, compliance, knowledge management, strategy, and other backend operations so legal teams can deliver excellent, sustainable client services.
Administration & Strategy
AI tools that help justice organizations manage teams, track grants, analyze trends, and maintain key resources, enabling courts, legal aid groups, and nonprofits to strengthen operations and strategy.

Staff Compass knowledge management system
Legal Aid Society of San Bernardino (LASSB) is piloting “Staff Compass” — a SweetProcess-powered internal knowledge hub that unites policies, procedures, and training for every staff member, no matter where they work.

LSLAsks
A chatbot prototype from Lone Star Legal Aid to provide staff with centralized, searchable access to internal policies, benefits information, and workplace procedures.
Brief Help Services AI Projects
Brief help services (cross-issue) help people spot their legal needs, triage them to the right services, get quick initial information and optoins, and give clear next steps so a person can move forward on their justice journey.
Getting Brief Help
AI tools that give consumers brief legal answers and guidance, helping them understand their problem, choose a path forward, and make informed decisions at key moments in their justice journey.

Beagle+
Beagle+ is an AI-powered legal information assistant developed for British Columbia that uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to deliver accurate, jurisdiction-specific legal guidance.

LIA
An AI-powered virtual legal assistant from LANC that helps North Carolinians navigate common civil legal problems with plain-language, bilingual guidance and referrals.

Navi community support chatbot
An AI-powered chatbot that helps community members identify legal issues, find appropriate referrals, and access self-help resources in plain language.

Access Engine
A national, AI-powered question-and-answer platform that routes public legal questions to verified, jurisdiction-specific knowledge bases maintained by legal aid and court partners.
Providing Brief Help
AI tools that help service providers deliver quality brief legal assistance, informing people of their rights early and empowering them to make strategic decisions or pursue further representation.

Caddy Q&A copilot
Caddy is an AI co-pilot developed by Citizens Advice in England to support legal advisers, helping them deliver faster, supervised answers with trusted information.

A2J ImageGen: Visualizing Legal Documents with AI
An AI prototype to help transform complex court forms, fliers, and training materials from text into visual-first, well-designed materials for litigants

Project LACI
Project LACI (Legal Aid Content Intelligence) helps organizations maintain content that has legal information, including generative AI RAG materials, keeping them up to date with changes to the law.
Work Product
AI tools that help people & providers create legal documents, file them, conduct research, craft narratives, and negotiate or review settlements, supporting both document preparation and in-person representation stages.

CaseStrainer
An open-source tool to verify whether U.S. legal case citations are real or fabricated—helping safeguard against AI hallucinations.

Juris Legal Research Chatbot
An AI chatbot that centralizes Lone Star Legal Aid’s most relevant legal resources, enabling faster, more consistent, and more cost-effective research for attorneys, paralegals, and legal staff.
Education Legal Services AI Projects
Education legal services help students and their families by resolving special education, discipline, and enrollment issues through advocacy, hearings, and services coordination.
Getting Brief Help
AI tools that give consumers brief legal answers and guidance, helping them understand their problem, choose a path forward, and make informed decisions at key moments in their justice journey.
Family Legal Services AI Projects
Family legal services help people resolve divorce and separation issues, custody and parenting plans, child and spousal support, adoption, paternity and safety and domestic abuse.
Work Product
AI tools that help people & providers create legal documents, file them, conduct research, craft narratives, and negotiate or review settlements, supporting both document preparation and in-person representation stages.
Case Management
AI tools that help justice organizations process, track, and manage cases—ensuring timely actions, efficient procedures, and clear operations while keeping the person engaged and process administered.
Immigration Services AI Projects
Immigration legal services guide people through relief screenings, applications, and court processes to secure lawful status and safety.
Case Management
AI tools that help justice organizations process, track, and manage cases—ensuring timely actions, efficient procedures, and clear operations while keeping the person engaged and process administered.
Intake and Referrals Services AI Projects
Intake and referral services triage people with legal problems to spot legal needs fast, capture key facts, and route people to the right help provider with warm handoffs and clear next steps.
Service Onboarding
AI tools that assist service providers in intaking, screening, and triaging clients, helping assess legal needs and match them to the right services once they reach out for assistance.

Automated Intake Data Extractor
LegalServer's Automated Intake Mode allows organizations to upload scanned or digital documents and automatically extract structured intake data into their case management system.

Missouri Tenant Help Intake Screener
A hybrid rule-based and LLM-powered intake screener developed for Missouri Tenant Help to help determine legal aid eligibility more efficiently and consistently.
Public Benefits Legal Services AI Projects
Public benefits legal services help people access food, cash, health, and disability benefits, including by screening eligibility, assembling applications, and appealing denials.
Work Product
AI tools that help people & providers create legal documents, file them, conduct research, craft narratives, and negotiate or review settlements, supporting both document preparation and in-person representation stages.
Work and Employment Legal Services AI Projects
Work and employment legal services help workers to enforce wage, safety, and anti-discrimination rights, and also deal with harassment or problems that arise on the job.
Getting Brief Help
AI tools that give consumers brief legal answers and guidance, helping them understand their problem, choose a path forward, and make informed decisions at key moments in their justice journey.
Learn More about the Access to Justice Domain
What does 'access to justice' mean? How can technology help more people navigate their legal problems and the justice system in order to get to good outcomes? Explore this section to get oriented in this A2J domain.
Common Stages of a Person's Justice Journey
How does a legal problem play out in a person's life? Different legal problems -- eviction, debt collection, divorce, driver's license suspension, or other disputes -- often follow the same 7 stages.
Use this overview to understand where AI might help a person. Then go to the Tasks Section to see the specific AI opportunities at each stage.

As a conflict brews, the person begins to recognize that they might need legal help to deal with it. They begin to seek out help online, through friends, or by contacting a service provider.
The person gets a diagnosis of the exact legal scenario they are in, what the law says about their rights, what options they have, and what services can help.
The person decides how they want to handle the problem. They weigh their goals, rights, and risks. They choose what path to take and get a plan of action -- including paperwork, research, hearings, meetings, and more.
The person drafts documents and forms to file, researches the law, gathers and organizes evidence, responds to requests, makes requests of the other side, and crafts talking points.
The person completes all of the steps, deadlines, and procedural requirements. They file things on time, make payments or get fee waivers, attend required meetings and hearings, and stay updated on their case progress and obligations.
The person presents their case to the judge or decisionmaker, answers questions, and interacts with the other party. They may also negotiate with the other side, and respond to settlement offers.
After a decision or settlement, the person must ensure they understand what the final arrangement is and how to live up to it (or enforce it). They may need to comply with orders, secure what they won, or clear their record to prevent collateral consequences.
Service Providers' Workflows to Suport Better Justice Journeys
Aside from users, service providers are also key stakeholders in advancing access to justice. Legal aid groups, court help centers, pro bono clinics, and other justice workers have common clusters of tasks. These tasks all relate to the front-facing services or back-end operations of providing legal help to the public.

The provider tries to connect with the right audience—raising awareness, providing legal information, building trust, and helping people recognize legal issues and seek help.
The provider attempts to understand each person's background and legal issue to determine if and how the organization can help. This includes routing people to services, guides, or referrals.
The provider provides the user with detailed, custom advice on their legal options, risks, and next steps. Advice is specific to the user's goals, context, and documents—and designed to support informed decisions.
The provider researches the law, draft and file documents, analyze legal options, collect evidence, and keep them on track with deadlines and next steps.
The provider gives ongoing encouragement, legal education, and guidance throughout the justice journey, so users stay involved and making informed decisions.
The provider presents the case to the judge or decisionmaker, answers questions, and interacts with the other party. They may also negotiate with the other side, and respond to settlement offers.
The provider monitors cases and outcomes overall, manages staff and reporting, spots patterns, operates tech, and identifies areas for service improvement, policy change, strategic litigation, or tech innovation.
Tasks for AI to Advance Access to Justice
Across all different problem types and geographies, what tasks can AI do to improve how people get legal help & how providers serve people?
For the various stages of a person's justice journey, we have documented the main tasks that need to be done. These specific tasks can help people successfully resolve their legal problems, and they can help service providers operate more effectively.
These tasks are all general (across problem types and regions) so that we can find ways to collaborate on common technology solutions.
The 7 main clusters of Access to Justice tasks came from our community brainstorms & workflow mapping. Some of them are tasks that the user does, others are what the service provider (like a legal aid group or a court) would do:
- User: Getting Brief Help
- Provider: Providing Brief Help
- User-Provider: Service Onboarding
- User-Provider: Work Product
- Provider: Case Management
- Provider: Administration, Ops, & Strategy
- Provider: Tech Tooling
Explore each in detail below.
Getting Brief Help Tasks
Tools for a consumer to get brief legal answers and assistance for their legal problem. People need these tools particularly during their Awareness stage, when they are trying to understand the problem, and their Orientation stage, when they are trying to get advice and details on what path is best for them. But they might need to get brief help throughout their justice journey, when they need to make important decisions and do tasks correctly.

Document Explainer
TS-01-03Help people understand legal documents they’ve received (like notices, summons, and lawsuit documents) by summarizing what the document means and what to do next.

Action Plan
TS-01-04Lay out a step-by-step process by which a person can navigate their legal problem and choose among possible options, tailored to their situation and desired outcomes.

Referral Routing
TS-01-02Match people with appropriate legal help providers (including service organizations, tools, and information sources) by taking in their situation, triaging their situation, and matching them with a service listing.

Issue-Spotting
TS-01-07Identify the specific legal issues present in a person’s situation, story, or document—so they can be guided to the right help, information, or next step.

Deadline Calculator
TS-01-05Determine a clear, jurisdiction-correct due date for a legal task —with a plain-language explanation of how the clock was counted and what to do before the cutoff.

Legal Q&A
TS-01-01Answer people's questions about their problem situation, giving brief information to help them understand their legal issues, weigh options, connect to resources, and make a plan for next steps.

Form Selection
TS-01-06Match people to the exact, jurisdiction-specific legal paperwork they need to use for their legal issue and stage, along with explanations about what the form does, who should use it, and how to file it.
Providing Brief Help Tasks
Tools for a service provider to offer quality brief help to consumers. Providers aim to connect with people during the Awareness and Orientation stages to ensure that people know their rights and can make strategic choices to protect their finances, housing, family, and security. They want to provide brief legal help to educate and empower the public, and possibly sign them up for fuller, in-depth legal representation.

Q+A Supporter
TS-02-01Help providers give better answers by supporting them with smart prompts, legal knowledge, and clear, supportive language.

Help Guide Writer
TS-02-02Help legal experts create clear, accurate, and actionable help guides—faster and with greater consistency.

Media Creator
TS-02-03Turn written legal help guides into engaging videos, audio, and visual media—quickly and accurately.

Content Reviewer
TS-02-04Help legal experts keep public-facing content accurate, consistent, and easy to use—by scanning for issues and recommending smart improvements.

Law Watcher
TS-02-05Keep public legal help content (like on websites, guides, fliers, and packets) accurate by detecting legal changes and suggesting timely updates.

Legal Help Translator
TS-02-06Help providers make legal help content available to all, by translating it into users' preferred language clearly, accurately, and usefully.
Service Onboarding Tasks
Tools to help a service provider intake, screen, triage, and prepare a client to receive legal assistance. A provider may onboard a person at any stage of their justice journey, but it typically occurs when a person has gone through the Awareness and Orientation stages, and then has reached out to the provider to get help. The provider then needs to understand the person's legal problems, check if they're able to help, and decide which kind of service is a good fit.

Intake Interviewing
TS-03-01Help providers understand who they’re helping and what path to take by gathering and organizing a complete, accurate picture of the person and their situation.

Document Issue-Spotter
TS-03-02Review a user’s legal documents (like notices, complaints, summons, and more) to spot defects, raise issues, extract key fields, and flag problems for further action.

Data Researcher
TS-03-03Help providers quickly understand a client’s situation by gathering and summarizing relevant data from external sources.

Legal Analyzer
TS-03-04Analyze a person’s legal situation and surface the legal rules, rights, and strategies that apply.

Payments
TS-03-07Manage the collection, processing, and confirmation of payments required for filings, services, or court fees so that users can move forward without delay or confusion.

Conflicts Checker
TS-03-05Determine whether taking on a new client or matter creates a conflict of interest and lay out the next ethical step.

Eligibility Verification
TS-03-06Determine whether someone qualifies for a service, benefit, or program by verifying evidence and gathering data to check against the eligibility rules.
Work Product Tasks
Tools to create legal documents, do research, craft narratives, file documents, negotiate, review settlements, and other legal tasks. These are used mainly in the Work Product stage when a person must complete and file many documents, but may also be needed during the Present and Negotiate stage when they have to verbally represent what they have filed, respond to questions about what is in the documents, and negotiate potential settlements.

Standard Document Filler
TS-04-01Help people complete standardized legal forms by gathering the right data, checking for fit and accuracy, and making the process fast and user-friendly.

Expert Document Drafter
TS-04-02Help providers and advanced users draft custom, complex legal documents—like motions, complaints, or discovery requests—quickly and accurately, tailored to the case.

Narrative Drafter
TS-04-03Help people tell their legal story clearly and effectively—so decision-makers can understand and act.

Contract Reviewer
TS-04-04Help people evaluate a proposed contract or settlement agreement by checking it against their goals, legal standards, and practical consequences.

Document Draft Checker
TS-04-05Help providers and users catch errors and gaps in drafted legal documents—ensuring they’re complete, clear, and ready to file.

Electronic Filer
TS-04-06Help people and providers file legal documents with courts correctly and efficiently—by handling formatting, submission, and confirmation.

Negotiation Helper
TS-04-07Help people prepare for and engage in negotiation by clarifying goals, understanding trade-offs, and exploring workable resolutions.

Legal Researcher
TS-04-08Conduct research across trusted legal sources, synthesizing accurate, jurisdiction-specific findings to determine how the law applies in a situation and give support to arguments being made.

Service of Documents
TS-04-09Serve court documents and other papers upon the correct party following all local rules, and getting the correct proof that it has been carried out.
Case Management Tasks
Tools to help a justice organization to process, sort, schedule, analyze, and track a case. These are particularly important during the Engagement stage, in which parties may otherwise miss deadlines, delay hearings, make errors, or cease participation in the case. It is also important for the backend administration of justice, to ensure that the case gets 'rightsized' procedure, the dispute can resolve promptly, and staff can operate efficiently and clearly.

Support Coach
Help people follow through on their legal journey by sending personalized messages, reminders, and encouragement—so they don’t fall off track.

Smart Scheduling
TS-05-02Schedule meetings and events by balancing team availability, participant needs, and logistical constraints.

Procedure Triage
TS-05-03Route cases to the right procedural track by analyzing case details and matching them to program rules and service levels.

Filing Screener
TS-05-04Help administrators review legal filings by checking for missing fields and compliance with procedural and substantive requirements—quickly and accurately.

Service Verification
TS-05-05Confirm whether required papers were properly served—check the proof, method, timing, and party details against local rules—and issue a clear determination to help with decision-making.
Administration & Strategy Tasks
Tools for a justice org to manage their teams, their grants, spot trends, create strategies, and build stronger organizations. A court, legal aid group, or nonprofit needs these backend tools to understand what types of cases they have, how to report their work for funding, and how to maintain the key databases and resources they rely on.

Data Extractor
TS-06-01Automatically extract structured, actionable data from court forms, PDFs, contracts, and images to populate case management systems and support legal service workflows.

Grant Reporter
TS-06-02Help providers generate complete, accurate grant reports by compiling data, writing narratives, and formatting results to meet funder requirements.

Knowledge Management
TS-06-03Organize, maintain, and share an organization’s policies, procedures, templates, and expertise so that every team member can quickly find what they need to do their work effectively.

Service Directory Maintenance
TS-06-04Help providers maintain an accurate, structured list of their services by gathering and updating details from internal documentation and program materials.

Trends Spotter
TS-06-05Help providers spot trends in client needs, legal strategies, and outcomes by analyzing data across systems and delivering actionable insights.

Data Anonymizer
TS-06-07Help providers transform confidential data into usable, secure datasets by removing identifiers and inserting consistent synthetic replacements.
Tech Tooling Tasks
Tools to help justice organizations build and manage legal help technology platforms, applications, and other tech. The ops and tech team need help to create and maintain websites, ensure security and privacy, and develop new functions to help with documents, research, analytics, and more.

Form Creator
TS-07-01Help legal aid and court teams build accurate, accessible forms (digital, paper, interactive, or otherwise)—faster and without technical complexity.

Website Administrator
Help providers keep their public-facing websites running smoothly by monitoring performance, security, and updates—and flagging important issues that need attention.

Site Administrator
TS-07-02Maintain fast, secure, and up-to-date public-facing legal help websites—with smart alerts when something needs human attention.

Interview Creator
TS-07-03Help providers generate high-quality, user-friendly interviews that collect the right user data to power legal documents, user profiles, and services.

User Tester
TS-07-04Help providers automatically test new legal help tools & projects for bugs, safety risks, accessibility issues, and fairness—before public release.
Datasets, Evaluation, and Benchmarks
Are you looking for data to build AI or measure its performance? Do you need evaluation protocols or standards to test out LLMs or tools? We are featuring open datasets, evaluation harnesses, benchmarks, and more resources that can be used for testing the performance of models and applications, and to improve how an AI system works.

LegalBench benchmark tasks
A collaboratively built suite of 160+ legal tasks that measure legal reasoning across statutes, cases, contracts, and procedures—crafted by legal experts and useful to test the performance of models and solutions.

Beagle+ Legal Chatbot Testing Dataset
A curated, labeled dataset of 42 real-world legal question-answers used to evaluate the safety and helpfulness of AI-generated answers during the development of Beagle+, a legal information chatbot for British Columbia.

OpenAI GDPval test on lawyer tasks
A short set of evaluation + dataset resources from OpenAI that tests AI models on economically valuable, job-specific tasks—including a “Professional: Lawyers” track with realistic legal work artifacts and human grading.

Common Legal Help Questions
A curated, synthetic dataset of common civil legal questions asked by the public—tagged by legal issue and sensitivity—to support research, product testing, and development of legal help technologies.

Learned Hands: Labeled Dataset of Legal Issues in Reddit problem stories
A crowdsourced, expert-reviewed dataset of legal issue labels on real-world problem narratives, created to support machine learning and research on legal needs and access to justice.

VALS.ai LegalBench Leaderboard
A live, third-party leaderboard tracking how frontier and open models perform on LegalBench tasks—handy for quickly narrowing model choices for legal pilots.
Please share datasets with JusticeBench at this form.
Guides
How can you create an AI plan for your justice organization, and what's the best way to implement new AI developments? Explore our guides for justice institution leaders.

Legal Aid AI Implementation guide
A guide from A2J Tech and LSNTAP on how to implement AI responsibly in a legal aid group.

ABA Ethics formal opinion 512 on GenAI
Guidance from the American Bar Association on how lawyers can responsibly adopt AI tools while meeting professional conduct obligations.

AI Readiness for State Courts
A practical NCSC guide that helps state and local courts assess and improve their AI readiness. It combines a clear maturity model (Foundations → Implementation → Post-project feedback), lifecycle guidance, and an interactive self-assessment to plan, govern, and evaluate AI responsibly.

AI Risk Management Framework for Legal Teams
A practical, step-by-step framework from Duke RAILS to help legal teams identify, govern, and mitigate AI-related risks while supporting responsible innovation.

Cal. State Bar Practical Guide for use of AI
Ethical framework from the California State Bar guiding lawyers through the responsible use of generative AI in legal practice.

LIA chatbot evaluation by Duke Law
A report of an independent audit of the LIA chatbot in North Carolina by Duke Law researchers, that documents an evaluation protocol, usage results, issues to address, and recommendations for improvement.

LSC's AI Peer Learning Labs
An online hub & regular online sessions where civil legal aid programs share lessons, resources, and best practices for using AI responsibly in legal services.

NCSC Guides for Implementing AI in Courts
Guidance from the National Center for State Courts and partners on adopting AI in court operations responsibly, with clear policies, oversight, and safeguards.

Regulating AI in the Delivery of Consumer-Facing Legal Services
IAALS' guide to a phased, innovation-friendly approach to regulating AI tools that deliver legal information and services directly to the public.
Please share guide proposals and open-source materials with us at this form.







