JusticeBench

An R&D Community Platform for AI and Access to Justice

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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 Justice

Projects

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 icon

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.

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.

Reentry Services icon

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.

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.

Brief Help Services icon

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.

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 icon

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 icon

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.

Public Benefits Legal Services icon

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 icon

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.

User justice journey overview
Overview of the person’s justice journey stages.
Awareness Stage
Awareness 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.

Orientation Stage
Orientation Stage

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.

Strategy Stage
Strategy Stage

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.

Work Product Stage
Work Product Stage

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.

Engagement Stage
Engagement Stage

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.

Present and Negotiate Stage
Present and Negotiate Stage

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.

Follow-Through Stage
Follow-Through Stage

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.

Provider journey overview
Overview of the service provider’s workflow, tasks along the justice journey.
Outreach & Education
Outreach & Education

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.

Screening & Triage
Screening & Triage

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.

Tailored Advice
Tailored Advice

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.

Work Product & Legal Research
Work Product & Legal Research

The provider researches the law, draft and file documents, analyze legal options, collect evidence, and keep them on track with deadlines and next steps.

Coaching & Support
Coaching & Support

The provider gives ongoing encouragement, legal education, and guidance throughout the justice journey, so users stay involved and making informed decisions.

Present & Negotiate
Present & Negotiate

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.

Administration & Strategy
Administration & Strategy

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.

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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 icon

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 icon

Document Explainer

TS-01-03

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

Read more about this task →
Action Plan icon

Action Plan

TS-01-04

Lay 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.

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Referral Routing icon

Referral Routing

TS-01-02

Match 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.

Read more about this task →
Issue-Spotting icon

Issue-Spotting

TS-01-07

Identify 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.

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Deadline Calculator icon

Deadline Calculator

TS-01-05

Determine 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.

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Legal Q&A icon

Legal Q&A

TS-01-01

Answer 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.

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Form Selection icon

Form Selection

TS-01-06

Match 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.

Read more about this task →
Providing Brief Help icon

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.

Service Onboarding icon

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.

Work Product icon

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 icon

Standard Document Filler

TS-04-01

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

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Expert Document Drafter icon

Expert Document Drafter

TS-04-02

Help providers and advanced users draft custom, complex legal documents—like motions, complaints, or discovery requests—quickly and accurately, tailored to the case.

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Narrative Drafter icon

Narrative Drafter

TS-04-03

Help people tell their legal story clearly and effectively—so decision-makers can understand and act.

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Contract Reviewer icon

Contract Reviewer

TS-04-04

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

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Document Draft Checker icon

Document Draft Checker

TS-04-05

Help providers and users catch errors and gaps in drafted legal documents—ensuring they’re complete, clear, and ready to file.

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Electronic Filer icon

Electronic Filer

TS-04-06

Help people and providers file legal documents with courts correctly and efficiently—by handling formatting, submission, and confirmation.

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Negotiation Helper icon

Negotiation Helper

TS-04-07

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

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Legal Researcher icon

Legal Researcher

TS-04-08

Conduct 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.

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Service of Documents icon

Service of Documents

TS-04-09

Serve court documents and other papers upon the correct party following all local rules, and getting the correct proof that it has been carried out.

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Case Management icon

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.

Administration & Strategy icon

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.