Results from the First Field Study of AI for Legal Aid
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Carl Rauscher
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WASHINGTON—Legal tech researchers discuss their recent field study of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for legal aid on the latest episode of LSC’s “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. Host Cat Moon is joined by Colleen Chien, professor of law at Berkeley Law School and co-director of the Center for Law and Technology; Miriam Kim, partner at Munger, Tolles and Olson LLP and fellow at Berkeley Center for Law and Technology; and Bréyon Austin, pro bono manager for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCRSF).
Chien and Kim authored a paper on their research, “Generative AI and Legal Aid: Results from a Field Study and 100 Use Cases to Bridge the Access to Justice Gap,” which was published in April. The co-authors wanted to advance the conversation around generative AI for access to justice with data.
“On the one hand you have regulators who are worried about all the things that could go wrong and then you have the market sort of going forward and trying to think about all the new applications that could be developed that could add value,” says Chien. “But the idea that eventually this can be an equalizing force is not something that has been at the forefront, so it seemed like an opportunity to really [think about] if we want to deliver on the promise of AI being an equalizer we need to actually deliberately engage in that question.”
Austin was a participant in the field study. Her team was given training on generative AI tools to use at LCCRSF’s free drop-in legal clinic.
“When we discovered that the use of AI may have the potential to increase access to justice for our client communities, we were very excited to test it out,” Austin says. “We're always searching for tools that will help us better serve our clients and our communities and we really also wanted to be a part of sharing our experience with other legal professionals that are curious about all the ways in which AI can be utilized.”
The research was conducted as a randomized-control trial to measure if the way the AI tool was introduced influenced uptake and user experience. All the participants received one to two months of access to paid generative AI tools, but a randomly selected subset received additional “concierge” support services like peer use cases, office hours and assistance. They found that those who received concierge services had significantly better outcomes than the control group.
In addition to the paper, they released a database of 100 helpful use cases, along with the prompts and outputs provided by legal aid professionals who participated in the study.
“Our pilot participants were so amazing and so generous in their willingness to share with one another and I really want to encourage the broader legal community to be thinking that way and to be putting on trainings to enable the next generation to also learn as they're coming into the legal practice and just all work together to share our learnings to increase access to justice,” says Kim.
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.
The next episode of LSC’s podcast will feature an interview with Maryland Senator Ben Cardin.