Because there often aren’t enough lawyers to help, technology must be a part of the solution to help litigants better advocate for themselves.

While there are few companies solely focused on pro se work, their impact is immense. In particular, technology is essential for helping self-represented litigants understand the technicalities of court processes, navigate the actual experience, and prepare essential documents.

If you’re not a lawyer (and sometimes, even if you are), the rules of civil procedure can be complex and confusing, and it’s often hard to know where to start. In fact, these rules can be so complicated that even legal aid organizations like Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service have gone so far as to produce virtual trainings of specific courtrooms to familiarize their volunteer lawyers with local processes.

Once in, navigating a trial on your own can be overwhelming and sometimes even detrimental to the case’s outcome. “One day, I attended a small claims hearing where an elderly gentleman was helplessly shuffling through his unorganized evidence in the middle of his hearing,” recalls Camila Lopez, a lawyer and the Co-founder of . “The judge quickly got frustrated, gave him half of what he was claiming, and moved on to the next lawsuit. Watching this happen inspired me to start People Clerk.”

Her company’s goal is to guide litigants through the California small claims process from beginning to end, and provide them the tools to prepare, settle, and litigate disputes. Using simple questions to automate parts of the process, such as court filings and evidence organization, the platform can help demystify the court experience. It also offers articles to supplement the litigant’s research and better equip them to manage their case in person.

While some justice tech founders approach problems from their perspectives as attorneys, others faced challenges in the system as litigants themselves and subsequently fought to make the experience better. Sonja Ebron and her co-founder, Debra Slone, are PhDs with backgrounds in engineering and information science, and “each had suffered abuse in the civil justice system until we learned to navigate it properly,” Ebron says. “We knew that people without our educational advantages would have even longer odds of being heard in court, so we decided to share what we’d learned.”

In addition to preparing pro se litigants for a potentially adversarial process in the courtroom, other initiatives have helped move e-filing processes online.

Their company, Courtroom5, is an automated legal toolbox for litigants handling complex matters like mortgage foreclosure, workplace discrimination, and medical malpractice. “Our technology tracks a user’s progress through their litigation and at each step provides them the legal information and tools — document templates, searchable case law, claims analysis — that is most relevant at that step,” she adds.

In addition to preparing pro se litigants for a potentially adversarial process in the courtroom, other initiatives have helped move e-filing processes online, such as , developed by Suffolk Law’s LIT Lab, Greater Boston Legal Services, and the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.

“MassAccess turns critical court forms that were previously available only as PDFs or on paper into beautiful, easy-to-use online forms,” explains Quinten Steenhuis, Clinical Fellow at Suffolk University Law School, adding that each online form walks a user step-by-step through a court process. “The forms are mobile-friendly, at a 6th grade reading level, and include help in-context. At the end of filling out the form, the user clicks a single button and the form is delivered directly to the court.”

By transferring old, resource-intensive filings into online help guides, pro se platforms such as MassAccess increase access to justice and the ease with which to file these forms — and they also help the courts themselves streamline their records. Hardcopy filings and in-person requirements were already barriers to low-income individuals seeking relief from the courts, so the ability to demonstrate the effectiveness of online formats is crucial to extending access to those in need.

The impact of these pro se tools are profound because technology allows them to be scalable and replicable, serving more individuals than ever before. “Technology is important because… it’s taken hundreds of hours of work, but now we can reach thousands of people who otherwise couldn’t access the court,” Steenhuis says. “There’s no real way to do that with one-on-one assistance.” So far, MassAccess has about 12 online forms completed across practice areas, and a few dozen more at different stages in the pipeline. Once released, these forms can be replicated across jurisdictions, and also used by law firms and solo practitioners who want to assist their clients more efficiently.

Taken together, it’s clear that these innovations can be a game-changer for access to justice, says Ebron of Courtroom5. “These tools for self-represented litigants will inevitably reshape the practice of law.”

People Clerk’s Lopez agrees. “In a few years, as this market evolves, it will revolutionize how non-lawyers normally solve legal problems and increase access to legal services,” she says.

The improvement in access to justice for self-represented litigants can mean anything from feeling more confident in navigating the court system, to feeling empowered to file the right documents, to changing the outcome of a case, and every tool that brings us closer to fair resolution has resounding implications on the justice system.

Nothing has highlighted the complexity and magnitude of Americans’ legal needs quite like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vulnerable individuals now have to navigate unlawful evictions, loss of wages and benefits, and delays in court proceedings. Victims of domestic violence who are quarantined with their abusers face increased risks, as do incarcerated individuals and detained immigrants. There is an unprecedented need for legal assistance to help people navigate these life-altering circumstances both quickly and from a safe place — and thus, a unique opportunity for new access to justice (ATJ) legal tech solutions.

While ATJ legal technology is typically deployed within legal services organizations (such as document assembly tools like ), at courthouses through e-filings, and through consumer apps (like ), a new champion is starting to incubate ATJ solutions: law firms. This development could potentially be game changing. Not only do law firms’ efforts add high-quality talent to the fight to close the justice gap, but also their work has inherent sustainability.

At the forefront is Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, whose software subsidiary, , develops tools to make legal processes more efficient and affordable. SixFifty recently released two free automated tools — Hello Lender and Hello Landlord — in response to COVID-19.

Their first, , helps homeowners write a letter to a lender requesting a mortgage payment delay for six months under the federal stimulus. “We saw that many banks and other lenders were ushering people into their own forbearance programs that were much less favorable than the federal stimulus, so we decided to automate a letter that checks all the boxes for people in making the request under the stimulus specifically,” says Kimball Dean Parker, the CEO of SixFifty. The goal of Hello Lender is to help people stay in their homes by avoiding foreclosure, Parker explains, adding that in the first month of deployment, the app saw more than 1,300 uses.

Similarly, was created to limit evictions: the product helps tenants write a letter to their landlord informing them that rent payment will be late due to COVID-19, and that they are most likely prevented by law from being evicted. “The federal stimulus prevents most landlords from evicting due to missed rent for 120 days,” says Parker. “It’s not clear that landlords know this, and many people leave their apartment at the threat of an eviction, without an eviction being filed.” In its first month, the app was used nearly 2,000 times, and since it was originally built with BYU Law School and the University of Arizona to help people write a letter to their landlord more generally, the team will continue its application after COVID-19 ends.

ATJ will expand in the future

While few firms are building full-fledged, free direct-to-consumer apps to address COVID-19 like SixFifty, other firms are lending technology expertise to assist with access to justice initiatives that will expand over time. For example, law firms are increasingly teaming up with legal services organizations to help move client intake from in-person to online, increasing the efficiency with which they can serve those in need.

Scott Powers, a partner at Baker Botts, which typically runs a regular in-person intake clinic with Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas (VLS), says the crisis has accelerated how the firm uses technology to meet with clients. “Before the pandemic, we were already looking at ways to meet remotely with applicants for legal assistance who might not be able to travel,” Powers explains. “Now, with the ability to meet in person substantially curtailed, we had the potential for a significant new solution to address the gap in access to justice. VLS and others have stepped up by creating remote intake clinics, and volunteer attorneys have stepped up to staff those clinics, giving people a critically important avenue to legal services.”

The technology involved ranges from traditional phone calls to video platforms like Skype, and allows lawyers to serve more individuals safely and from a distance. Clients are no longer saddled with transportation costs, and don’t have to take valuable time off work to meet in-person.

Another example of a successful remote intake model is the collaboration between Perkins Coie, Microsoft, the WAVE Foundation, and the Domestic Violence Unit of the King County (Wash.) Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. These entities are partnering to provide remote legal services to survivors of domestic violence who may be quarantined with their abusers. “During COVID-19, the courts in King County have allowed petitioners for a protection order to submit their requests electronically and appear telephonically,” says Beth Henderson, senior attorney and pro bono lead at Microsoft. “This has allowed petitioners to obtain protection without making a trip to the courthouse and reduced the barriers to accessing the justice system.”

Although technology can create new ways for clients to access legal services, sometimes the best option is to go back to basics, notes Ellyn Josef, pro bono counsel at Vinson & Elkins. “We have done Skype clinics for years for small businesses and regular intake. However, clients would go to an office of the provider to Skype with the lawyers,” she says. “When we launched the new small business program, the telephone calls seemed less cumbersome for clients — and really for lawyers.”

Generally, feedback on remote clinic work has been positive, and ATJ leaders don’t see these remote clinics going away anytime soon. “Remote clinics are working well, and they are proving to be very efficient for both the applicants for legal assistance and the volunteer attorneys,” says Powers. “The transportation problem will continue to exist even after the pandemic is over, and so I anticipate the remote clinic concept will outlive the pandemic.”

Henderson agrees, adding that from her view of working with courts “there are efforts underway at the state and local levels in Washington to ensure that remote and electronic access to legal services will continue after COVID-19 for survivors of domestic violence.” And while there is much work to be done until every law firm has a group dedicated to new access to justice solutions like SixFifty, Henderson explains that “technology has offered a critical lifeline by allowing pro bono volunteers to consult with their clients virtually, and also by providing access to the courts.”

This progress, and its success thus far, are encouraging signs that law firms and in-house teams will increasingly support and help evolve current access to justice solutions within legal aid and beyond.

Whereas LSOs have found past success in reaching clients through basic tools like texting, they are now moving to more advanced platforms like document automation to better streamline internal processes. Some are even going one step further by embarking on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) projects to determine how they can help address the 86% of civil legal problems reported by low-income Americans that aren’t fully resolved.

Access to justice starts with literal access: figuring out how clients best receive, digest, and act on legal information. On the lower-tech end, text messaging has proven to be a successful tool for reaching those in need. Hanna Kaufman, Counsel for Innovation and Technology at the Lawyers’ Trust Fund of Illinois, explains that for LSOs, “most of the people those organizations are aiming to serve have access to text messaging even when they have limited access to other technology. Texting meets people where they already are, using modes of communication with which they’re already familiar, and typically at a very low cost.”

Kaufman helped launched , which automates intake and responses to clients seeking help with housing issues via a chatbot. In a similar vein, New York City housing tech nonprofit recently launched an online learning center to centralize tenant advice. This work builds upon a number of studies detailing how texting information like court reminders can decrease court failure to appear (FTA) rates by 26% and reduce open warrants by 32%, as well as reducing the no-contact rate for online legal help applicants by 6.5%.

Access to justice starts with literal access: figuring out how clients best receive, digest, and act on legal information.

“If the legal industry could adopt the use of text messaging in a widespread way, it would enable people without access to other forms of technology or abundant free time during traditional business hours to be able to get help,” Kaufman says. “It would also streamline the way people across socioeconomic statuses receive legal guidance.”

Using Legal Tech Internally

In addition to connecting with clients using apps, LSOs are increasingly turning to new technology internally to produce higher volumes of work. In particular, document automation is becoming the standard for generating repetitive documents. Dorna Moini, the Founder of , explains that “document automation breaks down the economic, geographic, and temporal barriers to justice. Because it takes fewer lawyer-hours to generate the same documents, automation like Documate’s no-code platform expands the affordable, flat fee services that are accessible to those who can’t afford hourly rates.”

Document automation also enhances how LSOs like and Equal Justice Wyoming can collaborate by sharing workflows with each other to modify them for their own jurisdiction. For example, a domestic violence platform for Los Angeles can easily be modified by a Northern California legal aid organization to meet the local rules of San Francisco and Oakland and add additional forms of relief, Moini explains. “This type of open collaboration is the future of both document automation and the delivery of legal services.”

is another automation platform that assists LSOs like New Mexico Legal Aid intake clients, draft documents, and share legal knowledge. Scott Kelly, Community.lawyer’s co-founder, has found that automation has helped LSOs “dramatically scale the impact of their legal expertise. We’ve seen organizations use document assembly apps to go from serving dozens of people to thousands of people in a few short years.”

Adapting to the Technology

As more advanced tools like AI and machine learning become more pervasive, LSOs like ILAO, Pine Tree Legal Assistance, and Massachusetts Legal Aid are now incorporating tools like AI classifiers in their intake flow to direct inbound clients to the most relevant resources. The concept is that by essentially leveraging a massive, dynamic logic tree as a triage tool, clients can quickly and easily find the best resources for their issues.

While the idea is exciting, there are significant challenges in helping clients navigate the world of AI. For instance, AI classifiers have to match clients’ understanding of their own problems in order to be effective, and oftentimes, a client doesn’t know the associated legal term, says Jay Hancock from Pine Tree, adding that if a problem encompasses more than one legal problem, a linear tool simply will not suffice. The logic tree must have the ability to dynamically move between AI branches to address issues across multiple practice areas.

Gwen Daniels of ILAO points out that for maximum efficiency, the classifiers must be the same throughout all of the potential LSOs available to address a specific issue, and given the hundreds of potential criteria organizations use to intake clients, navigating those differences might prove difficult.

So, does all this mean that the future of access to justice look like robots analyzing your issue, routing you to the right chatbot to help, and then following up as the case progresses?

One technology that might help address AI’s challenges is machine learning. Specifically, ML has the potential to improve the way clients and LSOs use technology to identify legal issues — one of the biggest barriers to clients seeking help at the outset.

“Generally speaking, machine learning is in the business of making predictions,” explains David Colarusso, the Director of the Legal Innovation & Technology (LIT) Lab at Suffolk Law School. “If you can frame a problem as a prediction problem and you have the right data, it can give you repeatable and scalable solutions. For access to justice, this might mean getting resources to those in need more quickly or freeing up professionals’ time by minimizing the time spent on a mechanical task, allowing them to do more human work.” He added that this would allow us to expand the reach and capacity of existing solutions while making practical new approaches to mitigate the access to justice crisis.

Colarusso created , an online game that “aims to crowdsource the labeling of laypeople’s legal questions for the training of machine learning classifiers and issue spotters.” In Learned Hands — created in partnership between the Suffolk LIT Lab and Stanford Law School’s Legal Design Lab — lawyers and law students review real-world legal questions and identify the legal issues they see, producing a labeled set of texts. A classifier is trained to recognize common patterns in this data and use them to identify similar legal issues in new texts.

So, does all this mean that the future of access to justice look like robots analyzing your issue, routing you to the right chatbot to help, and then following up as the case progresses?

The practice of law is so context- and judgment-dependent that it may be doubtful that the immediate future looks so automated, but there is no doubt that these tools, when applied correctly, will make meaningful strides in the way clients actually access justice.