Equalizing Justice

Millions of individuals worldwide struggle to understand and assert their legal rights without legal representation. Equalizing Justice examines how AI and other technologies can address this access to justice crisis by providing unrepresented litigants with knowledge and skills traditionally available only through lawyers. This volume takes a needs-first approach, identifying tasks that unrepresented litigants must complete and mapping specific technologies to each task, such as generative AI, computational logic, and document automation. The book highlights real-world applications, demonstrating proven impact, and presents case studies and interviews to explore both the potential positive outcomes and potential challenges of AI for access to justice. Equalizing Justice proves that AI technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to create equitable justice systems serving everyone, not just those who can afford representation. The volume argues for legal AI assistants as a public good that should be accessible to all.

L. Karl Branting (1952–2024) was the Chief Scientist of Machine Learning for Computational Law at the MITRE Corporation (2007–2024). Karl served as the President of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (2004–2005), was a United States Supreme Court Fellow (2001–2002), and published more than 100 peer-reviewed research articles and books on artificial intelligence. Karl unexpectedly passed away while writing this book. The book was completed by Mia Bonardi, with contributions from Sarah McLeod (Chapters 2 and 9), Megan Ma (Chapter 2), Charlotte S. Alexander (Chapter 3), Elizabeth C. Tippett (Chapter 3), Hannes Westermann (Chapters 4, 8, and 12), Marco Giacalone (Chapters 4, 11, and 12), Rebecca Fordon (Chapter 5), Aniket Kesari (Chapter 6), Chinmayi Sharma (Chapter 6), Morgan A. Gray (Chapter 7), Jaromir Savelka (Chapters 7 and 16), Kiernan Moran (Chapter 13), Sateesh Nori (Chapter 14), Neel Guha (Chapter 15), Izak C. Rosenfeld (Chapters 15 and 17), Shraeya Iyer (Chapter 16), and Daniel W. Linna Jr. (Chapter 16). Mia Bonardi is a Research Attorney II at the Supreme Court of Guam. Mia was a member of Suffolk LIT Lab's Document Assembly Line Project and has published several articles at the intersection of human rights and technology.