Justice delayed is justice denied.
Legal violations go undetected and unaddressed every day. But by the time most people recognize they need legal help, the window for meaningful action is often already closed.
According to the American Bar Association, there are an average of 2.8 civil legal aid attorneys per 10,000 Americans living in poverty. Rural communities face especially acute shortages: 86% of rural low-income households that request legal aid receive no help, and 40% of US counties have fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents.
This growing access-to-justice discrepancy presents an opportunity for systemic change in the legal ecosystem. And as attorneys start using legal intelligence tools regularly in their work, these barriers are breaking down in two ways.
- By creating an upstream approach to identifying and addressing legal issues, meaning violations are detected earlier or resolved before they escalate.
- By streamlining attorneys’ workflows so they can serve more clients in less time.
Detecting harm sooner with legal intelligence
When people don’t recognize they’ve been harmed or can’t afford an attorney, opportunities for justice vanish. Legal intelligence is changing that.
In my previous article, I explained that legal intelligence is the use of AI, data analytics, web intelligence and human expertise to detect legal violations early and enable attorneys to step in before opportunities for accountability are lost.
Rather than relying solely on client outreach or whistleblower reports, law firms can now use legal intelligence to quickly evaluate large volumes of publicly available information and connect fragmented data points that indicate legal violations. This brings justice to those harmed by environmental, medical, privacy and consumer violations, among others.
For example, Katrina Carroll, a Chicago-based class action attorney, uses legal intelligence to uncover biometric privacy violations, including a $40 million case against Bumble. She pieced together digital online evidence alleging that Bumble collected biometric information from photos users uploaded to the app, a direct violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act.
Carroll says, “[These tools have] significantly helped me grow my business, expand access to justice, and file cases that would have otherwise been too cumbersome or time-consuming to pursue, or may not have been filed at all.”
The Bumble case shows how technology is making legal work more proactive and closing the justice gap at scale.
AI chatbots as first responders
AI-driven chatbots and online assistants offer another way to prevent legal harm. For example, in January 2025, Sateesh Nori, senior legal innovation strategist for Just-Tech, launched an AI assistant called Roxanne the Repair Bot in New York City to help tenants address housing problems before they become emergencies. This chatbot lets renters ask questions, such as: “I don’t have heat, what can I do?” and get instant, actionable guidance on their rights and next steps in real time.
Legal aid organizations, stretched thin by eviction cases, often can’t address housing maintenance issues until they become emergencies. Roxanne fills this void by helping tenants resolve problems like broken heaters and mold before they threaten health and safety.
Another valuable aspect of tools like Roxanne is that they expand access to legal information without crossing into the unauthorized practice of law, opening up a new category of assistance that wasn’t possible before: making legal guidance accessible without an attorney, preventing small issues from snowballing into crises and keeping people out of court in the first place.
Speeding up processes and creating more specialized firms
Legal intelligence is changing how attorneys work and how law firms operate in a number of ways.
First, by speeding up repetitive tasks, such as document review and legal research, it allows attorneys to dedicate more time to addressing client needs. Second, it reduces burnout, which makes lawyering more sustainable as a profession. Third, by reducing the cost of running a law firm, solo practitioners and small firms can more easily open their own practices. This will result in an uptick of leaner, more agile firms, lowering the cost of services and giving the public greater access to legal help.
All of these have multiple implications.
For example, moving forward, we may see fewer generalist practices and more specialized firms. With AI handling back-office work, even solo attorneys can manage focused, niche practices. Rather than a single overwhelmed personal injury attorney handling every type of accident case, you might have attorneys who specialize in specific areas like slip-and-fall accidents or car crash cases. Companies like EvenUp Law, Settlement Intelligence and Filevine’s DemandsAI, for example, are automating the time-consuming task of drafting and reviewing demand letters.
Additionally, states like Arizona and Utah now permit non-lawyers to own law firms. This opens the legal industry to technology experts and creates fertile ground for innovation as legal tech and legal intelligence become increasingly central to the practice of law.
As legal tech becomes more powerful, even non-lawyer professionals or community organizations may be able to use AI to offer certain types of legal assistance (Roxanne the Repair Bot is a great example of this in action).
AI certainly won’t replace our roles as attorneys, but it will allow us to expand client reach and provide counsel to underserved communities. And that’s a future worth building.
Read more: The rise of legal intelligence