In a recent article, Tom Martin highlighted several ways in which legal technology can benefit access to justice. In this article, we discuss the relationship between legal technology and access to justice. We first define what we are talking about. Then, we look at the benefits and challenges of legal technology for access to justice. This is a follow-up to our article of 2020.
What are we talking about?
Let us start with some quick short definition and then provide some context regarding the relationship between legal technology and access to justice (often shortened to A2J).
Martin defines access to justice broadly as the ability to access the legal system. Legal technology, or legal tech, is a broad term. It includes technologies used by lawyers and courts, such as practice-management systems, electronic discovery, legal research platforms and document automation.
From an access-to-justice perspective, the more interesting category is technology that is used directly by people who have legal problems. This includes online legal information, automated document generation, legal chat bots, online intake systems, self-help platforms, digital legal-aid services, online dispute resolution, electronic filing and remote court hearings. And these days, it also includes artificial intelligence and generative AI systems. These are capable of explaining legal concepts, helping users identify relevant issues, summarising documents or guiding people through legal procedures.
Which leads us to the access-to-justice problem. Justice is supposed to be accessible to all in equal ways. The reality is that there is an enormous gap between the need for legal assistance and the capacity of traditional legal systems to provide it. The problem is particularly visible in civil law. Unlike criminal defendants in many jurisdictions, people in civil cases often have no right to a lawyer. This applies, e.g., to people facing eviction, family disputes, debt, employment problems or loss of access to essential services.
Legal technology has become an important part of the broader debate about access to justice. Properly designed, technology can change who is able to obtain legal information, understand their rights, obtain assistance, resolve disputes and participate in legal proceedings. Yet, at the same time, technology can create new barriers if access to devices, connectivity, digital skills or reliable information is taken for granted.
Benefits of legal technology for access to justice
Everybody agrees that legal technology can have many benefits for access to justice. The articles mentioned below in the sources mention the following ways in which legal technology can facilitate access to justice.
Legal technology can lower the cost of legal assistance. A lawyer traditionally spends considerable time doing tasks that can be standardised. We are talking about things like collecting client information, conducting an initial intake, searching for documents, drafting standard correspondence, completing forms and preparing routine legal documents. AI, and more specifically, AI agents can automate many of these processes, thus lowering the cost.
Legal technology can make legal information easier to understand. Search engines, legal-information websites and increasingly AI-based systems can provide an initial layer of free legal information online. This can help people identify their problem, understand the terminology and determine what they should do next. As such, legal technology can therefore also assist in public education.
Legal technology has also made finding legal professionals easier. Search engines, legal directories and online platforms make it easier for people to identify lawyers.
Legal technology also helps self-represented litigants Courts are designed around legal procedures and terminology that lawyers understand. For a self-represented litigant, even relatively simple procedural requirements can be difficult. The problem is not necessarily lack of intelligence or motivation. It is that the legal system is effectively written in a specialised language. Legal technology systems can translate that complexity into ordinary language. They can explain procedures, generate forms, provide checklists, identify deadlines and guide users through administrative steps.
In a previous article, we discussed online dispute resolution. This, too, has been made possible by progress in legal technology. Online dispute resolution, or ODR, allows parties to resolve certain disputes without physically attending court. Depending on the system, parties may exchange information online, negotiate electronically, use automated processes to narrow the issues, or participate in mediation remotely. This can reduce travel, waiting time and administrative costs. It can be particularly valuable for relatively small disputes where the cost of employing a lawyer or physically attending court may exceed the amount in dispute.
Closely related to this are remote access and participation: The rapid expansion of remote hearings during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated another possibility. Courts can operate digitally. This allows lawyers, witnesses and parties to participate without being physically present. This also facilitates access for people with disabilities or chronic illness. They too no longer have to physically appear in court.
Overall, legal tech has also increased the efficiency for courts. Electronic filing and digital case management systems cut down on paperwork and clear backlogs
And the use of artificial intelligence has contributed to access to justice in several ways.
Challenges of legal technology for access to justice
But it’s not all positive. As pointed out above, legal technology also provides its own set of challenges for access to justice.
One of the main issues is the digital divide. Poor internet access and low digital literacy can exclude marginalised or rural groups. Someone with a smartphone, broadband connection, digital literacy and the ability to communicate comfortably in the dominant language may find the legal system considerably easier to navigate through technology. Someone without those resources may find it harder.
The digital divide has several layers. There is access to hardware, access to affordable and reliable connectivity, digital literacy, language and accessibility, and finally the ability to evaluate the information produced by technology.
When using AI, there also is the problem of accuracy and reliability. It becomes particularly important with AI-based legal assistance. Making legal information cheaper and easier to obtain does not necessarily make it correct. A person who cannot afford a lawyer may also be the person least able to recognise that an AI-generated legal answer is wrong.
From the beginning, legal technology has had to deal with resistance, on several levels. Lawyers are traditionally slow to adopt new technologies. Furthermore, traditional legal systems often slow down technological adoption due to strict rules and confidentiality concerns. And at present, we are also witnessing a growing resistance towards AI.
Conclusion
The question is not simply whether legal technology makes justice more accessible. We also must ask who gains access through technology, who remains excluded, and who may actually become more disadvantaged as the justice system becomes increasingly digital.
The World Justice Project makes essentially this point in its research on technology and access to justice. It identifies the potential for digital technologies to expand access while warning that poorly designed systems can exclude vulnerable populations and deepen existing inequalities.
Legal technology can democratise access to law. But the risk is real that benefits of that democratisation are themselves distributed unequally.
Obviously, access to justice should not become dependent on access to technology. Digital channels should ideally expand the available routes into the justice system rather than become the only route.
So, legal technology is very much a double-edged sword. It can make legal assistance dramatically cheaper and more accessible. But it can also create a new class of people who are effectively digitally excluded from justice. And with AI, that distinction is likely to become more rather than less important.
In other words, legal technology can democratise access to justice, but only if access to the technology itself is not allowed to become a new prerequisite for accessing justice.
Sources:
- https://lawdroid.com/technology-and-access-to-justice-how-does-it-work/
- https://www.lawdroidmanifesto.com/p/launching-the-legal-aid-plugin-empowering
- https://www.law.ac.uk/resources/blog/role-of-tech-in-access-to-justice/
- https://www.cliffedekkerhofmeyr.com/news/publications/2026/South-Africa/Knowledge-Management/Combined-Dispute-Resolution-and-Knowledge-Management-19-May-Artificial-intelligence-and-access-to-justice-in-South-Africa
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYHNCe5q1f4
- https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/institute/articles/scaling-justice-technology-self-represented-litigants
- https://iacajournal.org/articles/10.36745/ijca.635
- https://worldjusticeproject.org/access-to-justice
- https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/research-and-data/advancing-a2j-ict-driven-reforms
- https://justicegap.lsc.gov/resource/executive-summary/
- https://www.lsc.gov/our-impact/publications/other-publications-and-reports/report-summit-use-technology-expand-access-justice
- https://www.lsc.gov/techreport
