Since our inception, Access to Justice Tech Fellows has made significant strides in bridging the justice gap. Through these efforts, we are making a measurable difference in communities nationwide, empowering individuals with critical legal tools and advancing systemic change. Our fellows come from diverse backgrounds, bringing unique perspectives to tackle complex legal challenges.
Community Impact
Understand how our program benefits communities by addressing critical legal needs and promoting equity. Our fellows work on projects that provide direct support to underserved populations, creating lasting positive change and helping to close the justice gap. Through our fellows’ contributions, we ensure that legal services are more accessible and inclusive.
Fellowship Projects
Our fellows have developed a range of impactful projects in over 35 states, including:
Legal information websites: creating user-friendly platforms that provide essential legal information to the public.
Document automation tools: streamlining the creation of legal documents to save time for attorneys and clients alike.
AI-powered chatbots: implementing artificial intelligence to guide individuals through legal processes.
Explore some of the innovative projects our fellows have worked on. From legal tech solutions to community-based initiatives, these projects highlight the creative and impactful work being done by our fellows.
Issue & Goals
In a state where almost half a million residents live under the poverty line, New Mexico Legal Aid strives to maintain a high level of service to promote family and economic stability. For every 14,000 poor persons, there is one legal aid attorney at NMLA. They dedicate their work to individuals and families who have depleted resources for basic human needs, ultimately securing safe housing, food, income, and personal safety.
One significant area for potential improvement is the protection and defense of low-income housing tenants. Finding a way to provide substantial support to residents of low-income housing, especially communities of color. Though the city offers affordable living options for individuals who might otherwise struggle with market-rate rents low-income housing, public housing, subsidized housing, and Section 8 vouchers, the waitlists for these programs are slow and long.
According to the NLM, fewer than one in four eligible households actually receive this assistance and waitlists average two years nationally. Unsurprisingly, aside from the physical and financial implications of waiting for stable housing, they also found that individuals who were waitlisted were more likely to experience severe psychological distress compared to those receiving rental assistance.
Solution & Impacts
This project offered a possible solution: to enhance legal support by using a grant to fund a junior attorney at NMLA who would specifically assist tenants facing eviction in low-income housing. The presence of an attorney can open up new options for clients. Tenants often face uncertainty about attending mandatory informal meetings before court hearings, and an attorney can provide guidance, alleviating fears and helping to avoid eviction.
Additionally, for tenants whose only issue is an inability to pay rent due to low income, judges often offer payment plans. An attorney can help navigate this process and advocate for favorable terms, preventing further complications.
An interactive guide will also be instrumental in helping junior advocates, such as pro bono attorneys, volunteers, junior associates, interns, and paralegals, address legal needs more efficiently and assist a greater number of marginalized clients. However, there remains ample room for innovation and expansion
To effectively implement this initiative, this project proposed the inclusion of a mandatory NMLA referral number on eviction orders. This ensures that tenants have immediate access to legal resources and support. Utilization of interactive guides to address substantive due process requirements in low-income housing efficiently. This will streamline the process and enable us to assist a larger number of clients.
Issue & Goals
Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida (CLSMF) is one of the largest nonprofit law firms in the state. They provide civil legal assistance on consumer, family law, and domestic violence issues to more than 20,000 low-to-moderate-income residents a year. CLSMF’s attorney-staffed helpline receives more than 2,800 calls a month. Due to limited staff, CLSMF is unable to assist a significant percentage of the residents they serve. The average length of a phone call to CLSMF is about 20 minutes, and wait times can be a few hours.
Florida’s top consumer report categories include debt collection and identity theft, with Florida ranking number one among states for fraud reports. Most consumers are unaware that they are victims of debt harassment or fraud, until it is too late.
The goals of this project are to serve more residents with the same amount of staff, cut costs and time on the attorney’s side, and create a streamlined process for the user.
Solution & Impacts
This project aims to extend CLSMF's reach to more residents by creating a Consumer Law AI chatbot named JARVIS. JARVIS aims to streamline the legal aid process and provide residents with exposure to more legal resources.
When a resident interacts with JARVIS, it will gather and analyze data and send it to an attorney to confirm whether there is a valid consumer protection issue.
Our fellow on this project helped JARVIS “learn” about consumer protection issues by taking in broad datasets on debt collection and fraud issues and structuring them into more specific categories like: harassment (threats or abuse), credit card collection, and auto loan collection.
This initial stage is crucial as it will train JARVIS and establish a framework for the AI system to expand its knowledge and accuracy. Once JARVIS is live and users start interacting, this additional data will further train and refine the AI system. The more efficiently JARVIS can sort the data sets, the more effective and helpful it will be to the residents using it.
Issue & Goals
Although there is a constitutional right to court-appointed counsel for defendants who cannot afford a lawyer in criminal proceedings, no such right exists for low- and modest-income litigants in civil actions. This means that over 80% of the civil legal needs of the low-income residents in Virginia, and nationwide, go unmet.
In Virginia, 1 in 8 residents—approximately 1 million people—are eligible for free legal services from the state’s legal aid programs. However, with fewer than 140 legal aid lawyers available, there simply aren’t enough attorneys to meet the demand. Lawyers are not required to do pro bono work, which often leaves residents representing themselves in court.
Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC), a statewide organization dedicated to helping low-income Virginians seek justice in civil legal matters, provides training to local legal aid program staff, and private bar attorneys, focusing exclusively on the legal rights of Virginia’s low-income residents.
The center also assists with legislative and administrative proposals affecting Virginia’s low-income residents and provides technical assistance, training, and publications in areas such as consumer law, domestic and sexual violence law, elder law, family law, health law, housing law, and public benefits law.
Solution & Impacts
This project's solution is to bridge the civil justice gap by assisting the development of document assembly tools that average people can use themselves. These tools simplify legal documents into easily digestible questions, allowing self-represented litigants to generate personalized forms online that can be filed either electronically or manually.
A2J Author is an existing powerful tool that presents complex legal documents in a user-friendly format. In an A2J “guided interview,” a human avatar walks the self-represented litigant down a virtual pathway to the courthouse, asking questions one at a time as they proceed. Along the way, users receive additional information through pop-up videos, audio, graphics, and text. Their answers are then compiled into an automated document, which can be printed and filed at the courthouse.
A2J Author operates entirely in the cloud, requiring no downloads, and is easy to use even for non-technical authors. It’s available for free to any legal aid organization, government entity, court, or other nonprofit for non-commercial use, and it has been used by pro se litigants to fill out more than 2.3 million court forms over the past 12 years. Hosting for the tools is provided at no cost by the Law Help Interactive website, funded in part by the Legal Services Corporation.
This project aims to increase the availability of these automated court forms for self-represented litigants in Virginia. Our fellow updated the existing uncontested divorce form, and developed other forms identified as the "most needed" for self-represented litigants by the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Fellow: Michael Thompson, L'23
Host Organization: Community Legal Services
Impact: Developed an online intake system that reduced processing time by 50%, enabling the organization to serve 30% more clients annually.
Fellow: Sofia Hernandez, L'22 Engineering Manager
Host Organization: Immigrant Justice Center
Impact: Created a multilingual legal information portal, increasing resource accessibility for over 10,000 individuals.
Fellow: Alex Johnson, L'23
Host Organization: Housing Justice Project
Impact: Developed an online tool that simplified the eviction response process, aiding over 5,000 tenants in its first year.
Fellow: Priya Patel, L'22
Host Organization: Community Legal Services
Impact: Created a multilingual legal information website, increasing accessibility for non-English speaking communities.
The tools developed by the fellows have significantly improved our operational efficiency, allowing us to serve more clients effectively.
Our partnership with ATJ Tech Fellows has been invaluable. The fellows' contributions have significantly advanced our mission.
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University of Pennsylvania
Carey Law School
3501 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104