Prepared for Law, Justice, and Development Week 2015 at the World Bank
Improving Access to Justice
with Legal Advisory Systems
L. Karl Branting, J.D., Ph.D.
The MITRE Corporation
19 November 2015
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© 2015 The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.
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Outline
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Motivation
A framework for legal advisory systems
Example: the Protection Order Advisor (POA)
Lessons learned
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Motivation
 Barriers to access to justice
– Individualized legal assistance is often unafforable or unavailable
– Scarcity of information about rights, procedures, and documents
– Inaccessibility of courts or other forums
 Formalization of law in computational form can:
– Provide individualized legal assistance
– Assist pro se citizens by
 Informing them about legal rights
 Guiding them through proceduresto assert those rights
 Assisting with document drafting
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A Framework for Legal Advisory Systems
 Key system modules
1. Informing user of available forms of legal relief
2. Determining whether user can make a prima facie showing of
requirements for legal relief
3. Informing user of procedural requirements for relief
4. Assisting user in drafting petitions or other documents needed to
initiate legal action
 Computational requirements
– 1 & 4 – instructional or tutorial techniques
– 2 – logic programming, i.e., inference over formal representation
of legal rules and case facts
– 3 – automated document drafting
 Well-known computational techniques for all 4 components
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Example: The Protection Order Advisor
 Legal advisory system for pro se protection order applicants
– Victims of domestic abuse often can’t afford legal assistance
– In US courts, staff find it distressing that they can’t give advice to
domestic abuse victims
 Implemented with funding from the Idaho Supreme Court
– Implemented in logic-programming famework
 Deployed on trial basis in multiple Idaho courthouses in early
2000’s
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Opening Screen
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Tutorial Screen
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Data Elicitation Screen Showing Links to
Definitions
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Elicitation Screen for More Complex Data
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Petition for Proecton Order
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Lessons Learned from POA
 Implementation
– It is tractable to formalize routine legal rules for prima facie case in
computational logic
– Template-based techniques for document drafting adequate for
routine petitions
– Collecting and organizing self-instruction materials constitutes a
large component of implementation
– Total implementation costs for basic system not exorbitant
 Design
– Multilingual interface often necessary, e.g., Spanish and English in
many US cities
– Most useful in settings in which petitioner can get some assistance
in using the program, e.g., by domestic violence counselor
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Lessons Learned from POA
 Access – broader availability may require access through
– Web
– Cell phones
 Funding
– Although development costs are typically low, there is little private
sector interest in developing software for impecunious pro se
litigators
– Most cost-effective approach is for relatively simple systems with
very broad usage
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Summary
 Technology for building legal advisory systems is wellunderstood
 Legal advisory systems
– Can operate in kiosks, websites, or smartphone apps
– Address two of the three key obstacles to access to justice
 Providing individualized legal assistance
 Helping pro se litigants understand rights and procedures, and assisting
with document drafting
– Represent an inexpensive approach to increasing access to justice
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Bibliography
 L. Karl Branting, An Advisory System for Pro Se Protection
Order Applicants, International Review of Law, Computers &
Technology 14(3), (2000).
 L. Karl Branting, Advisory Systems for Pro Se
Litigants Proceedings of The Eighth International Conference on
Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL-2001), May 21-25, 2001, St.
Louis, Missouri.
 Maurits Barendrecht, Legal Aid, Accessible Courts or Legal
Information? Three Access to Justice Strategies Compared,
Global Jurist, Vol. 11, Issue 1, January 2011
© 2015 The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.
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