Intelligent Legal Tech To Empower Self-Represented Litigants

There has been a growing trend to seek alternatives to litigation since the 1970s, which is the foundation for the growth of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) movement. Empirical research by Marc Galanter of the University of Wisconsin at Madison concluded that the number of trials in the United States, whether federal or state, civil or criminal, jury or bench, is declining. The shrinking number of trials is especially important because virtually everything else in the legal world is growing, including the number of lawyers, plethora of cases, expenditure on legal services, and amount of regulation.

In prior articles, we have noted the capacities of current ODR systems and introduced the six modules (which can be stand-alone tools) that may be helpful for developing intelligent user-centric ODR systems. However, this Article builds significantly on this prior work to note how these six tools can be used in a modular system. Moreover, the Article notes gaps in current offerings and provides direction with respect to ethical considerations that arise in creating legal tech to assist SRLs. Indeed, this Article challenges the legal tech community to go further in developing and providing low-cost tools that act as six potential “modules” in a holistic system for SRLs to enjoy greater access to justice. These modules can be used independently of each other as litigants may not need all six modules in any given case. Instead, they are like Lego blocks—allowing litigants to choose the ones that they need to fit their cases. Furthermore, the availability of the six modules may assist the judicial system, as SRLs use modules to better represent themselves in court. Of course, this is an ambitious ask, but well worth it if intelligent legal tech can be used to help SRLs, instead of merely providing even greater power to well-resourced companies that can afford fancy data analytics to boost their chances of success in court.