AI Chatbot Development June Update: Advancing Access to Justice through Innovation

Since receiving TIG funding in December 2024, Lone Star Legal Aid (LSLA) has been working to develop and deploy three distinct chatbot tools designed to enhance legal access and organizational efficiency: Juris, LSLAsks, and Navi. As of the halfway point in our first project year, each system is actively in development—with several components already undergoing internal testing.

Juris – The Legal Research Chatbot 

Juris is LSLA’s AI-powered legal research assistant, designed to centralize the organization’s most relevant legal resources and reduce dependence on costly research tools like Westlaw. The tool is being built to serve not only attorneys but also paralegals and other legal staff who often lack access to commercial platforms.

Juris is currently undergoing internal testing. Its backend infrastructure is deployed on Azure, with GitHub integrations allowing for real-time updates. Over 100 legal documents are being curated for inclusion, and new features—like multi-document querying, citation checking, and a built-in PDF viewer—are already in progress. A staff survey conducted this spring helped prioritize the content needed most urgently by advocates.

The Juris platform will allow LSLA staff to locate answers faster, improve legal research consistency, and reduce overall operational costs.

LSLAsks – The Internal HR/IT/Policy Chatbot 

LSLAsks aims to tackle a familiar pain point: finding current internal policies and procedures. Many employees report challenges locating accurate information across LSLA’s shared systems, especially during onboarding and administrative tasks.

Development of the internal platform has reached key milestones, including the launch of a designated webpage and workflow mapping sessions across departments. These meetings revealed duplicative or outdated documents scattered across drives. The team is now interviewing staff and cataloging the highest-need materials for integration.

Once launched, LSLAsks will serve as a one-stop shop for internal questions, improving staff confidence, saving time, and reducing onboarding friction.

Navi – The Client-Facing Chatbot 

Navi is LSLA’s upcoming public chatbot designed to guide community members through identifying their legal issues and connecting with available help. Built using OpenAI and Azure, Navi will walk users through legal problem scenarios and recommend relevant resources, self-help materials, or referrals.

A legal issue life cycle has been mapped for all LSC legal problem codes, and staff subject matter experts are contributing plain-language explanations to make legal topics easier to understand. Development is still in the early phase, but community outreach and awareness efforts have already begun.

Stay tuned—Navi’s goal is to expand LSLA’s impact by helping more people access help in less time.

Outreach, Security, and Collaboration

We’ve also made progress on:

• Security & Compliance – Our team is drafting data governance, access control, and encryption protocols to meet GDPR, CCPA, and LSC requirements. These systems will support a secure and compliant chatbot environment.
• Marketing & Outreach – Since March, we’ve maintained blog updates and developed infographics and messaging to support future rollouts. We’re also collaborating with local partners to prepare for Navi’s public launch.
• Replication & Sharing – Code documentation and GitHub repositories are in the works. Our team has presented at the Equal Justice Conference, consulted with other legal aid innovators like Ayyoub Ajmi to exchange lessons learned, and will present to LSC AI & Legal Work Peer Learning Lab.
• Evaluation Planning – Impact tracking systems are being developed now so that we can monitor user satisfaction, search performance, and workload impact once the chatbots are live.

Looking Ahead

We remain on track to meet our grant milestones and anticipate the first round of beta testing in the coming months. Our internal testing continues to inform improvements and ensure each platform meets the real-world needs of legal aid staff and the communities we serve.

Thank you for following along on this journey as we build tools to improve access to justice—for clients, for our staff, and for legal aid programs everywhere.

Lone Star Legal Aid (LSLA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit law firm focused on advocacy for low-income populations by providing free legal education, advice, and representation. LSLA serves millions of people at 125% of federal poverty guidelines, who live in 72 counties in the eastern and Gulf Coast regions of Texas, and 4 counties in Southwest Arkansas. To learn more about Lone Star Legal Aid, visit our website at www.LoneStarLegal.org .

Media contact: media@lonestarlegal.org