Multidisciplinary team, including Allard Law professors, will test AI project at legal clinic
Law professors at the University of British Columbia (UBC) initiated the development of a new legal aid tool, which aims to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance experiential learning for law students and advance access to justice more broadly.
At the Peter A. Allard School of Law, lecturer Jon Festinger and professor of teaching Nikos Harris launched the project. Using the tool, a student can input a case scenario. Rather than offering answers, the output consists of targeted questions about factual gaps, pertinent legal issues, and directions for further research.
“Real cases bring real pressure,” Festinger said in UBC’s news release. “Students must assess facts, navigate unsettled law and prepare arguments – all under the guidance of supervising lawyers who need insight into how students are approaching each file.”
According to the news release, the legal aid tool seeks to help students ask better questions, think critically and creatively, and tackle unfamiliar legal tasks with clarity and confidence.
“The law that students learn in clinics is just as important as the law they learn in the classroom,” Harris said. “Our clinical programs provide a hands-on learning opportunity for students to work directly with clients and provide essential legal services to low-income persons. It is a vital experience, but it can also be one of the most demanding parts of a student’s legal education.”
To create the tool, Festinger and Harris partnered with the UBC Cloud Innovation Centre (CIC), a collaboration between UBC and Amazon Web Services.
“This project aligns perfectly with CIC’s vision,” said Liana Leung, CIC director, in the news release. “We’re here to support experiential learning and help solve real-world problems. This was a meaningful challenge—supporting students and improving access to justice—and it was a great fit.”
Over a semester, Festinger and Harris collaborated with CIC student developers to develop the legal aid tool.
“Jon and I were amazed at how quickly the CIC staff and students were able to take our numerous requirements and implement them in a manner that created an excellent learning tool,” Harris said.
Next phase
The project’s second phase entails testing the legal aid tool at the Indigenous Community Legal Clinic (ICLC) this year. Salima Samani, Allard law lecturer and ICLC legal services director, has joined the team.
“This tool could really help students in broadening their legal and factual analysis in cases, and the tool also critically allows the supervising lawyer to see a record of the students’ use of the tool,” Samani said in the news release.
The team plans to expand the tool to all of Allard Law’s legal clinics. According to Festinger, while the tool primarily caters to students, it has the potential to promote access to justice for Canadians, specifically self-represented litigants.
“Responsible AI tools which help students and the general public analyze their legal problems could one day provide very meaningful assistance to the millions of Canadians each year who are attempting to navigate legal problems on their own because they cannot afford a lawyer,” Festinger said.
More on CIC
At CIC, students lead multidisciplinary teams that create open-source technology solutions with reusable tools for others to adopt or adapt. According to the news release, these projects are geared toward achieving social impact.
“Every project we complete gets published with full documentation, so it can be used by other organizations,” Leung said.
Teams include technical and non-technical students alike, developers, and project assistants.
“We hire a lot of co-op students, and they gain hands-on experience working with cloud technology and generative AI,” Leung said in UBC’s news release.
Virtual moot court
Before developing the legal aid tool, Festinger and Harris collaborated on creating a virtual moot court, which offers students a simulated courtroom environment in a low-pressure setting.
The news release explained that the virtual moot court enables students to prepare oral arguments, receive real-time AI-supported feedback, improve their advocacy skills, and gain confidence.
