Over 5 billion people worldwide lack access to justice: people who cannot obtain justice for everyday problems, people who are excluded from the opportunity the law provides and people who live in extreme conditions of injustice.
In short, citizens cannot participate meaningfully in their country’s legal processes to access their rights under the law. This crisis is driven by factors including the high cost of legal services, scarcity of legal professionals able or willing to take on their representation, the very structure of and incentives within the justice system, as well as systemic discrimination.
Justice inequity is most evident in areas of law that have immediate adverse effects on people’s daily lives: family law, including custody disputes, restraining orders, and divorce, tenancy issues, such as housing conditions, neighbor disputes, and evictions and financial matters like bankruptcy proceedings and debt collection.
Those affected are also disproportionately from underserved populations, exacerbating the socioeconomic gap and creating a ripple effect that extends beyond the individual to families, communities, and entire demographics.
While legal aid and pro bono services are essential contributors to bridging these gaps, they remain chronically underfunded and overburdened. When legal needs go unmet, individuals are often denied the justice to which they are entitled.
Innovative models, with ethical, user-centric technology playing a pivotal role, are urgently needed to address this challenge effectively. Justice tech solutions are designed to modernise interaction with the legal system and make it more accessible, efficient, and fair for all. These solutions are mission-focused and developed to drive positive social impact, addressing justice inequity primarily through a business-to-consumer model, in which technology is designed, built for, and sold directly to individuals seeking resources and tools who would otherwise experience unmet legal needs.
For justice tech solutions built on a business-to-business model, the technology is intended to support organisations like legal aid or courts that assist unrepresented people with their legal needs. Depending on the challenge addressed, justice tech solutions can also overlap with government tech, health tech, fintech, and comms tech. Across verticals, AI offers significant potential in increasing accessibility by providing vital support and guidance to individuals as they navigate the complexities of their legal issues on their own.
Justice tech represents a unique challenge and unique opportunity. The best solutions to the access to justice crisis are built by those who have experienced the problem first-hand and already have community connections to build product trust and validate utility. However, these entrepreneurs often come from underserved groups and are farthest away from the network and capital necessary to launch and scale a product that will meaningfully improve justice equity.
A global justice gap of this magnitude has far-reaching implications. When people cannot exercise their rights, they receive poor outcomes that negatively impact their lives. This tension affects billions worldwide, inevitably eroding trust in the legal profession, institutions, and supporting systems. Further, a global rule of law recession—measured by indicators including corruption, regulatory enforcement, open government, fundamental rights, and functioning of civil and criminal justice systems—has increased for seven straight years. Without the broader societal trust that underpins fair legal systems and healthy economies and governments, the strength of shared values and faith in those institutions continues to decrease, and broader instability ensues.
Technology has the potential to compound or ameliorate the access to justice crisis. As legal AI proliferates, technology has the potential to compound or ease the access to justice crisis. We must offer well-reasoned ethical guidelines that put consumers first and offer early, concrete support to entrepreneurs as they leverage technology to transform legal accessibility.
Investment in creating economically viable social impact solutions and resources that systematically address the global justice chasm is what is needed now. Leveling the playing field will simplify people’s interactions with their legal system and lead to fairer results, which can increase trust that the system is organised with their best interest at heart, not weighted in favour of wealth and power.
Maya Markovich is a panel member of LawtechUK and executive director at Justice Tech Association
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