Interest in ensuring both access to justice and impartial resolutions through legal and justice institutions continues to be crucial, especially in contexts where public legal assistance is limited, self-help and self-representation are common, and outcomes are influenced by legal awareness and capability. The access to justice, influenced by individual, situational, and systemic factors, raises important questions about who can access it and how to improve it for others. However, access to justice remains unattainable or unachieved for many who require it for various reasons. With the public release of one of the fastest-growing applications in history—ChatGPT, OpenAI demonstrated powerful capabilities of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) through digesting a vast amount of information and generating original and unique content. For legal practice, Generative AI demonstrated that legal problems can be solved differently and with higher efficiency. Generative AI can be used to provide legal assistance not only to legal experts but also to people and organizations who may have limited resources to afford traditional legal services. As a result, Generative AI might help increase access to justice and ensure people and organizations can understand their legal rights and options. On the other hand, Generative AI can help legal professionals provide legal aid services more effectively. The essential condition for training Generative AI models in the legal domain is access to legal data. Ironically, the law generates an enormous amount of legal data and legal content, while access to legal information is often limited for different reasons, this is why access to legal, especially judicial data, plays a vital role. Open Legal Data means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share legal data for any purpose. Availability of the Open Legal Data can bring many benefits to individuals and society through increasing transparency and by enabling informed decisions by individuals and organizations. However, mere opening of legal data is not enough, since legal information is rarely organized in a way to be ready for machine processing. The obstacles related to the lack of public and free access to judgments and decisions made by courts and other official authorities have long been a concern. It is clear, that training Generative AI on relevant documents, such as judgments and other court decisions, can dramatically improve the accuracy of its responses. We believe that the opening of legal data and Generative AI can together create a powerful alliance in facilitating greater access to justice, but only if other requirements are also satisfied, such as the legal capability of subjects seeking solutions to their legal problem.

Towards Access to Justice Through Generative AI and Open Legal Data: Between Utopia and Dystopia

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发表日期：

2025年

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Marcel Hajd

摘要

Interest in ensuring both access to justice and impartial resolutions through legal and justice institutions continues to be crucial, especially in contexts where public legal assistance is limited, self-help and self-representation are common, and outcomes are influenced by legal awareness and capability. The access to justice, influenced by individual, situational, and systemic factors, raises important questions about who can access it and how to improve it for others. However, access to justice remains unattainable or unachieved for many who require it for various reasons. With the public release of one of the fastest-growing applications in history—ChatGPT, OpenAI demonstrated powerful capabilities of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) through digesting a vast amount of information and generating original and unique content. For legal practice, Generative AI demonstrated that legal problems can be solved differently and with higher efficiency. Generative AI can be used to provide legal assistance not only to legal experts but also to people and organizations who may have limited resources to afford traditional legal services. As a result, Generative AI might help increase access to justice and ensure people and organizations can understand their legal rights and options. On the other hand, Generative AI can help legal professionals provide legal aid services more effectively. The essential condition for training Generative AI models in the legal domain is access to legal data. Ironically, the law generates an enormous amount of legal data and legal content, while access to legal information is often limited for different reasons, this is why access to legal, especially judicial data, plays a vital role. Open Legal Data means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share legal data for any purpose. Availability of the Open Legal Data can bring many benefits to individuals and society through increasing transparency and by enabling informed decisions by individuals and organizations. However, mere opening of legal data is not enough, since legal information is rarely organized in a way to be ready for machine processing. The obstacles related to the lack of public and free access to judgments and decisions made by courts and other official authorities have long been a concern. It is clear, that training Generative AI on relevant documents, such as judgments and other court decisions, can dramatically improve the accuracy of its responses. We believe that the opening of legal data and Generative AI can together create a powerful alliance in facilitating greater access to justice, but only if other requirements are also satisfied, such as the legal capability of subjects seeking solutions to their legal problem.