NY Legal Aid Groups Embrace AI, but Cost Concerns Remain

Legal aid and advocacy groups in New York have big plans for using AI as a way to increase access to justice, but they are struggling to implement those tools due to a lack of funding and resources.

Organizations throughout New York State have received access to AI products through grant funding or by partnering with academic institutions. And while concerns about client privacy and the reliability of generative AI programs remain, there’s momentum in the legal aid community for using AI to take on legal gruntwork like generating summaries and documents, as well as translation services.

But beyond the cost of specialized AI programs, it can take time, resources, and a knowledge base to train staff and maintain the tools.

“To me, one of the biggest blockers that people don’t really talk about is not just the cost itself of AI, but legal aid organizations don’t typically have technologists on staff,” said Sam Harden, program manager at Pro Bono Net, a New York-based nonprofit that provides technology to legal aid groups.

“There are a small number of people in legal aid that have knowledge of this beyond going to” free services like ChatGPT or Claude, Harden said. “I think that’s the biggest issue. The technology is expensive and the personnel cost is expensive as well.”

A number of generative AI products can be accessed for free but for additional features and capabilities, they can cost up to $30 per user per month. For example, Microsoft’s Copilot is free to use as part of the Bing search engine, but users pay $30 per license per month to use Copilot in Microsoft 365 products—a cost that Microsoft’s Adrián Palma, global pro bono manager and digital strategist, acknowledges “can be quite expensive for non-profits.”

Affordability Concerns

Costs can be high even for non-generative AI tools, like the LegalServer products used by the New York County Lawyers Association to track and search for cases and help with client intake. LegalServer—whose products are specifically made for nonprofits, public defense, and government agencies—said that subscriptions can start at about $600 per month, a price includes multiple users within an organization. There’s also a one-time onboarding cost for new organizations, and additional costs if those organizations want to use LegalServer’s data and document migration services.

Those programs would be unaffordable were it not for grant funding, said Anthe Bova, director of pro bono programs at the New York County Lawyers Association.

“We’re able to function really because of this daily use of this very old form of AI, which I think we all take for granted,” Bova said.

“At the end of the day, most large funders of civil legal aid understand the importance of infrastructure and are willing to continue funding these types of services, because they understand that it is a crucial part of helping us deliver the services that we provide,” Bova added. “But if this funding dried up, then it is unclear how legal services providers will be able to continue these services without alternative sources of funding.”

Palma said his team is using the existing infrastructure of Microsoft Philanthropies, which provides nonprofits with access to Microsoft products for free or at a reduced cost, to connect legal aid organizations and pro bono providers with trainings on how to use Copilot.

Staff at nonprofits and legal service organizations don’t have the time to sit through trainings, let alone have the resources to get in touch with the right people at major technology companies to set up tutorials, he said.

“We actually need to find a way to meet the nonprofits where they’re at,” Palma said. “At Microsoft, we have immense resources. How do we get those resources to the nonprofit?”

There’s also less support for individuals who are seeking humanitarian or family-based relief, especially in the immigration space, said Rodrigo Camarena, director of Justicia Lab, which recently got $500,000 of seed funding from Google to launch an AI lab aimed at bringing technology to immigrant legal service providers across the country.

“The market isn’t really supporting these more vulnerable immigrant communities,” he said. “That’s where it’s important for us to fill the gap.”

Academic Partnerships

Ray Brescia, associate dean for research and intellectual life at Albany Law School, suggested legal aid organizations partner with academic institutions to get access to new tools and training resources. Professors at schools, like the University at Albany, which Brescia is working with, are trying to find work and research for their students.

“Nonprofits have long looked to law schools, but I would urge them to look to the local universities, local community colleges that are doing programming to find partners,” said Brescia.

But schools also run into funding and resource issues. Eliza Hong, a recent graduate of Cornell University, has worked with students and faculty at Cornell’s Tenants Advocacy Practicum to develop and maintain chatbots for advocacy groups using Josef Legal’s no-code workflow automation programs and Josef Q AI tool.

Josef Legal declined to say exactly much its products cost but said it does provide licenses to legal aid and nonprofit organizations at a 90% to 95% discount. The housing rights organizations working on the chatbots are getting access for free.

“We don’t say ‘no’ based on cost for good products that we believe in, but for longer term projects that are continuing, we ask for a” financial contribution, said Sam Flynn, co-founder and chief operating officer of Josef Legal.

It’s difficult to ensure the sustainability of those projects given the lack of resources and the student turnover, Hong said.

“I haven’t found anyone to take over yet and I’m graduated,” she said. “It’s hard to pass on the knowledge. The turnover part is more difficult because you need to explain everything again.”

Giving Clients Options

There’s “huge opportunity” for developers who want to innovate in this space and help increase access to legal services for both low- and middle-income people, said Brescia.

There’s also a lot of will to figure out how to use the technology well, said Harden.

But there needs to be buy-in from the legal community, which tends to be risk averse and not as willing to embrace new technologies for fear of being replaced, Bova said.

“We don’t want to be too protectionist of the legal industry,” Bova said, emphasizing that AI is a supplement to human lawyers. “If there are whole swaths of the public accessing information, if there’s ways they can access some legal information, that’s overall a general good but at the end of the day, our work centers on talking to the client.”