Name: AI Chatbot Development for Legal Services
Start: 2025-08-28T13:00:00-0500
End: 2025-08-28T14:00:00-0500

Thursday August 28, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm CDT

Salon E

AI-powered chatbots hold incredible potential to enhance legal service delivery, both internally for staff and externally for clients. This session will provide an accessible, high-level overview of AI chatbot applications in the legal aid space, addressing ethical implications as well. We’ll focus on practical examples from Texas legal aid organizations, including TexasLawHelp’s public-facing Amigo information bot, and Lone Star Legal Aid’s TIG-funded chatbot initiatives: Juris (for legal research), LSLAsks (for internal administrative support), and NAVI (for public-facing information, referrals, and resources). Through this session, participants will gain an accessible understanding of how AI chatbots can be applied in legal services, and how these tools are being developed and implemented to meet evolving needs.

Speakers

Martha Beard-Duncan

Managing Attorney, Texas Legal Services Center

Aaron Varner

Co-Managing Attorney, Texas Legal Services Center

Aaron Varner is a staff attorney in Texas Legal Services Center’s Self Represented Litigants Program, which administers TexasLawHelp.org. He has a Master of Public Affairs degree from the University of Wisconsin, where he focused on tech policy, and he received his JD from Chicago-Kent... Read More →