Hannes Westermann : Winner of the "Prix de la meilleure thèse dans le secteur Arts, lettres et sciences humaines des ESP 2023-2024"

The Cyberjustice Laboratory is pleased to announce that Hannes Westermann, researcher at the laboratory and now a professor at Maastricht University, is the recipient of the prestigious Prix de la meilleure thèse dans le secteur Arts, Lettres et Sciences Humaines des ESP 2023-2024 for his thesis entitled Using Artificial Intelligence to Increase Access to Justice.  

Thesis Abstract

Artificial intelligence is one of the most thriving and exciting areas in research and industry. Recently, approaches using deep learning have led to a number of breakthroughs in a range of areas, including computer vision, machine translation, image recognition and generation, and text understanding and generation (such as GPT-4). In this thesis, I investigate if and how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to improve access to justice and access to legal information for laypeople, i.e. people without legal training. The average citizen is often overwhelmed and helpless when dealing with legal problems. They may struggle to understand how the law applies to their situation, and further have trouble using the judicial system to resolve their issue, even if they are aware of their rights. This results in their problems going unresolved or prevents them from benefiting from opportunities available to them. For this reason, I developed and implemented the “JusticeBot” methodology, which uses AI to support laypeople with their legal issues. The resulting tools use a hybrid rule-based and case-based reasoning approach to ask a user relevant questions, analyze their legal situation, and provide them with suitable legal information and similar previous cases related to their particular legal problem. They can use this information to negotiate a mutually agreeable solution, or to navigate the arduous legal process. Thus, JusticeBot is an augmented intelligence tool, enhancing the user’s knowledge level to help them solve their legal problems. I describe the overall methodology and how I implemented it into software tools, e.g. the “JusticeCreator”, an interface to create and update JusticeBot tools. I also elaborate on a deployed JusticeBot tool in the area of landlord-tenant disputes, which is accessible to the public at https://justicebot.ca. This tool has been used over 17k times, and 86% of users responding to a survey report that they would recommend the system to others. I believe that JusticeBot can contribute to helping individuals resolve their legal problems, as well as increasing trust in and identification with legal institutions on a societal level, by improving access to justice and access to legal information for the average citizen.  

Thesis

This content has been updated on 3 May 2024 at 18 h 30 min.