New York tenants’ rights organization Housing Court Answers, in partnership with New York University School of Law and legal automation company Josef, has launched a gen AI-powered tool designed to help tenants navigate housing repair issues.
The assistant, called Roxanne, helps renters in New York City learn about and enforce their repair rights, including by providing them with actionable information on issues like documenting repair problems; helping them to prepare letters to landlords; or filing HPD complaints.
Powered by OpenAI-based solution JosefQ and leveraging the expertise and experience of HCA and NYU, the tool scales assistance and frees the team up to help with more complex cases.
Legal aid lawyer, author and adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, Sateesh Nori, was a key contributor to the tool’s development. He said: “One of the biggest challenges of working as a legal services lawyer or a nonprofit lawyer is that you don’t have enough time, or resources, to help everybody who seeks your help.
“Legal aid organizations often have to turn away half the people who seek help which can be extremely frustrating and demoralizing for everyone involved. Solutions like Josef Q help us close the access to justice gap and increase our capacity to help by 10x, 100x, 1000x.”
This is an interesting development because there is high hope and promise that generative AI will begin to solve the huge inequalities currently faced by people needing, but unable to afford legal services. Josef co-founder and COO Sam Flynn said: “LLMs give us the ability to really turn the tide on the access to justice gap, but we do need to make sure that we’re creating technology that’s not just efficient, but also safe. Our tool only draws from trusted and validated sources, is extensively tested and trained prior to launch, and will continue to be updated and maintained thereafter.”