Ep 275: Can AI Bridge the Justice Gap? Legal Aid Lawyer and Innovator Sateesh Nori Thinks So

Jan 21, 2025

Sateesh Nori is a legal aid attorney and tech innovator dedicated to bridging AI and access to justice. He discusses his journey from housing lawyer to developing AI tools, like Roxanne, to help tenants understand their rights. Nori believes AI could revolutionize legal services and tackle the justice gap, comparing its potential impact to electricity. He also critiques the current legal education system for not preparing students for a tech-driven future and emphasizes the ethical considerations in integrating technology into legal practices.

Ask episode

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

Intro

00:00 • 4min

From Law to Technology: A Journey in Legal Aid

03:33 • 8min

Bridging the Justice Gap with Technology

11:30 • 9min

Harnessing AI to Address the Legal Aid Crisis

20:05 • 3min

AI's Role in Legal Access

23:16 • 22min

Reflecting on the Future of Law and Technology

45:12 • 2min

From legal aid attorney to legal tech innovator, Sateesh Nori brings a unique perspective to the intersection of artificial intelligence and access to justice.

After spending two decades in the trenches as a housing lawyer at legal aid offices in New York City, Nori now bridges multiple worlds – continuing his legal aid work at the Legal Aid Society of NYC while also serving as an adjunct clinical professor at NYU Law School in its eviction defense clinic and working as a senior legal innovation strategist at Just-Tech LLC, a technology consulting firm that focuses on legal services providers.

He recently partnered with Housing Court Answers, a nonprofit tenants’ rights organization in NYC, and Josef, the legal automation company, to develop and launch Roxanne, an AI-powered tool to help tenants understand their repair rights, and he believes artificial intelligence could be the key to finally making meaningful progress in closing the justice gap.

As if all that were not enough to keep Nori busy, he recently published a memoir, Sheltered: Twenty Years in Housing Court, and gave a TEDx talk, How A Chatbot Can Save Someone From Homelessness.

Today, in a conversation recorded live at the Legal Services Corporation’s Innovations in Technology conference in Phoenix last week, Nori and host Bob Ambrogi discuss why he believes that AI is as transformative as electricity, how he is using it in his own work, and why he believes law schools are failing to prepare students for the AI revolution.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.
Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.