Justice can hold many definitions. In terms of legality, justice requires people to enjoy protected rights and to comply with legal obligations. However, the legal system without accessibility is morally unjust. Socially disadvantaged people, including people with low income, disabilities, and of color, face a justice gap, one between the civil needs of low-income people and the assistance actually available to them.
They are unable to appeal to legal services when facing unjust treatment. According to Capelletti Mauro (1982), accessibility itself is valuable. Enforcement and solutions are essential when these legal rights cannot be completely protected—this understanding of accessibility as a core component of justice is precisely the framework this paper adopts. In short, rather than adopting a broad philosophical conception of justice, this essay approaches it through the framework of accessibility, emphasizing the extent to which individuals are protected by the state.
The Disability and Justice Gap
Disabled people in America face significant discrimination in the status quo. There are 10.7 million disabled individuals living in households with incomes lower than 125% of the poverty threshold. Among low-income households with disabled members, 82% encountered at least one civil legal issue over the past year, 48% suffered five or more legal problems, and 27% faced ten or more related disputes. Only 25% of severe legal issues prompted residents to seek legal assistance, while 91% of such serious problems failed to obtain adequate legal support. Additionally, low-income groups with disabilities lack confidence in accessing and affording legal counsel. The reason for low legal accessibility for the disabled remains to be barriers. The barriers including, but not limited to, communication, comprehension, and economic. The communication barrier refers to those that block effective interaction between persons with disabilities and the justice system. Legal information regarding rights, procedures, and complaints is rarely provided in accessible formats such as Braille, audio, sign language, or Easy Read materials.Qualified sign language interpreters, communication assistants, and intermediaries are often absent during police questioning, legal consultations, and court hearings. Many legal services rely on traditional in-person or telephone channels that are not adapted for people with sensory or communication disabilities. Proctors of justice, including lawyers, police, and judges, often lack the skill to communicate appropriately with persons with disabilities, leading to misunderstanding and exclusion from legal processes.
Many disabled people face comprehension barriers accessing the legal system as well due to complex legal language and procedural requirements. Legal documents tend to contain technical jargon, abstract reasoning, and strict procedural rules that have high barriers to be understood, particularly for people with intellectual or cognitive disabilities. As a result, many disabled individuals struggle to understand their legal rights, to navigate legal procedures, or to effectively participate in legal processes. In addition, some courts and legal professionals still rely on the traditionalmedical model of disability, viewing disabled persons as incapable rather than providing reasonable accommodations and accessible support. This approach may further exclude disabled individuals from effective participation in the justice system.
Moreover, disability usually relates to low income. Costs required for legal services are significant and cannot be ignored. In this case, with lower-than-average income, families with disabled personnel have lower confidence in seeking legal assistance to solve problems. Due to the numerous obstacles caused by these factors, people with disabilities have become a disadvantaged group in the context of legal aid. They often fail to successfully and accurately ensure that their legal rights are realized. This is what is known as the justice gap.
AI as a Tool of Legal Accessibility
Along with the improvement of AI technology, some legal-professional AI emerges. By providing a new method for legal services, they can effectively fill the justice gap, improve legal accessibility, and foster social justice. For example, AI tools such as Voiceitt, NexTalk, Be My Sense, and LawDroid can significantly reduce communication barriers for disabled people in legal settings: Voiceitt helps people with speech disabilities by translating unclear speech into understandable language, NexTalk supports deaf or speech-impaired users through real-time communication assistance during phone calls, Be My Sense uses AI to translate sign language into text or speech, helping hearing-impaired people communicate more easily, LawDroid provides simplified legal guidance and voice-based legal assistance for people with cognitive or communication difficulties.
Together, these technologies make legal information and services more accessible, allowing disabled individuals to comprehend their rights better and communicate effectively with lawyers, courts, and legal institutions. Many articles of laws contain linguistic features that increase processing difficulty, such as center-embedded clauses, passive voice, etc. These features are particularly difficult for disabled people to comprehend and therefore create significant comprehension barriers. AI serves as an effective accessibility tool. AIs with large language models such as ChatGPT possess strong abilities to summarize information and generate concise explanations.
Compared to traditional legal texts or ordinary search engines, conversational AI can reduce comprehension barriers more effectively by translating complex legal jargon into simpler and more accessible language. In addition, AI can provide interactive explanations and immediate responses to users’ questions, allowing disabled individuals to better understand legal procedures and their legal rights. This could improve their ability to participate more independently in legal processes and access legal information without relying entirely on expensive professional assistance.
AI can also reduce economic barriers. Many basic legal service AI, such as LawDroid, Legal Aid Chatbot projects, and general large-scale models, are free. On the other hand, AI serves as a legal assistant for lawyers, which apparently reduces their workload. According to investigations, 90% of the lawyers said that those AI programs increased their productivity. Together, AI can reduce the economic barriers in legal services. Thus, by using AI on a wide variety of tasks, including summarizing court opinions, brainstorming arguments and counterarguments, legal research, drafting, automating documents, and translating, AI narrows the justice gap.
A New Form of Exclusion
Artificial Intelligence is by no means perfect, though. AI has a plethora of limitations, and may very well produce new forms of exclusion for they make mistakes.
The most significant problem with AI being used as a legal assistant is that it often creates hallucinations. According to investigations, although the number of hallucinations is reduced, AI research tools made by LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters each hallucinates between 17% and 33% of the time. Not only do the mistakes made by AI tools produce unnecessary costs for both usersand lawyers with great probabilities, but also do they have a chance to erode public trust in AI tools.
For instance, in May 2025, Marc Gunnarsson, an American, appeared in court alone to claim over 13,000 pounds in Covid financial aid. He cited fake legal cases fabricated by an AI chatbot to support his appeal against the UK tax authority. In the end, his appeals are directly rejected by the judges. Considering disabled people’ weaknesses in correctly determining the authenticity of AI-generated information, AI legal tools are required to minimize hallucination in order to provide helpful legal suggestions for those in need.
In legal services, AI usually uses the medical model to understand disability. It sees disability only as physical impairments, ignores people’s real needs and environmental barriers, and treats disabled people unfairly. This happens because AI training data lacks real experiences of disabled people, relies too much on medical records, and copies existing unfairness in society. As a result, disabled people are incorrectly judged by AI during welfare claims and legal assessments, losing rights and benefits. To fix this, AI should use the social and relational models. Disabled people must be included in design AI, data should be more representative, and human oversight is needed to make legal AI fair and clear.
Limitations
The research has several limitations. First, most arguments in this essay are based on existing secondary sources rather than original field research. Therefore, the discussion of legal barriers and AI solutions lacks detailed quantitative analysis and statistical investigation. In addition, this paper does not include interviews or direct communication with disabled individuals. As a result, some arguments may not fully mirror the real experiences and needs of disabled people. Different disabilities also involve different challenges, which cannot be completely covered in a short essay. Future research would be more empirically grounded and reflect more practical situations of people with disabilities in terms of legal services.
Conclusion
Aspiration toward justice has long been an issue from the establishment of civilizations. However, justice was “allocated” by fortune. From the king Solomon, who wisely addressed the belonging of a kid, to Roman philosopher Cicero, who bravely accused Sicilian governor for corruption, justice was granted by fortune, the possibility to encounter a just elite.
Capitalistic society is no different, even crueler. Since wealth became the only measurement, we seemingly slipped to the Thrasymachus-defined society----justice is the justice of the strong. However, according to the above discussions, AI can serve as an effective mean which empower the public. As they gained the capability to declare their legitimate rights, justice, equality, even democracy could be fostered and expanded. In conclusion, people with disabilities continue to face significant communication, comprehension, and economic barriers in legal services, which creates the justice gap.
This paper argues that AI has the potential to improve legal accessibility through tools such as speech recognition, legal chatbots, and language simplification systems. These technologies may help disabled individuals better understand legal information and participate more effectively in legal processes to reduce the justice gap. However, AI is not a perfect solution. Problems such as hallucinations and potential discrimination still exist. Therefore, future legal AI systems should prioritize inclusion, accessibility, and human care to improve accessibility for disabled people in legal services.
