Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to profoundly influence the practice of law in Canada, reshaping how legal professionals operate and how access to justice is delivered. However, as AI’s role in law expands, it raises important regulatory, professional, and ethical questions. Will AI truly improve access to justice? How will existing legal regulations impact AI-driven services? What do legal professionals need to know about integrating AI into their practice while upholding professional standards?
While the potential benefits of AI are significant, it is equally important to critically examine its consequences for the legal profession and the justice system as a whole.
The Access to Justice Crisis in Canada
The access to justice crisis remains one of the most pressing challenges facing Canada’s legal system. Courts are overwhelmed, litigation is expensive, and a growing number of Canadians cannot afford legal representation—forcing many to self-represent or avoid legal action altogether.
The scale of this issue cannot be overstated. Nearly half of Canadian adults will face a civil or family law issue over a three-year period, according to the Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada report. This problem is particularly evident in Western Canada, where 49.8% of individuals report experiencing legal difficulties over the same timeframe. Alberta, in particular, has seen a sharp rise in self-representation, with the Court of King’s Bench ranking among the highest in Canada for self-represented litigants—even surpassing British Columbia’s Supreme Court, despite BC’s larger population, according to the National Self-Represented Litigant Project.
As a result, many litigants struggle to navigate complex legal matters alone, often making procedural mistakes that delay cases, burden courts, and impact their legal outcomes. While alternative dispute resolution (ADR), unbundled legal services, and legal coaching have helped address some of these challenges, these solutions remain underutilized and constrained by regulatory barriers.
How Can AI Improve Access to Justice?
The potential for AI to improve access to justice lies not in replacing legal professionals but in enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and expanding the reach of legal services. By leveraging AI strategically, the legal profession can bridge the gap between lawyers and the public, making legal assistance more accessible to those who may otherwise struggle to navigate the system.
AI can contribute to this shift in several key ways:
1. Automating Legal Tasks to Lower Costs
One of AI’s most immediate and practical applications in law is task automation. AI-powered legal tools are already revolutionizing how lawyers conduct research, draft documents, and analyze case files. These tools are not only faster but also help ensure accuracy, consistency, and issue-spotting that might otherwise be overlooked in manual review.
For example, legal research platforms powered by AI can scan vast databases of case law, precedents, and statutes in seconds, surfacing relevant legal authorities far more efficiently than traditional methods. Document automation software is streamlining the generation of contracts, pleadings, and memoranda—allowing lawyers to shift from creators to strategic editors, focusing on legal judgment rather than repetitive drafting. AI is also transforming disclosure review and due diligence, where machine learning models can rapidly sift through large volumes of documents, identifying key evidence and legal arguments more efficiently than human reviewers alone.
While these technologies are still evolving, their integration into legal practice has already begun to lower the cost of legal services—a shift that has profound implications for access to justice. By reducing the time required for lawyers to complete routine work, AI allows firms to offer more cost-effective services, making legal representation feasible for a broader range of clients.
2. AI as a Tool for Self-Represented Litigants (SRLs)
The access to justice crisis has led to a dramatic increase in self-represented litigants (SRLs), many of whom lack the legal knowledge required to navigate the complexities of the court system. AI has the potential to provide structured legal guidance, helping SRLs understand procedures, complete necessary forms, and identify relevant legal principles.
Already, AI-driven chatbots and virtual legal assistants are emerging as tools to bridge this knowledge gap. These systems can:
Interpret user queries and provide legal information, directing SRLs to court forms, procedural requirements, and legal resources.
Simplify complex legal jargon, offering plain-language explanations of rights, obligations, and next steps.
Guide users toward appropriate legal services, such as mediation, legal coaching, or pro bono assistance, based on their specific situation.
However, while AI can educate and inform, it cannot replace legal judgment or provide case-specific advice. Legal professionals must therefore consider how AI-driven guidance can be responsibly integrated while ensuring that users understand its limitations. Failure to make this distinction could lead to serious consequences for SRLs who may misinterpret AI-generated information as legal advice.
3. AI’s Potential in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
Beyond traditional litigation, AI is also reshaping the landscape of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), particularly in mediation and arbitration. Data-driven dispute resolution models can analyze historical settlement data, identify negotiation patterns, and even suggest fair resolutions based on precedent. AI-powered ADR tools are being explored to:
Assess case strength and likely outcomes using predictive analytics.
Identify points of agreement and contention between disputing parties, streamlining the mediation process.
Generate first-draft settlement agreements, allowing mediators to refine and finalize terms with human judgment.
By reducing reliance on court intervention, AI-powered ADR could alleviate pressure on the judicial system, offering faster and more cost-effective dispute resolution methods for parties who might otherwise be forced into lengthy litigation.
The Limits of AI in Expanding Access to Justice
Despite AI’s potential to improve access to justice, its expansion remains constrained by existing regulatory frameworks—particularly in Alberta, where restrictive policies continue to limit legal service innovation. AI’s ability to assist SRLs is ultimately limited by who is permitted to provide legal services, how AI-generated information is regulated, and whether legal regulators are willing to adapt to technological change.
These concerns raise important questions about the legal profession’s role in shaping AI’s future. Will legal regulators embrace AI-driven tools as a way to increase accessibility, or will they restrict its use due to concerns over quality control and liability? How will firms balance AI’s efficiency with the need for lawyer oversight? And perhaps most critically, how do we ensure AI benefits those who need it most—rather than reinforcing existing inequalities?
These questions must be addressed if AI is to meaningfully expand access to justice rather than simply optimize legal work for those who can already afford it.
How Legal Professionals Can Leverage AI Today?
Despite regulatory uncertainties, AI is already transforming legal practice in fundamental ways, from research and document review to litigation strategy and business development. While AI is not a replacement for legal expertise, it has the potential to significantly increase efficiency, reduce costs, and provide deeper insights into case strategy and client engagement.
AI in Legal Research
Legal research is a fundamental yet time-consuming aspect of legal practice, requiring lawyers to analyze extensive databases of case law, statutes, and secondary sources. AI-powered research tools like Lexis+AI and Westlaw Precision are transforming this process by automating complex searches, summarizing key legal principles, and identifying relevant precedents with speed and accuracy.
Unlike open-source AI, Lexis+AI and Westlaw Precision operate within a closed network of vetted legal sources, ensuring case law remains current, authoritative, and jurisdictionally relevant—a key distinction that mitigates the risk of outdated or fabricated legal information, which minimizes the risk of retrieving outdated or non-existent legal precedents.
By leveraging natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, these platforms allow lawyers to query legal databases in a conversational manner, retrieving results that are contextually relevant rather than strictly keyword dependent.
While these tools enhance efficiency, lawyers must still understand their limitations and potential risks. Even within a closed network, AI models may miss nuanced legal interpretations, fail to recognize jurisdictional distinctions, or generate overly broad results that require further refinement and analysis. Additionally, legal professionals must ensure they fully understand how these AI tools function, including their search parameters, data limitations, and predictive capabilities, to maximize their effectiveness while mitigating risks.
Ultimately, AI does not replace legal judgment—it refines and accelerates legal research. Lawyers who integrate these tools strategically and responsibly will be able to enhance the quality of their legal analysis, improve workflow efficiency, and deliver more precise and cost-effective legal services.
AI in Contract Review and Due Diligence
Contract analysis and due diligence are also labour-intensive, requiring lawyers to manually review hundreds or thousands of pages of legal documents. AI-powered contract review tools streamline this process, scanning large volumes of contracts, flagging inconsistencies, and identifying potential risks, non-standard clauses, and compliance issues. AI-powered due diligence tools can also cross-reference multiple data sources, identifying financial risks or contractual loopholes that might be overlooked in manual review.
Yet, full reliance on AI remains impractical. Contract review software still struggles with complex legal reasoning and contextual interpretations, meaning that lawyers must refine AI-generated outputs rather than accept them at face value. AI is a tool for acceleration, not autonomy, and firms integrating AI into their workflow should ensure that lawyers remain actively involved in the review process.
AI in Litigation Strategy and Predictive Analytics
AI is also making its way into litigation analytics, allowing firms to analyze judicial tendencies, opposing counsel strategies, and historical case outcomes. By processing vast amounts of case law and court records, AI-powered tools can:
Identify patterns in judicial decisions, helping lawyers anticipate how a particular judge might rule on certain issues.
Assess settlement probabilities, giving legal teams a data-driven approach to advising clients on litigation risk.
Refine arguments based on past case law outcomes, helping lawyers strengthen their advocacy strategies.
While this technology is still in its early stages, its implications are far-reaching.
AI in Marketing and Business Development
Beyond legal work, AI is also reshaping how law firms engage with clients and optimize business development strategies. AI-powered analytics tools can:
Assess client behavior and engagement trends, helping firms tailor their outreach strategies.
Predict legal service demand, allowing firms to adjust their marketing focus based on emerging client needs.
Optimize online presence, improving search engine rankings through AI-driven content optimization and digital advertising strategies.
For small and mid-sized firms, these tools offer a significant advantage in a competitive market. AI can help firms understand which practice areas are growing, which services are most in demand, and where to allocate resources for maximum impact.
However, ethical considerations around AI-driven marketing must be addressed. Data privacy laws and professional conduct rules place strict limitations on client data usage, requiring firms to ensure that AI-powered insights are used responsibly and in compliance with regulatory advertising standards.
Ethical Considerations in AI and the Legal Profession
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, ethical considerations must remain at the forefront of the profession’s adoption strategy. While AI offers undeniable advantages, it also raises concerns about job displacement, bias, reliability, and professional accountability.
The Impact on Legal Employment and Professional Roles
One of the most frequently debated concerns surrounding AI is its potential to disrupt legal employment, particularly for junior lawyers, researchers, and administrative staff.
However, rather than outright replacing these roles, AI is shifting the nature of legal work. Instead of spending hours on research or contract review, legal professionals are moving toward higher-value tasks that require strategic judgment, client interaction, and nuanced legal reasoning. As AI adoption increases, firms and legal educators must focus on retraining and upskilling, ensuring legal professionals develop technological literacy and expertise in AI-driven workflows rather than becoming redundant.
Bias in AI and the Risk of Reinforcing Systemic Inequities
AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of legal data presents an efficiency advantage—but it also introduces the risk of replicating and reinforcing systemic biases. AI models are only as objective as the data they are trained on, and if legal datasets contain historical biases, AI can perpetuate those same inequities.
For example, AI-powered risk assessment tools in criminal justice could disproportionately flag marginalized communities as higher-risk defendants, mirroring racial biases found in historical sentencing patterns. Similarly, AI tools used in civil litigation could unintentionally favor certain case outcomes if trained on imbalanced datasets that reflect long-standing disparities in judicial decisions.
To mitigate this, legal professionals must scrutinize the datasets and algorithms used in AI-powered tools, advocate for transparency in AI decision-making, and push for bias audits and fairness checks in AI-driven legal analytics. Blind reliance on AI-generated insights without understanding their underlying biases could lead to unethical decision-making and reinforce structural inequities in the justice system.
The Challenge of Accuracy and AI “Hallucinations”
Unlike closed-network AI tools like Lexis+AI and Westlaw Precision, which operate within verified legal databases, open-source AI models like ChatGPT can generate misleading or entirely fabricated legal information—a phenomenon known as AI hallucination.
A widely publicized example of this risk occurred when a New York lawyer filed a legal brief citing non-existent case law, relying on ChatGPT for research. The AI-generated citations appeared legitimate but had no actual legal foundation, leading to professional consequences for the lawyer. This case underscores the dangers of using unverified AI sources for legal work and highlights the necessity of human oversight.
Even with trusted legal AI platforms, lawyers must exercise due diligence by cross-referencing AI-generated insights with primary legal sources. AI can streamline legal research, but it cannot replace the lawyer’s role in ensuring accuracy, applying legal judgment, and maintaining professional responsibility.
As AI-driven legal tools become more prevalent, the legal profession must take an active role in shaping regulations and ethical frameworks. While some jurisdictions have begun exploring AI-specific legal guidelines, many professional conduct rules remain vague on AI’s role in legal practice. Given the rapid pace of AI advancements, law societies, courts, and policymakers must act proactively to establish clear ethical standards, rather than reacting after ethical failures occur.
For legal professionals, the greatest challenge lies in striking the right balance between automation and professional oversight. AI can handle high-volume, repetitive tasks with efficiency and speed, but it cannot replace legal judgment, ethical reasoning, or contextual analysis, at least not yet.
Lawyers and firms that embrace AI as an enhancement, not a replacement, will not only stay competitive but will also drive innovation while safeguarding the high ethical and professional standards that define the legal industry.
The information contained in this blog is not legal advice and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject. The information provided in this blog is for informational purposes only.
