By: Melissa Luhtanen, Alberta Human Rights Commission

During Access to Justice Week, it is particularly timely to reflect on how the processes guiding human rights complaints are intricately connected to the fundamental nature of our relationship with government and administrative bodies. Administrative law, a branch of public law, governs the relationship between citizens and the government. A central challenge in adjudicating such important rights is protecting procedural fairness while considering increasingly complex complaints.

By: Rob Hudson, Law Librarian, Alberta Law Libraries
 
The effective use of prompts in legal research will support A2J in pro-bono practice and increasingly will be adopted in 2025. Developing some literacy in AI prompt engineering this year will assist lawyers and self-represented litigants alike. 
 
Alberta Law Libraries (ALL) supports the administration of justice and the rule of law in the Province of Alberta through its legal information resources. In keeping with the theme of this year's A2J Week, legal information sources at ALL are ‘Lifting Communities Through the Power of Pro Bono’ with specific Services to the Bar and Services to the Public. Continuing legal information literacy, outreach, and education at ALL are central to the Access to Justice (A2J) goal.

By: Januel Ibasco, Student at Law

Access to Justice
As a volunteer with the ECLC, lawyers and articling students promote access to justice in the legal profession. Often, when an individual is not well versed in the intricacies of the legal justice system in Canada, it can be a daunting exercise to navigate alone. This is the reality for individuals coming from marginalized communities, who are low-income, and do not have access to resources.

Alberta Law Libraries (ALL) promote informed engagement with the law, encouraging broad access to justice. ALL’s mission of providing access to the Law supports the Access to Justice initiatives in the province.

This article was originally published in CBA Alberta's Law Matters publication on April 18, 2023.

By: Ryan Fritsch

ChatGPT is barely five months old but has already reframed how the profession discusses legal-tech and access to justice. And little wonder why. To paraphrase science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, the AI-powered text generator appears sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic.

The latest version - ChatGPT4 - has already demonstrated its legal chops by scoring in the 90th percentile of the LSAT and Uniform Bar Exam. It can draft facta, contracts, custody settlements and affidavits. It can summarize and contrast case law or write closing arguments. Non-lawyers will get pithy, plain-language descriptions of rights related to wrongful dismissal, human rights discrimination, breaking a rental tenancy or criminal charges.