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Amy has been preparing for this legal case for a little over a year. She was due for a hearing at the Landlord Tenant Board of Ontario. Amy, 26, has never been in a legal process before. Her schedule is mostly dotted with study sessions, with the occasional space for some R&R. She spends most of those free days conversing with her lawyers.
Due to the ongoing nature of the client’s legal case, she has opted to omit her full name from this article. She is being referred to as “Amy”
Amy hastily stitched the loose button on her coat as she cursed her luck for picking today to have a wardrobe malfunction.
“I just thought to myself ‘This can’t be happening.’ I was so stressed I couldn’t sleep the night before.”
Amy has been preparing for this legal case for a little over a year. She was due for a hearing at the Landlord Tenant Board of Ontario. Amy, 26, has never been in a legal process before.
“It’s my first legal case…I’m a med student I have no clue what’s going on half the time they keep asking me for affidavit this and notarized blah blah blah that. When I looked over my documents to make sure I have everything I had to do it all in one sitting or else I’d forget what’s for what purpose.”
Amy says that her schedule is mostly dotted with study sessions, with the occasional space for some R&R. She spends most of those free days conversing with her lawyers.
“It sucks since I can’t really email them or call them multiple times whenever I need clarification. Most of the time I find my answers on Google or ask some of my friends studying law. I love my lawyers but I always feel like I’m in a crunch and I need to choose my words very carefully so I don’t end up wasting their time.”
Amy says she rehearses most of her conversations with her lawyers before she calls or meets them.
“I do think it’s a little silly but I don’t want to look stupid in front of them!” she exclaims. “I know they have other clients too, so I try not to bother them about small things.”
We asked Amy how she felt about the possibility of talking to a chatbot instead of their lawyer for simple questions.
“I think that would be great! Sometimes when I study I stay up at terrible hours so it would be nice to have access to something working that late…I’ve used chatbots before, Canada Post and TD come to mind when I think about it.”
Amy says that for a lot of services, she feels like chatbots and support bots are common to the point of being taken for granted.
“I never really thought about it…the times I used support bots I never really thought ‘hey it’s neat that they have this’...I guess now I’ll start noticing whenever companies provide them.”
Support bots like TD’s Clari are commonly used by people who need answers to their banking questions without the time to go in and line up at the bank. Nanette Kwong, an experienced litigation lawyer who supports the use of emerging technology in the field of law says that the legal industry has not had widespread use of what would be considered standard in many other fields of customer service.
"Lawyers are in the service industry. Our job is not only to protect clients' legal rights to the best of our ability. We should also ensure that their experience in the legal journey is made as seamless as possible. Human lawyers cannot work 24 hours a day but technology can be deployed to assist users of legal services. With the availability of ChatGPT and other similar options, the legal profession has no reason to stay in the techno dark ages.” Kwong says.
On the day of Amy’s big hearing, she walked into the room. The clacking of her heels stifled her pounding heart as she approached the stand. She’s been preparing for this like it was a final exam. Her landlord’s lawyer and the adjudicator started talking. The adjudicator furrowed his brow as he glanced over some documents.
The adjudicator withdrew the case. They said something about some missing administrative documents on her landlord’s side. Her coat button, the documents, all the time she spent at home stuffing papers in multicolored folders. Days spent in telling friends she couldn’t go. All postponed because someone forgot a few papers.
“I don’t even know what really happened…I’m honestly not even sure if someone’s going to reimburse me for the legal fees I had just walking in there…I’m just really confused,” Amy says.
“When I walked out and they started calling for the next case I felt…small. Like whatever was going on in my life didn’t matter too much, like I was just another cog in this giant machine.”
Amy was a little shocked at how quickly things moved along in court. She thought that every action would be treated as a significant, plot twisting cliffhanger like in the legal dramas she’s watched. She didn’t expect the cold, almost robotic processing of events.
“Since the case started I haven’t felt quite at home in the apartment I’m renting…I feel like I’ll have to leave because of the dispute but I don’t know when or how it’ll be settled. I feel trapped.”
Amy hopes that the case can move forward so that she can figure out the next steps she needs to take in her life.
“It’s a big change…it might not feel big for others but I’ve been living there for five years now. It’s almost a fifth of my life.”