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In brief
AI platform customizes American Arbitration Association technology
Program generates court-ready separation agreements and financial statements
Retired Judge John D. Casey leads clinic development and implementation
A local law school clinic has built an AI-fueled platform aimed at helping parties who can’t afford an attorney to resolve their uncontested and low-contest divorces more efficiently.
Suffolk University Law School’s Online Dispute Resolution Innovation Clinic recently unveiled a customized version of an American Arbitration Association platform that will guide couples through the process of drafting separation agreements formatted to meet Probate & Family Court filing standards.
The new platform addresses a problem in the court that the director of the school’s clinic — now-retired Judge John D. Casey — witnessed in his years on the Probate Court bench: people whose uncontested divorces are delayed at the registry because their forms are incomplete. Casey says the clinic’s students have been able to gauge for themselves the fixes needed by going to court and observing court processes.
“They have witnessed firsthand these people that are coming back two or three times because they can’t fill out the paperwork properly in order to get [a proposed separation agreement] before a judge,” Casey says. “We have been developing the tools that are going to revolutionize what is happening in the Family Court.”
Completing the paperwork that the court requires can be a daunting task to individuals who don’t have the assistance of counsel, according to Casey, who served as chief of the court from 2018 until he retired last year.
“Even a short form financial statement for someone making less than $75,000 a year can be really complicated,” he reports. “The students have been averaging three to four hours just to fill out a simple form for one of the parties. The language can be really complicated, for example, in terms of merger language. A lot of times the court reviews these and then sends out a deficiency notice where they identify problems [with the party’s filing]. And people just don’t know how to resolve it.”
In 2024, Suffolk Law and the AAA announced the launch of the ODR Innovation Clinic, a pioneering online dispute resolution effort with the goal of offering an “accessible, digital process for low-contest divorces and family law matters in Massachusetts.”
“The American Arbitration Association is … on the cutting edge as far as some of the AI tools that they have,” Casey says. “They decided they were going to look at family law as a field that they could help provide services for people. With Suffolk [Law’s] legal technology lab, they thought it was a good fit.”
The Suffolk Law ODR Clinic’s new AI-tools build on the AAA’s technology.
“Our goal was to work with the students and create or customize an online dispute resolution platform targeted toward low-income individuals in low-conflict cases in Massachusetts,” Casey explains. “But the idea is that we would create something that could be replicated across the country and, potentially, across the world.”
The platform walks parties through the process of: (1) drafting a separation agreement that addresses parenting schedules, support arrangements, and asset division; (2) ensuring the agreement meets the court’s formatting requirements; and (3) assembling documentation the court requires in support of such filings.
According to Casey, the clinic is working along two parallel lines in developing new technology.
“We actually have customized and are testing an ODR platform that engages parties online and walks them through the process,” he says. “In the event they do reach an agreement, that populates into a separation agreement in a form that is approved by the court. Ultimately, with the court’s approval, our goal is to enable the parties to efile that directly to the court.”
Casey says perhaps the most “revolutionary” aspect of the program is the fact that it involves two students from Suffolk Law’s Legal Information & Technology Lab working to create a platform that offers guided interviews that generate court-ready forms, such as financial statements from a user’s plain-language answers.
“For example, this program will ask you basic questions and then will not only do the math, but it will then populate [that information] into the financial statement,” Casey says. “That will also be transferable to the ODR platform so you don’t need to [enter that information] more than once.”
Aside from financial statements, the program would also perform the same tasks for completing complaints for divorce, complaints for separate support, and, in the future, maybe even guardianship petitions.
Implementation of the clinic’s AI tools will result in a tremendous time savings for courthouse staff.
“We’re talking thousands and thousands of hours that are spent with people trying to get them to complete these forms properly,” Casey says. “It’s hard to really appreciate how much time is spent on that unless you are actually there working with people.”
In addition to helping those who can’t afford a lawyer, Case says the new AI tools will aid those for whom the cost of dispute resolution services isn’t feasible.
Casey and his students will conduct a panel discussion at a June 12 conference explaining how the clinic’s AI tools will be used in a working courthouse.