Last month, when Anthropic, developer of the popular AI assistant Claude, announced a major push into legal, much of the coverage in the media and the buzz on social media focused on what the announcement meant for law firms, in-house legal teams, and the legal tech ecosystem.

But the less talked about side of the story was potentially the more impactful – Anthropic’s explicit commitment to access to justice, highlighted by a direct partnership with the Free Law Project and its CourtListener free legal research platform. Suddenly, anyone with a legal problem and a chat window could access verified, authoritative legal materials, significantly reducing the risk of using a general AI assistant to answer legal questions.

As the Free Law Project itself put it: “A response built on verified CourtListener data is categorically different from one built on even the best model alone.”

In today’s episode, host Bob Ambrogi sits down with Mike Lissner, executive director and co-founder of the Free Law Project, the nonprofit behind CourtListener, and Nathan Dahlberg, the Free Law Project’s AI developer who actually built the CourtListener connector. They get into what was announced and why it matters, how the technology works under the hood, and, most importantly, the bigger questions it raises — about the potential impact on access to justice, and on the legal research industry.

Listen here:

Watch here:

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

  • Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

  • Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).

  • CosmoLex, helping law firms manage their entire practice in one platform, from intake to payment. Try it free.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.