Access Engine

Access Engine is a proposed national infrastructure from Sateesh Nori for delivering accurate, plain-language legal information directly to the public. The system functions as a federated Q&A platform: participating state and local legal aid organizations, court self-help centers, and public interest partners maintain jurisdiction-specific knowledge bases that are connected through a shared routing and response layer.

When a user submits a legal question, the Access Engine detects the jurisdiction, topic, and procedural stage, then routes the query to the relevant, verified content source. Using large language models constrained by these vetted datasets, the system returns plain-language, actionable answers, supplemented with links to official forms, self-help tools, and live referral options.

This architecture addresses two persistent barriers in public legal information delivery:

1. Jurisdictional accuracy – ensuring that answers reflect the correct laws, rules, and resources for the user’s location.
2. Scalable maintenance – allowing each partner organization to update and control its own content while contributing to a national network.

The Access Engine builds on successful single-use prototypes such as Depositron (a tenant tool for recovering security deposits) by expanding the model to every major civil legal problem type. The aim is to provide a universal, public-facing entry point for legal help—reducing early-stage demand on legal aid staff, empowering individuals to take informed action, and supporting more efficient allocation of attorney resources to high-complexity cases.