Malawi Lawyer's Assistant

Protection orders are a critical remedy for survivors of violence and child marriage, but in Malawi, severe lawyer shortages make timely filings difficult. In partnership with the Women Lawyers Association of Malawi (WLA) and Microsoft's AI for Good team, the Oxford Institute of Technology and Justice is piloting a conversational tool that captures a survivor’s account in their own language and automatically generates a draft affidavit in a compliant format for lawyer review. The goal is to reduce drafting time and enable legal teams to reach more clients quickly.

The Malawi Lawyers’ Assistant is designed to streamline one of the most time-sensitive parts of the protection-order process: producing a clear, complete affidavit. Through WhatsApp, a survivor (or a trained advocate working with them) answers a stepwise series of prompts that elicit who/what/when/where details and context relevant to the legal standard, in their preferred language. The system structures these facts and produces a draft affidavit that aligns with Malawi’s legal requirements.

The tool is explicitly lawyer-supported: every draft is reviewed and finalized by a practicing lawyer before filing. This preserves legal quality while offloading the most time-consuming transcription and formatting tasks from attorneys. By shortening the drafting cycle, the pilot aims to increase throughput during urgent windows and improve consistency in affidavit quality.

Safety and governance are core design principles. The chat begins with informed-consent language, limits data collection to what’s needed for the affidavit, and provides quick-exit guidance. It avoids offering legal advice, focusing instead on structured information capture and document generation. Where users disclose imminent risk, the flow prioritizes safety referrals.

A goal is to reduce the time that it takes the lawyer and user to complete a robust, accurate application for a protection order. Ultimately, this can help more legal team members help more at-risk women, and doing so more quickly.