CLEO's Guided Pathways Legal Narrative Assistant

Community Legal Education of Ontario's Guided Pathways Legal Narrative Assistant is a prototype of a digital tool designed to support people in drafting strong legal narratives as part of self-advocacy in housing, benefits, family, and other civil legal matters. The prototype is helping people to take their information and organize it into a clear, well-organized narrative.

The system uses a structured interview to ask the user about their background, situation, key events, and what they are asking for. It helps them identify what details are most important, what decision-makers need to hear, and how to organize their thoughts clearly and persuasively. At the end, the user receives a written draft they can review, revise, and submit as part of a legal filing or application.

This tool prototype is part of CLEO’s broader Guided Pathways platform and is built on the belief that everyone—regardless of education, income, or legal knowledge—should be able to express their experiences and needs in a way that courts and agencies can understand and act upon.

This project is also part of a multi-year research initiative exploring the promise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to improve document assembly tools for people who are self-represented or have limited legal help. The research is a collaboration between CLEO, scholars at McGill Law, and the Montreal Cyberjustice Laboratory. It aims to rigorously evaluate whether GenAI can be successfully integrated into CLEO’s Guided Pathways to enhance usability and accessibility. To learn more, read the discussion paper: Generative AI: Opportunities to enhance CLEO's Guided Pathways.