Issue-Spotting

When people first seek legal help, their stories are often complex and mixed with multiple problems—housing, family, debt, benefits, or employment issues all intertwined. The task of issue-spotting is to accurately recognize which legal issues are actually involved. This may include analyzing a narrative, reviewing uploaded documents or notices, or asking clarifying questions to surface hidden or secondary problems.
Effective issue-spotting allows both people and systems to route the matter to the correct information, tools, or services. For AI tools, this means detecting legal problem types and sub-issues from natural language or document text, while avoiding false positives or omissions. For human helpers, it’s the foundation for triage, referral, and tailored guidance—ensuring that people start on the right path toward resolution.