Legal aid clinics receive free access to legal AI assistant

Co-founder of LegalMike, Frank Biesebeek, with the staff of the Amsterdam Legal Aid Clinic.

In times of legal shortages, technology becomes a public value

Access to justice in the Netherlands is under increasing pressure. The European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI) warned again this week in a report of a negative trend in the rule of law, with the deteriorating access to legal assistance for vulnerable citizens as a low point.

Against this background, LegalMike is now making its legal AI assistant available free of charge to all legal aid clinics in the Netherlands. This stems from the conviction that AI should not be a luxury product, but a public value from which many can benefit.

In a society where more than 350,000 people depend on subsidized legal aid annually, this is not an unnecessary luxury. Since 2019, the number of social lawyers has decreased by 13%. Young lawyers are dropping out en masse; more than half of the outflow in 2024 consisted of legal professionals under the age of 35. In several regions, from Flevoland to the Northern Netherlands, access to legal assistance is problematic.

With the deployment of the AI assistant, those seeking justice gain access to fast, objective, and reliable legal information in every field of law. Additionally, the system bypasses the search engine and feels as though you are sparring with a senior colleague. This ensures greater legal depth.

“We believe that access to justice begins with access to reliable legal information,” says Frank te Biesebeek, co-founder of LegalMike. “By making it available for free to legal aid clinics, we ensure that people without deep pockets also receive legal support. In this way, we make the law fairer and more accessible.”

The kick-off took place at the Amsterdam Legal Aid Clinic Foundation, which was the first legal aid clinic in the Netherlands to start using the system.

Maxim Garcia Abrahamse of the Amsterdam Legal Aid Clinic Foundation emphasizes the impact: “Not only will this save us a vast amount of time in helping our clients, but it will also improve our work because it simply possesses a massive amount of legal information that you, as a student, are not always aware of.”

The goal: to equip every legal aid clinic in the Netherlands with LegalMike in the near future. In this way, technology enables access to objective and reliable legal knowledge and advice for both legal professionals and those seeking justice.