legal problem solving help

I say begin. Because there was something missing.

That missing something? Human centered design.

Why human centered design?

As this post is not intended to be a detailed explanation of what human centered design (also often referred to as "design thinking") is, you can go here for a great introduction to the process and its purpose. (You also can peruse the Resources section of this site for much more information on the process of design thinking.)

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.

— Tim Brown / IDEO

At essence, design thinking is a process for creative problem solving. And as such, I posit that human centered design is critical to both how we solve legal problems for clients and how we deliver legal services to clients, especially at this juncture in the evolution of our profession.

At the center of our professional obligation is THE CLIENT. Human centered design puts THE CLIENT at the center of how we do our work. Quite simply, it is the heuristic that has been missing from both legal education and legal practice.

As I explained to LPS students on day one, in law school you are given a primary tool: you are taught (via the case method) to "think like a lawyer." I call it the hammer. Have a legal problem? Use the hammer. And the hammer comes in very handy to solve many legal problems. But. You can't solve all problems with a hammer. Not every legal problem is a nail. And you need more tools than just one.

To "think like a lawyer" means adopting an emotionally remote, morally neutral approach to human problems and social issues; distancing oneself from the feelings and suffering of others; avoiding emotional engagement with clients and their causes; and withholding moral judgment. To think like a lawyer one must be dispassionate in analyzing a client's legal problems and options, and in developing a legal strategy for achieving the client's goals.

– Stephen Wizner, Is Learning To "Think Like a Lawyer" Enough?

Especially in this day and age, when it's quite apparent that clients are rejecting the hammer as the sole tool . And the now-irrefutable evidence that the hammer-wielding lawyer alone can't serve all of the legal needs that go unmet each and every day in this country .

Yes, to solve legal problems, a lawyer must think like a lawyer . But guess what? Thinking like a lawyer requires you first to think like a client . Because until you understand where the client stands, and have a holistic view of the depth and breadth of the problem, you cannot provide the best solution. (See Einstein quote at top of post — the best solutions come from thinking more about the problem.)

And this is what the problem-solving process of human centered design requires. It requires you to first THINK LIKE A CLIENT in order to more fully understand the problem, before you engage in problem-solving. To BE CURIOUS about the client's situation and needs. To come from a place of empathy, and do a deep(er) dive into context and understanding. BEFORE you wield the hammer.

And now, back to why "Legal Problem Solving."

The course name — Legal Problem Solving — wasn't my first choice. I view this course primarily as one in human centered design, and how this heuristic can be applied to three aspects relevant to a legal education:

#1 How to design better, more effective legal services that serve more people; 

#2 How to better solve legal problems — or, client problems that happen to have a legal component (which I believe more accurately describes most client problems); and

#3 How to design better professional journeys through the legal profession — some would call this designing a better legal career.

The name was "suggested" because (a) it fit within the ABA's course name guidelines, and (b) it was unlikely to raise suspicion among those who would question a course in human centered design or "legal design" (which apparently was important in order for the course to be approved and added to the schedule).

So, for bureaucratic and political reasons, Legal Problem Solving it was.

And as I embraced the name and the initial constraint I felt (yes, it aptly described aspect #2, but not really #1 or #3?), and simultaneously thought more broadly about what it means, I realized that it's quite perfect.

Because here's the thing: ALL of the aspects of this course deal with solving problems we face in the legal profession. ALL are part of the larger, more holistic view of what it means to do legal problem solving.

Starting with #1 , we have a HUGE access to legal services problem in this country. This is spelled out quite clearly in many places — for a good overview, read the ABA's 2016 Report of the Future of Legal Services . Serving the 80% of people in the U.S. who have a legal need but don't have legal help? And might not even realize they need legal help? This is a level-one problem our profession MUST solve for. We're not doing a good enough job at solving it right now. We need different, better, tools.

And those who we're already serving? Well, they aren't happy, either. Go here and here and here for the latest reports on how well the traditional BigLaw services delivery model is faring. Hint:

It has been a difficult 10 years for law firms in many respects, and looking ahead, significant long-term challenges remain,” said James W. Jones, a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession and the report's lead author. “Actions that have helped sustain firm financial performance over the past few years, such as expense controls and reducing the equity partner ranks, are not likely to be as effective in the future. Firms need to embrace a longer-term, fundamental shift in the way that they think about their markets, their clients, their services, and their futures.

— The “2017 Report on the State of the Legal Market” Finds 10 Years of Stagnation Changing the Industry; Says Innovation Key to Law Firm Success

Moving on to #2 , it's incumbent upon lawyers to find better ways to solve clients' problems that have a legal component. Clients do not have legal problems in isolation. For 18+ years, I helped my business clients solve  business problems that often had a legal component (but not always). Clients of divorce attorneys have personal and/or family and/or financial problems that have a legal component. Perhaps most importantly, with issues of civil liberty involved, we must view clients of criminal defense attorneys has having a larger set of problems, within which the legal problem exists.

Clients from many parts of the legal services spectrum are telling us that we do not do a good job responding holistically to their problems. We often use only our hammer — when the hammer might not be the best (or even appropriate) tool. (Guess what? Not every legal problem requires — or is even best-served — by a purely "legal" solution. Just ask any really good mediator.)

We also tend to work in isolation, focusing solely on "legal" issues instead of taking an integrative approach that more fully considers a client's situation. A classic example here? The rising chorus of general counsel pointing out how little their outside counsel know about the actual business of the companies they represent.

When it comes to being great lawyers, we must add more tools for solving clients' problems with a legal component. And this doesn't even begin to take into account the impact that increasingly sophisticated and effective technology will have on much of the work heretofore done by lawyers .

And #3 . This is one of my personal missions. To insure the positive growth and transformation of the legal profession, we MUST do a better job of preparing law students to craft intentional career paths that empower them to both successfully navigate a rapidly changing legal landscape AND participate meaningfully in shaping this landscape's future. Traditional core curriculum courses are not enough. Clinics are not enough. Frankly, not even PoLI (in its current form) is enough.

You don't have to fully embrace that the billable hour is dead , that the traditional law firm model is dying , that technology may soon render many lawyers obsolete , that the market lawyers serve is shrinking , or that the opportunities for associates are declining . But only a luddite will disavow that the business of law has changed for good, and there is only one thing of which we can be certain — it will continue to change and evolve in the face of economic, technological, and other forces.

So how do we prepare future lawyers to enter into this new world? And take an active role in shaping the future for the better? By giving them more, and better, tools than just a hammer. Yes, by teaching them how to think like a lawyer. AND by encouraging them to be endlessly curious. By using pedagogical methods that encourage creativity instead of hampering it. By modeling empathy and embedding it into how and what we teach.

I began this post with an oft-cited Einstein quote, one I've had on my office desk or wall for nearly all of my 18+ years in legal practice. My experience and observation over these nearly two decades continue to confirm that good legal problem solving first and foremost requires legal problem understanding – and that understanding requires much more than performing the traditional legal analysis we are taught in law school. As our world and our profession become increasingly more complex, this becomes even more important.

And this is precisely why the mindsets of human centered design — empathy , creative confidence , learning from failure , embracing ambiguity , optimism , iteration — deserve a place in the law school curriculum and in the toolbox of new lawyers. These mindsets help us dive deeper into the understanding of problems, in ways that the solely "thinking like a lawyer" simply can't, to help us find better, more creative, and more innovative solutions to the challenges that our clients and our profession face.

And this is why I'm teaching a course called Legal Problem Solving. My students will leave this semester having been exposed to the mindsets and tools of human centered design, and it's my hope and belief that they will be better prepared to go forth to more intentionally and successfully shape both their own professional journeys and the course of our profession.

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Section 4: Seeking and Receiving Legal Help

While a significant majority of low-income Americans faced at least one civil legal problem in the past year, they rarely sought legal help. And even when they sought legal help, they typically did not get as much help as they needed. Using data from the 2021 Justice Gap Measurement Survey, this section presents findings on how often low-income Americans sought and received legal help in the past year, the types of legal help they sought, and potential barriers to seeking and receiving legal help.

ABOUT THE DATA: The 2021 Justice Gap Measurement Survey asked respondents to provide details about their experiences seeking and receiving legal help for problems they had personally experienced in the past year. The survey only asked for detail on problems that had a negative impact on respondents’ lives overall (i.e., negatively affected them “slightly,” “moderately,” “very much,” or “severely” overall); the survey did not ask for detail on problems that affected respondents “not at all.”

The vast majority of respondents (92%) personally experienced 10 or fewer problems that impacted their lives to some extent, and these respondents were asked to provide details for all of these problems. In the case that respondents experienced more than 10 problems that impacted their lives, the survey selected a subset of 10 of their problems about which to ask details. To maximize the potential for learning about problems relating to veterans, disabilities, housing, and family issues, these types of problems were given priority for inclusion if they met the other criteria.

The primary unit of analysis in this section is problems. 33 The focus is exclusively on problems that respondents personally experienced (i.e., excluding problems experienced by other household members) and problems that negatively impacted respondents overall to some extent (i.e., excluding problems that impacted them “not at all”). Note that the primary unit of analysis changes to the individual in the discussion about barriers at the end of the section.

Seeking Legal Help

Low-income americans rarely seek legal help for their civil legal problems..

Low-income Americans sought legal help for 19% of their collective civil legal problems in the past year. As Figure 4A shows, they were slightly more likely to seek legal help for problems that impacted them substantially (25% of problems impacting them “very much” or “severely”) compared to less impactful problems (14% of problems affecting them “slightly” or “moderately”).

Figure 4A. Percent of problems for which low-income Americans sought legal help in the past year 34

Percent of problems

Low-income Americans sought legal help for 25% of the civil legal problems that substantially impacted them in the past year.

People are more likely to seek legal help for problems that are more obviously “legal” like those involving legal documents and court proceedings.

Figure 4B presents the percent of civil legal problems for which low-income Americans sought legal help in the past year by problem type. As the figure shows, people were most likely to seek legal help for problems relating to family and safety (33%) and to wills and estates (41%). 35 Compared to the other problems explored in the survey, these types of problems might be considered more obviously “legal” in nature. For example, many family and safety problems involve the courts, such as those related to child custody, divorce, and protection from violence. Similarly, the problems in the wills and estates category involve official legal documents and often involve court proceedings as well.

Figure 4B. Percent of problems for which low-income Americans sought legal help, by problem type 36

Wills & Estates (n = 64)*

Family & safety (n = 690)

Disability (n = 171)*

Housing (n = 1,107)

Employment (n = 466)

All problems (n = 5,784)

Official records (n = 165)*

Consumer issues (n = 1,472)

Income maintenance (n = 626)

Health care (n = 675)

Education (n = 348)

Percent of problems experienced in each category. *Small base sizes

The types of legal help that low-income Americans seek from lawyers reflect the wide variety of ways legal professionals can help people with these types of problems.

Figure 4C presents the various types of help low-income Americans wanted when they talked to a lawyer about their civil legal problems in the past year. The most common type of legal help sought was legal advice about specific situations (59% of the times they sought legal help). Other common types of help sought include representation in court (39%) and help filling out legal forms and documents (35%).

Figure 4C. Percent of problems for which low-income Americans sought various types of legal help from lawyers 37

Percent of problems about which individuals talked to a lawyer | n = 822

Even when they seek legal help, low-income Americans often do not get all of the help they need.

Looking at all of the problems for which low-income Americans sought legal help, they say that they did not receive all of the help needed for nearly two-thirds (64%). 38 If we narrow our focus to only those problems that affected them substantially, we find a similar result: low-income Americans did not receive all of the help they needed for 66% of these substantial problems. 39

Survey-based Measure of the Justice Gap

The survey results allow us to estimate a survey-based measure of the justice gap among low-income Americans. 40 To do so, we first identify the full set of problems low-income Americans experienced in the past year and then identify the set of these problems for which they did not receive any legal help or did not receive enough legal help.

Justice Gap =

(problems not receiving any legal help) + (problems not receiving enough legal help)

all problems experienced

We define each part of this measure below:

• All problems experienced : All personally experienced problems that impacted respondents to some extent in the past year. 41
• Problems not receiving any legal help : The subset of problems for which they did not seek any legal help. 42
• Problems not receiving enough legal help : The subset of problems for which they sought legal help but did not receive as much as they needed. 43

Client Story

Nancy | New Jersey | Disability. Nancy, an elderly disabled woman, lived in public housing for seniors, a placement that she risked losing. When she lost her identification documents, she fell behind on rent because she did not know how to access her bank account without them. She asked Essex-Newark Legal Services (ENLS) for help, but they lost contact with Nancy when the pandemic hit. An ENLS staff member eventually tracked her down and found that she had been isolated for several months – surviving on food donations and still housed only because evictions were not allowed. ENLS helped her get a new I.D. card, and she is now up-to-date on rent and safe.

Low-income Americans either do not receive any legal help or do not receive enough legal help for the vast majority of their civil legal problems.

Figure 4D presents the survey-based justice gap measure for low-income Americans among three sets of problems: all of the civil legal problems they experienced, problems with substantial impact, and problems with less impact. As the figure shows, low-income Americans did not receive any or enough legal help for 93% of all of their problems. Interestingly, this estimate is essentially the same whether we look at problems with substantial impact (92%) or problems with less impact (94%).

Figure 4D. Percent of problems for which low-income Americans did not receive any or enough legal help in the past year (i.e., survey-based justice gap measure) 44

Percent of problems experienced

Low-income Americans did not receive any legal help or enough legal help for 92% of the problems that substantially impacted them in the past year.

Barriers to Seeking and Receiving Legal Help

The survey data allow us to explore three types of potential barriers to seeking and receiving legal help:

• Knowledge barriers : We look at the extent to which people know that legal professionals can help resolve the types of civil legal problems explored in this survey.
• Attitudinal barriers : We explore people’s beliefs about the civil legal system and how it relates to people like them.
• Cost barriers : We consider the extent to which the (real or perceived) cost of receiving legal help might pose a barrier to getting it.

There is a low level of awareness around the fact that lawyers can help resolve many of the everyday civil legal problems people face.

For each civil legal problem that they personally experienced, respondents indicated whether they thought it was a type of problem that a lawyer or other legal professional could help resolve. The results point to a low level of awareness about how legal professionals can help. As Figure 4E shows, low-income Americans did not know if a lawyer could help resolve 74% of their problems. Indeed, they did not think a lawyer could help with 44% of their problems and were not sure for another 30%. Among low-income Americans with at least one reported problem, only 5% knew that a legal professional could help resolve all of the types of problems they experienced; the vast majority (95%) either did not think a legal professional could help or were not sure for at least one problem.

Figure 4E. Low-income Americans’ beliefs about whether a lawyer could help resolve their civil legal problems 45

Percent of problems experienced | n=9,306

Most low-income Americans hold uncertain or negative perceptions of the civil legal system and how it relates to them.

The survey asked respondents to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the following three statements about the U.S. civil legal system: 46

• The civil legal system can help people like me solve important problems like those discussed in this survey.
• People like me are treated fairly in the civil legal system.
• People like me are able to use the civil legal system to protect and enforce their rights.

Figure 4F presents the percent of low-income Americans who agree, disagree, or are indifferent/unsure when it comes to these statements. As the figure shows, a minority (ranging from 28% to 40%) agrees with the statements, but most people either disagree or are indifferent/unsure. For example, only 28% of low-income Americans agree with the statement, “People like me are treated fairly in the civil legal system.” Forty-six percent are either indifferent or unsure, and another 24% disagree.

George | Virginia | Elder abuse. George is an elderly veteran with serious health issues. He had a caregiver who was neglecting and abusing him – in addition to stealing from him. Once Adult Protective Services became involved, they referred George to Blue Ridge Legal Services (BRLS). BRLS attorneys helped him revoke the abuser’s previous power of attorney and get new powers of attorney in place with trusted family members. BRLS also helped George file a civil case against his abuser, which resulted in a settlement of $40,000. Additionally, BRLS helped George and the police document the stolen money and property, resulting in a parallel criminal case against George’s abuser.

Only 28% of low-income Americans believe that people like them are treated fairly in the U.S. civil legal system.

Figure 4F. Low-income Americans’ attitudes about the U.S. civil legal system 47

Percent of individuals | n=2,003

More than one-half of low-income Americans doubt they could find and afford a lawyer if they needed one.

The survey asked respondents how confident they are that they would be able find a lawyer or other legal professional that they could afford if they needed help on a serious civil legal problem, such as preventing an eviction, foreclosure, or the loss of custody of a child. Figure 4G presents the corresponding results. As the figure shows, less than one-half (45%) of low-income Americans express confidence that they could find a lawyer that they could afford while 53% either have low confidence or are not sure.

53% of low-income Americans do not know if they would be able to find a lawyer that they could afford if they needed help with a serious civil legal problem.

Figure 4G. Low-income Americans’ confidence in their ability to find a lawyer that they could afford 48

Many low-income americans cite cost as a reason for not seeking legal help in the past year..

Among those who did not seek legal help for at least one of their recent civil legal problems, nearly one-half (46%) 49 cited concerns about cost as a reason why. There is also evidence to suggest that concerns about cost stood in the way of others’ ability to get all of the help they needed. Indeed, among those who sought legal help but did not get all that they needed for one or more problems, 61% say one of the reasons was that it was too expensive to get more help. 50

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Low-income Americans did not receive any or enough legal help for 91% of the pandemic-related civil legal problems that substantially impacted their lives.

Low-income Americans sought legal help for 22% of the substantial problems that they attribute to the COVID-19 pandemic in the past year. 51 Consistent with broader findings, two common reasons cited for not seeking legal help for these problems were concerns about cost and the belief that lawyers could not help with these problems. 52

All in all, low-income Americans did not receive any legal help or enough legal help for 91% of the pandemic-related problems that impacted them substantially. Figure 4H below presents estimates for the survey-based justice gap measure for the three types of problems most frequently attributed to the pandemic (i.e., income maintenance, education, and housing).

Figure 4H. Percent of substantial, pandemic-related problems for which low-income Americans did not receive any or enough legal help in the past year (i.e., survey-based justice gap measure) 53

Percent of pandemic-related problems experienced with substantial impact *Small base size

Geographic Focus

This snapshot presents key statistics about the likelihood of low-income Americans seeking and receiving legal help for each of the four Census regions in the United States. All estimates are based exclusively on civil legal problems with substantial impacts and come from LSC’s 2021 Justice Gap Measurement Survey. 54 The unit of analysis is problems.

Sought legal help for 25% of substantial problems.

Did not receive any or enough legal help for 93% of substantial problems.

Sought legal help for 29% of substantial problems.

Did not receive any or enough legal help for 88% of substantial problems.

Did not receive any or enough legal help for 92% of substantial problems.

Sought legal help for 21% of substantial problems.

Special Focus

This snapshot presents key statistics about the likelihood of low-income Americans seeking and receiving legal help for the six subpopulations of interest throughout this report. All estimates are based exclusively on civil legal problems with substantial impacts and come from LSC’s 2021 Justice Gap Measurement Survey. 55 The unit of analysis is problems

Seniors (n=222)

Sought legal help for 26% of substantial problems.

Did not receive any or enough legal help for 91% of substantial problems.

Individuals from Rural Areas (n=593)

Did not receive any or enough legal help for 94% of substantial problems.

Individuals from Veteran Households (n=366)

Sought legal help for 34% of substantial problems.

Did not receive any or enough legal help for 84% of substantial problems.

Individuals with High Housing Costs (n=1,507)

Did not receive any or enough legal help for 95% of substantial problems.

Individuals from Households with Children (<18 yrs) (n=1,500)

Sought legal help for 24% of substantial problems.

Did not receive any or enough legal help for 90% of substantial problems.

Recent Survivors of Domestic Violence (n=666)

Related information.

• Subject guides
• Legal problem solving

Legal problem solving: IRAC

• Application
• Example 1 (Contract)
• Example 2 (Negligence)
• Find out more
• Back to Law research and writing guide

Advice on writing and study skills is provided by the Student Academic Success division; if you need further advice you can book a consultation with a Language and Learning Adviser .

What is IRAC?

Legal problem solving is an essential skill for the study and practice of law. There are a number of legal problem solving models, with the most popular being  IRAC  (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion) and   MIRAT (Material facts, Issue, Rule/Resources, Arguments, Tentative conclusion).

Read more about MIRAT in this article  Meet MIRAT: Legal Reasoning Fragmented into Learnable chunks

We will focus on the IRAC model in this guide, but note that there can be flexibility in the use of the models.

The IRAC methodology is useful to help you organise your legal analysis so that the reader can follow your argument. It is particularly helpful in writing exam answers and legal memos . 

The MIRAT model starts with Material facts. This is an essential first step in the process and is a precursor to following the IRAC model.

• Before you state the legal issues, it is important to identify the facts you have been provided with, determining which ones are relevant, which are clearly not relevant, and which ones may become relevant once the rules are identified.
• It is from the facts that the issues can be identified.
• The facts and issues lead to the identification of the most appropriate rules, and the rules then determine the most useful way of construing the facts. 

Let's take the example of Matthew, a 50-year old independent contractor from Victoria who has been engaged for some work by X Pty Ltd (a company). Matthew attends a number of staff meetings as well as a training course provided by the company. Do the terms of the contract referring to an 'employee' apply to him even as a contractor? 

Relevant facts here are:

• Matthew is an independent contractor.
• He has an employment contract with company X Pty Ltd.
• He has attended some company staff meetings and a training course.
• The jurisdiction of Victoria may also be relevant.
• It is unlikely that Matthew's age would be a relevant fact.
• Think about questions that involve: Who, What, How, Where, and When.
• Is there any missing information?
• Next: Issue >>

Five steps to deal with a legal problem

Every legal problem is unique. So when you face one in your own life, there are plenty of factors to consider as you try to decide if and how to take it on. Things like the seriousness of the issue, and the motivations and means of the people involved, all figure in. Whether you’re hiring a legal professional to help, or going it alone, we walk you through the steps to tackle a legal problem.

Step 1. Be clear on your problem

“This was the second time I’d been passed up for a promotion. I was qualified — more so than the person who got it. And I nailed the interview. Everyone I work with was puzzled as well. I like my job, but I feel like something is off here. Someone told me I should sue. But to what end? I worry it’d make things worse. And isn’t this just how life works sometimes? I’m just lost on what to do next.”

– Fatima, Victoria, BC

Step 1 explained: Get it out of your head and into words

Some legal problems are cut-and-dried. Probating a will ? There are steps the court requires you to follow. Got a traffic ticket? The ticket explains how to dispute it. But other problems aren’t so straight-forward. First order of business is figuring out what the problem actually is.

First, how serious is it?

Be honest: Is this something that has to be solved? Or is it simply … annoying? Imagine a scale of 1-10, with 10 being your most serious possible problem. If the problem is less than, say, a 5, the effort to solve it might be more trouble than it’s worth. 

Write the problem out on a page

Get it out of your head and into words. This can relieve stress and clarify your thoughts. Try to summarize the problem in a few paragraphs or bullet points, a “problem on a page” so to speak ( we’ve got a helpful template for that here ). Read and re-read what you’ve written. Make sure it captures:

what happened (the facts)

when it happened

who was responsible

who else is involved (as in, who can back up your story)

what you’ve lost or are trying to get back

Think about what you want

That last bullet point is worth thinking hard about. Many people assume only a money settlement will make them feel “whole.” But sometimes an apology will feel like enough. Or a pledge that the bad behaviour will stop. (Or both.) So ask yourself: what do you really want?

Do you need professional help?

Know when to get advice. The more “yes” answers to the following, the more likely you should seek help, possibly immediately.

Are the stakes high? 

Do you feel unsafe?

Do you need help figuring out your options? 

Options for help go beyond all or nothing

Keep in mind, asking for help doesn’t mean a lawyer or other legal professional has to do everything for you. You can ask them to handle just a part of the issue, or prepare a roadmap of steps that need to be taken. Check out our page on free and low-cost legal help for more backup.

Step 2. Do a gut check

“Mom died a few weeks ago. I was named executor in the will. Good thing I’m pretty comfortable with filling out forms and dealing with bureaucracy. I figured I could handle probate. But I’ve got two young kids and work full time. After spending a week researching and understanding the process, I decided to hire a lawyer to help. It wasn’t cheap — and I know not everyone has the luxury to get professional help in these situations — but for me and my family, it was the right choice.” 

– Rob, New Westminster, BC

Step 2 explained: Check in about what you can really handle

So you’ve diagnosed the problem. But before you dig any deeper, check in with yourself about what you can really handle. Dealing with a legal problem can be challenging. This isn’t to say you can’t do it — part of our mission at People’s Law School is to empower folks to take the next step, often on their own — but sometimes, your circumstances might make it difficult to proceed. Here are a few issues to consider.

Do you have time?

Can you commit nights and weekends doing research and filling out forms? Can you squeeze in a phone call and some emails during a work break or before you pick up your kids? If you can’t make the time, this won’t be an easy problem to solve, especially if going to court is involved. 

Can you be resilient?

You may get frustrated along the way, even if you follow all the steps, rules or laws. You might have to file an appeal if things don’t go your way the first time. It can take years to solve certain legal problems. 

Are you okay with confrontation and uncomfortable conversations?

To get what you deserve, you might have to be assertive. This is true whether you’re dealing with the other person in a dispute, a government office, or other agencies — or even your own professional advisors. 

Do you have reliable internet access?

This may seem trivial, but without daily access to a computer and internet, it can be hard to communicate in a timely way, or do basic research. 

This internal audit of your own bandwidth should be an ongoing process. The scope of a problem can quickly change. Take a gut check early and often. 

Step 3. Know the law and the process

“Two thousand bucks and one week later, and still my car won’t start! The mechanic came recommended by a friend, but surely they messed something up. It’s almost a new car! Trouble is, I already paid the mechanic. Can I get my money back? Maybe they’ll agree to do the next repair for free? Or can I make them pay for the repairs at a different mechanic?”

– Hien, Sicamous, BC

Step 3 explained: Understand your rights and your options 

You’ve scoped out the problem at a high level, and done the gut check. Now you need to arm yourself with knowledge.

Find reliable, up-to-date information

Be choosy with your internet sources. Make sure you find ones that follow accepted best practices . Look for material written by lawyers or law firms or established non-profits, and make sure it’s been published or updated recently. Make sure you’re looking at resources in your jurisdiction — things can be different between countries, and even between provinces. 

Know where you stand

In step 1, you wrote out the “problem on a page.” ( Here was that template we mentioned.) Now that you’ve learned a bit about the law, it’s time for another reality check. Are you actually entitled to anything? And do you have enough support (this could be witnesses, photos, and so on) to prove you’re entitled to it? Flesh out your problem further, in writing, to see what you need to do to apply the law to your situation. Think of how you’d talk it out with a friend. Get comfortable arguing in favour of your case.

Is there a roadmap you need to follow?

Some areas of the law have clear steps, while others are a bit murkier. If you’re applying to probate a will , for example, there are specific forms to fill out and timing for when they get filed. If you’re complaining about neighbour noise in your strata , find out the process for making complaints and how they get resolved. Trying to deke around an established process will result in more headaches than shortcuts.

Step 4. Make contact

“I did my research: I reviewed the law on trees, I called the municipality for backup. I even read past cases on overhanging branches. I know I'm in the right. Their trees need to be cut back. But my neighbour is a tough cookie. They’re not unreasonable, but they’ve got a strong personality and don’t back down when they’re called out. To be honest, I’m terrified about having a ‘talk’ with them. But I don’t want to get a lawyer involved (yet) or start a formal legal case.”

– Amber, Prince George, BC

Step 4 explained: Contact the other party (we have tips to help)

You’ve got the time to deal with it, and now you know the law. The next step is where things can get hard. A Canadian study on how folks deal with serious legal problems identified contacting the other party as the least helpful in solving a problem. (Only one in four people found it helpful.) 

But we’d still suggest you try. Think of it this way — if you go about it thoughtfully, there’s a better chance of it working.

Don’t let your anger, or your newfound awareness of your legal rights, whip you into a righteous frenzy. When you’re calm, you will exude confidence, which will help to get things resolved faster.

Plan a tiered approach

It might take more than just one strongly worded email to solve this problem. Strategize on the best way to get started — a phone call? face-to-face? in writing? — and have a plan for what you’ll do and when.

Reassess along the way

If the other side won’t budge on a certain issue, consider compromising. Are you okay with backing down a bit? Are you willing to compromise, perhaps more than you were before you got started? 

Wording to help inspire you

Okay, that’s all very nice, but what should you actually say ? We’ve got suggested wording to help get you started in some common situations.

Step 5. Try formal steps

“Honestly, I thought I was going to give up on my complaints about my strata when I realized I had to go to court. But then I learned that my dispute would be handled through the CIvil Resolution Tribunal, which didn’t feel like a court at all. I could navigate the whole process easily without a lawyer (everything happened online and in writing). It was so unintimidating.”

– Don, Kelowna, BC

Step 5 explained: Court and other options

If you're past the point of getting things resolved on your own, there are more formal steps you can take. 

First, consider mediation . With the help of a neutral third party, mediation can help you and the other party talk to each other and come to a solution together. Learn more about the process here . 

Failing that, you may decide to take more formal legal action. But not all legal venues are created equal, and some problems take a lot of time and effort to go through the system. Keep the following things in mind.

What court am I dealing with?

Depending on how much money is involved, or the subject matter, you might not be going through traditional court. There are various tribunals that exist that deal with, for example, employment issues or tenancy matters. And they all have different procedures. Some allow witnesses, some don’t. Some do things orally, others only let you submit arguments in writing. 

Is there an appeal process?

Even if you win, many decisions can be appealed. This means more effort and patience until things are truly finalized. 

Is it time to get professional help?

Maybe you’ve reached the limits of your skills and patience. Maybe you’re on the receiving end of a lawyer's letter or court summons, and never intended to deal with this problem (whether on your own, or at all). There’s no harm in considering professional help, and in BC, there are free or low-cost options for legal help available .

Reviewed for legal accuracy by

David Kandestin , People's Law School

Also on this topic

Still not sure what to do.

If you're looking for advice specific to your situation, there are options for free or low-cost help.

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6 problem-solving strategies for legal professionals

• June 7, 2018

Jennifer Anderson

Legal professionals are known for being problem solvers. Indeed, just about every engagement involves some type of problem a client needs to have solved. Typically, we handle these issues with ease. Our education and training have taught us to apply established rules to a given set of facts in order to reach the desired solution.

Whether it’s a legal issue, personality issues in the workplace, technology challenges, or slow-paying clients, every law firm has issues to deal with that fall outside our area of expertise. Here are some of the top strategies we’ve identified.

#1 Identify the real problem

This is an especially useful tactic for solving problems that impact multiple people. By way of example, let’s say your team continually misses deadlines. To figure out why this is happening, ask each team member to write down what he/she believes is the cause of that problem.

Then, as a group, discuss each cause, asking the question what caused that cause? By doing this, you can often trace the problem to its core and work on finding a reasonable solution.

#2 Split the problem into smaller pieces

This strategy, sometimes referred to as “ decomposition ,” is often employed by computer programmers. The key here is to identify the small problems that are contributing to a larger problem. Using our prior example, you might find that the reason your team keeps missing deadlines is that: (1) your computer systems are antiquated; (2) team members aren’t using a master calendar to set deadlines; and (3) the lead partner takes too long to get her edits back to the associates.

Each of these sub-problems is unique and manageable on their own, but together they are creating a major problem. By solving each piece, the ultimate problem will undoubtedly resolve.

#3 Get some sleep

This may sound simplistic, but sleep is a key ingredient for solving difficult problems. It’s hard to find a legal professional who doesn’t feel overworked and under-appreciated from time to time. The harder the grind, the bigger our problems seem to become. It’s no wonder – a lack of sleep can impair concentration, increase mood swings, and decrease physical performance.

Therefore, before you decide to give the managing partner a piece of your mind, it’s probably a good idea to get a full night’s rest. You might be surprised how much your problems can decrease with the right amount of sleep.

#4 Try to make the problem worse

Making a problem worse in order to solve it may sound counterintuitive, but this is a great way to test your theories about the underlying cause. Can you replicate the problem by deliberately prompting the circumstances you think are causing it?

To illustrate this strategy, let’s say you suspect that answering emails throughout the day is decreasing your productivity. For one week, you might set up your email program to alert you every time an email comes in – and then commit to answering each one right away. If at the end of that week you find your productivity has decreased, then you might consider turning off all email alerts and setting a narrow window of time during which you’ll respond to emails each day.

#5 Zoom out

Oftentimes, we attempt to solve problems by focusing on the minutia. Instead, it can be more helpful to look at the bigger picture . Returning to the issue of missed deadlines, it may be true that several small, individual problems are contributing to the dilemma. The bigger issue, however, could be that the firm has no real consequences for team members who fail to meet deadlines. If you fix that global problem, the smaller issues will likely cease to have any impact.

#6 Employ SMART goals

Finally, a great way to problem-solve in the legal setting is to set goals that will help eradicate the issue. Some experts suggest that the goals should be “ SMART ”; i.e. , specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

To solve the missed deadline problem, for example, a team might set a goal of finalizing projects one day before the actual due date. The goal is specific (one day before), measurable (the project is either finished or it is not), attainable (it leaves plenty of time for completion), realistic (a difference of one day is achievable), and timely (the goal is met when the project is done). If the goal is achieved, the overarching issue of missed deadlines will disappear.

With a bit of thoughtful attention to realistic solutions, your team should be able to work through just about anything. What problem-solving strategies does your firm employ when working through issues?

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Writing Law Problem Questions

How to write a legal problem essay.

Law problem question essays give you an imaginary scenario. They then ask you to comment on the legal issues that arise and advise the parties. This guide will explain how to answer a problem essay with eight handy tips.

1. Read the Facts

The first step to answering any law problem question is to read the entirety of the facts you are given. Do not just jump into answering the question. Take your time and ensure that you fully understand all the issue involved in the case. It may help to highlight parts of the fact-pattern that you think are important.

2. Structuring Your Analysis

This is a mistake many law undergraduates and GDL students make when writing a scenario law essay. They look at the facts and recognise that they are similar to a case they’ve read. They will then immediately assume ‘this is like Joe Bloggs vs John Smith’, and answer the question accordingly. For this reason, examiners often complain that law essays lack coherent structure or proper analysis.

To avoid this pitfall, when answering legal problem questions you must adopt a structure .

Say you have an problem on whether or not the defendant is liable in the tort of negligence. The facts look similar to a particular case you’ve read on contributory negligence. Your first instinct is to start talking about defences. Stop . Ignore the similarity completely for now, and think. Before you can even discuss defences, you must talk about whether the defendant is liable in the first place. What does the law actually require you to establish to prove liability? Is the defendant liable? If so, what defences might he rely on, and how are those established?

Develop steps that you can put every scenario relating to that area of the law through in order. For example:

Contract Law

• Has there been an offer ?
• Was the offer accepted ?
• Are the terms of the agreement certain ?
• Do the parties intend to be legally bound ?
• Is there consideration ?
• What are the terms of the contract?
• Is there a breach ?
• What kind of breach has occurred?
• Is there a defence to the breach?
• What are the innocent party’s remedies and options?

Criminal Law

• Is the actus reus of the offence established?
• Is the mens rea of the offence established?
• Is there a relevant defence?

Negligence Law

• Does the defendant owe the claimant a duty of care ?
• Has the duty been breached ?
• Is the breach a factual cause of the loss?
• Is the breach a legal cause of the loss?
• Is the loss sufficiently non-remote ?

This doesn’t mean you have devote a whole paragraph to every step. If its obvious that the defendant owed a legal duty, a single sentence pointing this out will suffice. If the question tells you there is a contract, simply note you will assume the contract was validly-formed. The most controversial and difficult points should be given the majority of your essay’s attention.

Nevertheless, you get credit for completing each necessary step in the order in which they arose. This is how a court of law would most naturally consider them. This method of structuring essays also stops you missing interesting elements of problem questions. You might miss these points by skipping straight to what you think is the most obvious issue.

3. Structuring the Overall Essay

The problem question may present you with multiple areas of law. For example, a defendant may have committed different kinds of crime, or liability might arise in both negligence and nuisance. Alternatively, the question may ask you to discuss the liability of several different people.

If you have to advise different parties, discuss the liability of each party in turn . Otherwise, a good rule is to  deal with each area of the law in turn . Give each area of law its own separate section. This will lead to a clearer essay structure than trying to deal with each event chronologically.

4. Structuring Individual Paragraphs

You can structure your discussion of individual issues any way which makes sense and follows a logical structure. One of the most popular ways for structuring discussions is the IRAC method. This stands for:

State the issue you are about to discuss

State the applicable legal rules (with authority or statutory references)

Discuss how these legal rules apply to the facts in front of you

State what the conclusion to the issue is based on your analysis

For example, lets say you are writing a problem question in tort law. You have a defendant who has run over a pedestrian with his car. You think he may be liable in negligence, so you start by considering whether he owes a duty of care. You would structure your analysis of this issue as follows:

The first issue is whether the defendant owes the claimant a duty of care.

If the case’s facts are non-novel, whether a duty is owed depends on the applicable precedent ( Robinson v CC of West Yorkshire Police ). It is established that road-users owe others a duty of care ( Nettleship v Weston ).

In this case, the defendant is a road-user because he was driving a car on the road. The claimant was also a road-user because they were a nearby pedestrian.

Therefore, the defendant owes the claimant a duty of care.

5. Not Enough Information Given?

What if the problem question does not seem to give you enough information to advise on the parties’ legal position? It is completely fine to write ‘the problem question does not give us enough information to determine X’.

For example, lets say you think that whether the defendant was in breach depends on how fast he was driving. The facts do not tell you how fast he was driving. Do not be afraid to say so!

However, saying that there isn’t enough information is NOT enough. You must then go on to say what information you would need to advise the party. Once you have set this out, explain how the law would apply to the facts if you had this information.

For example, you might say ‘if the defendant was speeding, he is likely in breach of his duty.’ Explain why. Then, say that ‘if he was not speeding, he is likely not in breach.’ Finish by explaining why this is the case.

This shows you are thinking like a lawyer. If a client walks in and gives half the facts, you need to be able to ask the right questions. You then need to be able to evaluate the facts, whatever they turn out to be.

6. Red Herrings

Sometimes, the fact-pattern will include information which seems salient, but actually is not. This is known as a red herring. These red herrings are designed to test your ability to pick apart relevant information from irrelevant information.

Many students assume that all of the information in the problem question must be relevant and addressed. When presented with a red herring, these students will panic and start guessing at how the information affects the outcome. Instead, the examiners expect you to point out that the information is not relevant. You can get bonus points by explaining why the law doesn’t consider this kind of information relevant.

For example, say you have a commercial law question where the owner of a painting stores it with a local art dealer. The owner then sees that the art dealer has put the painting up for sale without authority. The owner decides he will call the dealer later in the day to clear up the problem. However, he negligently forgets. The painting is later sold to a third-party.

The red herring here is the owner’s negligence. This seems like it should be relevant to whether the owner has lost property in the painting. In reality it is not: you cannot lose ownership of property because you were negligent. Because the information seems relevant, it is tempting to discuss it at length, for example by talking about estoppel by negligence. This wastes time and will not get you any marks. Rather, you should say ‘the owner’s negligence is not relevant to whether he retains ownership of the painting’. Then, move on.

7. Don’t Hedge Your Bets (and other Stylistic Tips)

If there’s one thing most law professors hate, its a phrase like ‘it seems from the evidence that there might be a possibility of supporting the argument that…’.

Confidence in essay-writing is not something that is stressed enough at school or university. When you aren’t sure, it is tempting to hedge your bets with language like ‘probably’ and ‘it might be the case’. Resist that urge. If your analysis is correct but don’t sound confident, the examiner may doubt that you firmly grasp the material. If it is not correct, saying ‘probably’ in front of the error won’t help in any case.

Other stylistic tips for writing a professional sounding essay include:

• Avoid contractions (‘don’t’, ‘can’t’), slang phrases and other informal language;
• Avoid the phrase ‘it is submitted that’. This kind of wording is for moots and legal debating, not academic legal essays;
• Try to deal with only one issue per paragraph. This makes the essay less visually intimidating;
• If simple language and short sentences get your point across, use simple language and short sentences. There is a temptation to sound ‘professional’ by using multi-clauses sentences and complex vocabulary. This just makes the essay harder to read.

8. Cite, Cite and Cite Again

If you ever make any kind of positive claim about the law, back it up with a citation. What proves your claim? A case? A statutory provision? Cite it. You need to assure the marker that you aren’t just making lucky guesses. Also, many institutions’ grading criteria specify that you can’t get more than a 2:2 if there is insufficient citation.

Generally there is no need to give the year, report and page number of case-law in exams. However, you should check your university’s best practice guidelines to know for sure.

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Seven steps - How to deal with legal issues

• Introduction
• Step 1 - What is your problem?
• Step 2 - Know your rights (and responsibilities)
• Step 3 - Understand your options (and know what you want)
• Step 4 - Know who to speak to
• Step 5 - Communicate effectively
• Step 6 - Get organised!
• Step 7 - Know when to get help
• About this guide

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September 2022

You need to be clear exactly what your problem is. This might be obvious, but sometimes it takes a bit of unpicking.

Top tip! Sometimes you have a couple of problems tangled up together. Don’t get flustered. Try and work out the facts for each one and what you need to do in what order.

To help, try and answer these questions:

• What is your problem about?
• When did it happen?
• Where did it happen?
• Who is the problem with?
• How did it come about?

Once you are clear about the facts it will help you to carry out the next steps.

“My ex threatened to take me to court after weeks of rows about him seeing the kids. I used to take them to his flat at weekends and he would bring them back. But I’m on such a tight budget that when one of my benefits went down I just couldn’t afford the fares. He said I was stopping him from seeing his kids. When I got the letter about court I was terrified, and furious.

But after chatting with a friend I realised that despite all the slanging matches, my ex and I both wanted him to see the kids. So that wasn’t the actual problem – the key to it all was getting them there. So I texted him and suggested he asked his dad, the kids’ granddad, to come and pick them up in the car. He agreed and it’s worked out really well for everybody.” Lindsay, Falmouth

Not all the information on the internet is up to date, trustworthy or easy to understand. So, start your search at Advicenow where we have brought together all the best information on the law in one place .

Make sure you know:

• what your legal rights are;
• if there is anything that you should have done (your legal responsibilities);
• what ways you might be able to solve the problem. For example, by having an informal chat, making a formal complaint, through mediation or by going to court .

Once you have got all the information you will be in the best position to make decisions about what to do (see Step 3).

Friends and family are often keen to give you advice, but there are a lot of myths out there about the law, and the law often changes. So make sure you look up what you need to know to make sure it is right.

You can find lots of free information on your rights online. You can also visit your local library, Citizen’s Advice Bureau or other advice centres to find out where you stand (see our Help Dirctory for more information).

"Last year I was living in a bedsit. It wasn't brilliant but at least it was my own place, and it was near college.

One day, out of the blue, my landlord knocked on the door and told me I had to move out at the weekend because he needed the bedsit for a family friend.

It was really bad timing, I didn't have anywhere I could go, and I had exams coming up. I told my friends what had happened and everyone thought it was unfair, but what can you do? So I moved out and slept on a mate's floor.

When I told my tutor what had happened, she said my landlord wasn't allowed to just evict me like that. So, I looked it up and she was right! Wish I'd known at the time - I would have stood my ground." Suzgo, Croydon

Top tip! If you don’t have a clear idea of what your choices are, or what a realistic outcome would be look up your rights or speak to an adviser. Don't just believe what you are told by someone who might not be on your side.

Be clear what you are asking for. Do you want an apology, a refund, compensation, or something else?

What your options are will depend on how strong your position is. For example, does the law protect you or will you have to rely on goodwill to get what you want?

It will also depend on how confident and motivated you feel. Sometimes it does not feel worth the hassle, and that can be a fair enough conclusion to come to once you have understood your options.

Even if the law does not protect you, it might still be worth having a go. If you negotiate confidently you may still get what you want.

"I bought a necklace for my girlfriend. It was quite cheap, but I didn't want her to know that. The second time she wore it, it fell apart. I was so embarrassed! When I took it back to the shop, they offered me an exchange. But I wanted to get her something completely different. Then they offered me a voucher, and acted like it was some big favour and I was really putting them out. But I didn't really want that either. I wasn't sure what to do so I said I'd think about it.

When I got home, my mum looked it up online. We found out that the shop was wrong and that, if I took it back straight away, I should be able to get a refund. When I went back, I asked for a refund and told them I knew I was entitled to one. They paid up.” Tom, Morecambe

Work out who to speak to in order to solve the problem.

If it is an organisation rather than an individual, ask who the best person to talk to is and try to talk or write directly to them each time.

Sometimes there will be a set process to follow. Find out if there is, and what to do. The more you understand about the process, the stronger your position.

Top tip! If you are not getting anywhere with the people you are talking to it might be time to approach somebody different, for example, the customer services department, or go up a level, for example by contacting an ombudsman (an independent person at the top of the complaints ladder, whose job it is to investigate complaints fairly.)

"This bloke I work with used to say sleazy things to me, and to some of the others. It didn't seem to bother some people, but it made me feel very uncomfortable. I tried to just avoid him but we were always being put on the same shifts. I didn't know what to do.

Then I had a quiet word with someone in human resources, she explained who I could talk to about it informally, and what the procedure was if I wanted to take formal action. It gave me the confidence I needed to do something about it" Jasmine, Sunderland "

To resolve most everyday legal problems you will probably have to talk to the person or organisation involved, either in person, on the telephone or in writing. Below we give you the lowdown on how to do this effectively.

Top tactics

• Stay calm and be polite.
• Be clear about what you want and stick to the point.
• Know your rights (see step 2) and if the law is on your side, or you have had advice, tell them so.

Top tip! When you call an organisation and are told ‘your call will be recorded’ make a note of exactly when you call. That way if they later go back on what they agreed you can ask for the recording. They probably will not have the recording, but it can mean that they take your issue more seriously!

If you are talking to someone in person or on the telephone

• Make notes of everything you want to cover during the conversation and tick them off as you go along.
• Get the name of the person and repeat it several times through the conversation to keep personal contact.
• Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t understand something that the other person says to you. Ask them to explain it in a different way or to give you an example.
• At the end of the conversation repeat back anything you have agreed, particularly anything that they have agreed to do.
• Repeat their name at the end of the conversation and where they are: it helps to make that person feel committed to what they have agreed.
• Sometimes a bit of praise can go a long way in getting that person on side!
• Make a note of who you spoke to, where they are and what you agreed.
• For extra peace of mind send them a letter, email or text confirming what you agreed. The more you have in writing the more evidence (see step 6) you will have if you need to make a complaint.

Top tip! If you are writing to complain about something write ‘Complaint’ in bold across the top of your letter. That way they may have to deal with your letter in line with their complaints procedure and reply within a certain number of days. 

If you are writing to someone

• Double check that you have covered everything you want to. It is sometimes useful to have a friend check that you have made all your points clearly. What is in our minds is nt always what we have put down on paper.
• If you are posting a letter and can afford it, send it ‘signed for’ so that you can track it. This means they will be more likely to respond and not fob you off.

"I had a tendency to get upset and lose my temper a bit when I tried to sort things out. I remember shouting at this woman at customer services when my computer broke. I hadn’t really worked out what I wanted to say, and ended up yelling about some pretty irrelevant stuff. It wasn't my finest moment, it was the company's fault not hers. Apart from being embarrassing, and stressful, it also made things worse! It made it hard to get my point across, and made her less keen to help (understandably).

Now, I try to stay calm, write down what I want to say beforehand, and tell them clearly what the problem is I need their help with." Luca, Birmingham

To solve your problem you need to keep records of what went wrong and how you tried to solve it, and gather evidence to prove you are in the right. For example:

• Check if there are time limits to do with your problem, for example, a certain amount of time in which you have to take something back to a shop, apply to backdate your benefits or put in a claim to a tribunal.
• Keep copies of all the emails, texts and letters you send and receive.
• Make a note of everything you do to solve the problem. Write down who you spoke to, what they said, what you or they were going to do next, and when by.
• If it is your word against somebody else’s write down your account of what happened, date it and keep it safe. 

Recording things properly and getting all your evidence together can be crucial to solving your problem. Not only will it be very helpful for anyone trying to help you, like an adviser, but it could also make all the difference if you have to make a formal complaint or go to court further down the line.

Top tip! If you hand over documents or evidence make sure you get a receipt and keep it safe.

"My mum was sick and in and out of hospital for a while and it played havoc with her care package. Because she wasn't well, I had to try and sort it out for her.

But I learnt something really useful. Now when I speak to someone at social services, at the end of the conversation I always repeat anything they have agreed to do and ask how long they think it will take. If they say a week, I write it down and phone back a week later. I ask to speak to the same person and ask what the progress is. It stops me from being passed from person to person and nobody really dealing with my problem. If they don't want me to call back again, they'll solve it for me." Puja, Carmarthen

Top tip! If you have an important deadline approaching fast, perhaps a court date, get help or advice as soon as you can.

If you are not getting anywhere, or if you are confused, you need to get help.

You can get help from your local advice or law centre, a solicitor, many charities, and organisations like Citizens Advice or ACAS.

Depending on your problem, they may step in and do some of the work for you, or they may just clarify what you should be doing and advise you on tactics. Help from a professional, even if it just confirms that you have been doing the right thing, should help to stop things getting out of control and becoming too stressful.

See Advicenow's Help Directory for where you can get free or low cost legal advice about different types of legal problem .

"I got into debt when I lost my job. My credit card company started sending me letters saying that if I didn't pay it all off immediately, they'd send the bailiffs round. But I didn't have the money. When I phoned the ‘helpline’ they said they'd take me to court, add £300 court fees to my debt, and a bailiff would come into my flat and take all my things. I offered to pay what I could each week, but he wouldn't have any of it. I was so desperate I thought about taking out another loan.

But then I went to see an adviser. She said that they couldn't take my things, and that he had broken the law by saying they could. She said that if they took me to court, the court would only make me pay off what I could afford each week - exactly the same as I had already offered! We wrote out my income and all my expenses and worked out I could only afford to pay £2.50 a week.

When I phoned him back, it was so much easier because I knew the law was on my side. They backed down eventually and accepted £2.50 a week. They had no choice." Jack, Worthing

The information in this guide applies to England and Wales. 

The law is complicated. We have simplified things in this guide. Please don’t rely on this guide as a complete statement of the law. We recommend you try and get advice from the sources we have suggested.

The cases we refer to are not always real but show a typical situation. We have included them to help you think about how to deal with your own situation.

Acknowledgement

This guide was updated in Septemeber 2022 and continues to be available thanks to funding from the Litigant in Person Support Strategy.

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The Art of Legal Problem Solving A Criminal Law Approach

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The Art of Legal Problem Solving: A Criminal Law Approach is a sophisticated skills book designed to help students develop the problem-solving techniques necessary for their legal careers. This succinct yet comprehensive book provides the perfect mix of general instruction and specific examples to encourage students to think about problems both in depth and broadly. It follows a clear roadmap presented in a logical progression, beginning with the fundamentals, fact finding and statutory interpretation before turning to the advanced areas…

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• skills book
• succinct yet comprehensive
• provides perfect mix of general instruction and specific examples
• legal problem solving
• legal reasoning
• criminal law
• legal writing

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• DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009457927
• Subjects Criminal Law, Law
• Publication date: 11 March 2024
• ISBN: 9781009457927

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Dr Brendon Murphy is Professor of Law at the School of Law, Southern Cross University. He has served as an Associate Professor at the Thomas More Law School, Australian Catholic University, and at Canberra Law School, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle, and a Foundation Lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Prior to joining the academy in 2007, he worked as an in-house solicitor for the University of Newcastle, and in litigation in Newcastle after being admitted as a legal practitioner in the NSW Supreme Court.

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The Art of Solving Legal Problem Questions

Table of Contents

❌ The Wrong Approach

✅ the successful technique, 4️⃣ the four-step process: irac, 1️⃣ 1. issue, 2️⃣ 2. rule, 3️⃣ 3. application, 4️⃣ 4. conclusion, 🎉 final thoughts.

Legal problem questions are something that trip up many law students. After all these years of writing free-flowing essays, suddenly you have to completely change the way you think about writing and answering questions. Not only will the typical essay approach no longer work when it comes to tackling problem questions, but clear structure is more important than ever. So today I want to help you develop a process for answering problem questions that works every single time. 

I think problem questions are great if you have a system or process for approaching them, so this is how I’m going to break down the article. Firstly, I want to show you the wrong approach most law students take, specifically looking at how they differ from essay questions. Secondly, I want to help you create your own problem solving technique that is equally applicable across all your law modules. So stick around and let’s get into it.

Perhaps the biggest mistake law students make is using their essay skills to answer problem questions.

In my first year of law school, this is something that I did too. After all, why wouldn’t a problem question have an introduction and a conclusion? It seems as though it makes sense to demonstrate your contextual knowledge of the law and to show the examiner your thought process in a coherent arc from start to finish. Unfortunately, this just demonstrate a poor awareness of what a problem question really is. 

With essays, you are supposed to critically analyse the law and associated academic opinion, interjecting your own thoughts into a form of written debate. Whereas with problem questions, you’re not engaging in a verbal battle of opinions, but a structured application of the law to a set of facts. In other words, your goal is not to debate whether or not a law is right or wrong, but to offer advice to a fictitious client about their legal responsibilities.

Think about it like this: if they were a real client would you really sandwich your legal advice with introductions and conclusions? Would they really care about academic opinion or the intricacies of the law? No, that would be absurd! 

Your job is to simply and coherently explain how the law applies to the relevant facts that concern them, and what this could mean for them. Will they go to jail? Will they get a fine? What are the consequences? 

This is what your client cares about in real life and in a problem question.

The key to writing brilliant answers to problem questions then is treating these fictitious clients as real clients and having a structured technique for providing advice to them. 

Your own university has probably given you some advice already on how to structure these questions, but they have probably done little more than chucked an acronym at you and left you to it, without explaining how you can use each element of these acronyms to your advantage. 

So, I will do their job for them by breaking down the technique that actually works.

The IRAC process for answering problem questions is my favourite acronym to use, and it stands for issue, rule, application, and conclusion. So, first you identifying the issue that you are dealing with and advising on; second, you identify the relevant legal rule applies; thirdly, you apply the rule to the issue at hand; before reaching a conclusion that answers the question.

I’m going to talk about each element in turn, but before I do so it’s imperative you NEVER apply the IRAC process to the question as a whole. In other words, you aren’t breaking your answer into four big chunks where you begin by looking at all the issues, then all the rules, then apply the rules, before crafting a huge conclusion on everything. Instead, you are dividing the answer into a number of separate issues and sub-issues that must be explored in turn using the IRAC method. 

For example, let’s say we had a problem question dealing with 3 different people, Tom, Daisy, and Harry and their respective liability for an injury sustained by Emily. We could break down the problem question by structuring our answer as to the liability of each party (e.g. Tom’s liability, Daisy’s liability, and Harry’s liability). Then within each of these ‘issues’ we should be able to identify subissues, which we apply the IRAC method to. For example, you may have to analyse whether Harry owes a duty of care or whether there are any defences available to him, in which case you should make a statement of the law and apply it to the facts before making a conclusion on that subissue.

Warning to one side, let’s wrap our heads around each element of IRAC.

Your job here is to look at the facts in the problem question and analyse them in relation to two key variables: parties and events. So, this is a two stage process.

Firstly, with respect to parties, jot down each of the people that are identified in the problem question and write next to them whether they are someone who has a claim (i.e. something happened to them) or they are someone who faces liability (i.e. they did something wrong).

Once you’ve done that, you want to determine how each of the parties relate to one another. In other words, you need to clearly write down how the ‘victim’ in the problem question relates to the ‘wrongdoer’ and what the specific event that took place to potentially give rise to a claim. 

The purpose of this exercise is to build the structure for your answer setting you up for success. The obvious approach would be to structure your problem question by considering each party one by one (e.g. Tom’s liability), but clearly establishing the issues allows you to see the myriad of possible offences that may need to be analysed as sub-issues. For example, if Tom killed Emily, we will have to analyse the actus reus and mens rea of the offence as sub-issues to help us determine whether or not it was murder.

Now we have a structure for our answer based on the issues within the problem question, it’s time to turn to the law.

I like to open up my textbook, statute books, and relevant websites to simply learn the law around the issues I identified and create some VERY brief notes. There’s no need to go into too much depth because you’re simply looking for supporting authority. For instance, if I was trying to prove mens rea I may look for relevant cases that help explain what is meant by ‘intention’ or with theft I will be looking for its statutory definition.

My top tip here though is to avoid abstract statements of the law. The purpose of finding the relevant ‘rules’ is to simply state the law rather than applying – you don’t need to think too deeply as you’re only making it clear to the reader you are aware of what needs to be proved for there to be liability. What does the statutory law say? What does the case law say? These are the sorts of things you want to write down; the application of this law comes in the next stage.

Application is the crux of a winning answer to any problem question.

Having identified the issue at hand and the relevant law, our focus is on marrying them together to answer the questions. Fortunately, this is a relatively straightforward process as long as we aren’t lazy in our application and don’t just end up critically analysing the law as if we were dealing with an essay.

For example, if we were dealing with the issue of Tom taking Emily’s purse and his liability for theft, we would start by turning to the definition of theft, which is the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with intention to permanently deprive. 

By breaking down the components of this definition we find that the actus reus of theft involves appropriating property belonging to another. We can then apply the law to the facts by asking ourselves whether or not Tom’s actions of picking up the purse and placing it in his rucksack was an exercise of the rights of ownership, and therefore whether or not it makes out the actus reus of the crime. 

You see, a good understanding of the law makes its application to the facts quite straightforward. By doing the groundwork in advance of finding the issues, understanding the facts of the case, and identifying the law, you can approach the problem question with a coherent understanding of what advice you need to give.

For each of the issues and sub-issues you identified at the start you need to form a conclusion. This conclusion must address the overall liability of the parties, including the potential ‘punishment’ that they could face, and ensure that all your conclusions are aligned and consistent with one another. 

Unlike an essay question, where a more authoritative conclusion is usually desired, in a problem question you don’t need to be determinative. The nature of a problem question means there are going to be some grey areas of the law and saying “it depends” could be the ‘correct’ answer. But if you do that, make sure you state what the contingent factors and how liability would differ depending on the approach taken by the court.

The whole approach is extremely methodical, and if you follow these steps in order every time you answer a problem question – regardless of the law module you are taking – then you have a strategy that should lead to some awesome answers. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach where you don’t even have to think to get first class grades.

A methodical approach is possible to many other areas of your law degree. So, if you enjoyed this article, you’d probably also enjoy learning more about my approach to studying:  A Masterclass in Studying Law

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Legal Problem Solving - A Guide for Law Students

This book describes methods of legal problem solving and then demonstrates how the method can be applied in the solution of an examination question.

Published: 01 November, 2002

Publisher: LexisNexis Australia

• Why Problem-based Assessment is used in Law Teaching
• Identifying the Issues
• Stating the Relevant Legal Authority
• Developing an Argument
• Reaching a Conclusion
• Sample Questions and Answers - Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law, Real Property, Equity, Succession, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Evidence, Law of Associations, Family Law
• Study Methods and Examination Technique

Featured Authors

Patrick keyzer.

Patrick Keyzer is a Professor of Law, Chair of Law and Public Policy and Head of the La Trobe University Law School. Patrick co-wrote and continues to update the Halsburys Laws of Australia title on Constitutional Law. Patrick also co-wrote the 7th and 8th editions of Hanks Constitutional Law: Commentary and Materials. Patrick was Executive Associate to Sir Gerard Brennan AC KBE, the Chief Justice of Australia, from November 1996 to May 1998. He holds a PhD in constitutional law from the University of Sydney and is also a practising barrister who has appeared in a number of significant constitutional cases including North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service v Bradley, Fardon v Attorney-General (Queensland) and Queanbeyan City Council v Australian Capital Territory. Patrick has taught constitutional law for over 20 years and has won five teaching awards.

AI for Legal Help

This Year’s Class

In Autumn-Winter quarters 2024-25, the Legal Design Lab team has a new version of its “AI for Legal Help”, this year focused on hands-on R&D to advance how legal aid and pro bono counsel can serve more people at scale.

It is a 3-credit course, with course code LAW 809E.

Policy Challenge: Can AI increase access to justice, by helping people resolve their legal problems in more accessible, equitable, and effective ways? What are the risks that AI poses for people seeking legal guidance, that technical and policy guardrails should mitigate?

Student Work: In this course, students will work on teams, partnered with frontline legal aid and court groups interested in using AI to co-design new tech pilots to help people dealing with evictions, criminal justice problems, debt collection, and other legal problems.

Using human-centered design, students will help their partners scope out exactly where AI and other interventions might serve both the providers and the clients, what quality benchmarks should guide any new intervention. Then they will work on a demo project, using AI tools and service design, to pilot and evaluate.

Along with their AI pilot, teams will establish important guidelines to ensure that new AI projects are centered on the needs of people, and developed with a careful eye towards ethical and legal principles.

Join our policy lab team to do R&D to define the future of AI for legal help. Apply for the class at the SLS Policy Lab link here.

Last Year’s Class

In Autumn-Winter quarters 2023-24, the Legal Design Lab team offered the first 2-quarter version of “AI for Legal Help”.

We worked with community groups & justice institutions to interview members of the public about if & how they would use AI platforms (like ChatGPT) to deal with legal problems like evictions, debt collection, or domestic violence.

Our class client was the Legal Services Corporation’s TIG (Technology Initiative Grant) team.

The goal of the class was to develop a community-centered agenda about how to make these AI platforms more effective at helping people with these problems, while also identifying the key risks they pose to people & technical/policy strategies to mitigate these risks.

The class was taught with user interviews, testing sessions, and multi-stakeholder workshops at the core – to have students synthesize diverse points of view into an agenda that can make AI tools more equitable, accessible and responsible in the legal domain.

On This Course Page

2023-24 Class

Our class will conduct research, hold events, and do fieldwork in order to:

• Will they use them? What will they ask AI for? Will they trust what it says? What will they do with the responses the AI gives them?
• What kinds of ‘user types’ can we identify, when it comes to using AI for legal help?
• Does the AI give them wrong or problematic info?
• What are the quality standards & harm scenarios we can build into a measurement instrument?
• What tech & policy interventions can ensure risks of harm are mitigated? What will work with people’s needs and preferences?
• How can AI platforms increase the quality of the responses they give when people ask about legal problems?
• How can tech & legal institutions work together going forward, so that the platforms continue to be responsible, accountable, and empowering around legal & justice system use cases?
• What datasets, AI models, benchmark standards, or other R&D pilots can advance AI for access to justice, while also ensuring consumer protection?

Students will synthesize what they learn into visual and engaging communications, and propose new strategies to improve AI platforms and oversight of them. Students will have a chance to build their skills in critical analysis, client-centered lawyering, visual communication, and policymaking. They will conduct user research, technology experiments, and legal research to identify how people use AI platforms, new ideas for improvements, and plans for new policy and technology initiatives.

Readings for AI For Legal Help

How could ai help (or harm) access to justice.

Opportunities & Risks for AI, Legal Help, and Access to Justice, report by Margaret Hagan from Spring 2023 multi-stakeholder workshop co-hosted by Stanford Legal Design Lab & Self-Represented Litigation Network

Justice & AI Crossover development work report, by Margaret Hagan after July 2023 technical-legal crossover event to discuss possible projects

Guzman, H. (2023). AI’s “Hallucinations” Add to Risks of Widespread Adoption. Retrieved June 19, 2023, from https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2023/03/23/ais-hallucinations-add-to-risks-of-widespread-adoption/?slreturn=20230519164801  

Granat, R. (2023). ChatGPT, Access to Justice, and UPL. Retrieved June 19, 2023, from https://www.lawproductmakers.com/2023/03/chatgtp-access-to-justice-and-upl/  

Hagan, M. D. Towards Human-Centered Standards for Legal Help AI. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A . (Forthcoming)

Holt, A. T. (2023). Legal AI-d to Your Service: Making Access to Justice a Reality. Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law . Retrieved from https://www.vanderbilt.edu/jetlaw/2023/02/04/legal-ai-d-to-your-service-making-access-to-justice-a-reality/

Kanu, H. (2023, April). Artificial intelligence poised to hinder, not help, access to justice. Reuters . Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/artificial-intelligence-poised-hinder-not-help-access-justice-2023-04-25/  

Perlman, A. (2023). The Implications of ChatGPT for Legal Services and Society . The Practice . Cambridge, MA. Retrieved from https://clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hub/magazine/issues/generative-ai-in-the-legal-profession/the-implications-of-chatgpt-for-legal-services-and-society/  

Poppe, E. T. (2019). The Future Is ̶B̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ Complicated: AI, Apps & Access to Justice. Oklahoma Law Review , 72 (1). Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/olr/vol72/iss1/8  

Simshaw, D. (2022). Access to A.I. Justice: Avoiding an Inequitable Two-Tiered System of Legal Services. Yale Journal of Law & Technology , 24 , 150–226. https://yjolt.org/access-ai-justice-avoiding-inequitable-two-tiered-system-legal-services  

Stepka, M. (2022, February). Law Bots: How AI Is Reshaping the Legal Profession. ABA Business Law Today . Retrieved from https://businesslawtoday.org/2022/02/how-ai-is-reshaping-legal-profession/  

Telang, A. (2023). The Promise and Peril of AI Legal Services to Equalize Justice. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology . Retrieved from https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/the-promise-and-peril-of-ai-legal-services-to-equalize-justice  

Tripp, A., Chavan, A., & Pyle, J. (2018). Case Studies for Legal Services Community Principles and Guidelines for Due Process and Ethics in the Age of AI . Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rEvg5xuOs_o1njPHHpF9jtuaGi0ren6DYUElBu0Fkfk/edit  

Westermann, Hannes and Karim Benyekhlef. JusticeBot: A Methodology for Building Augmented Intelligence Tools for Laypeople to Increase Access to Justice. ICAIL 2023. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.02032.pdf , https://www.cyberjustice.ca/en/logiciels-cyberjustice/nos-solutions-logicielles/justicebot/  

Wilkins, S. (2023, February). DoNotPay’s Downfall Put a Harsh Spotlight on AI and Justice Tech. Now What? Legaltech News . Retrieved from https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2023/02/10/donotpays-downfall-put-a-harsh-spotlight-on-ai-and-justice-tech-now-what/  

Projects to make AI improve Access to Justice

JusticeBot project at Cyberjustice Laboratory in Montreal

See the research paper: JusticeBot: A Methodology for Building Augmented Intelligence Tools for Laypeople to Increase Access to Justice by Hannes Westermann, Karim Benyekhlef

Laypeople (i.e. individuals without legal training) may often have trouble resolving their legal problems. In this work, we present the JusticeBot methodology. This methodology can be used to build legal decision support tools, that support laypeople in exploring their legal rights in certain situations, using a hybrid case-based and rule-based reasoning approach. The system ask the user questions regarding their situation and provides them with legal information, references to previous similar cases and possible next steps. This information could potentially help the user resolve their issue, e.g. by settling their case or enforcing their rights in court. We present the methodology for building such tools, which consists of discovering typically applied legal rules from legislation and case law, and encoding previous cases to support the user. We also present an interface to build tools using this methodology and a case study of the first deployed JusticeBot version, focused on landlord-tenant disputes, which has been used by thousands of individuals. 

Spot Classifier from Suffolk LIT Lab, a classifier that can analyze people’s descriptions of their life/legal problems, and identify specific legal issue codes.

Read more about the project: “ Online Tool Will Help ‘Spot’ Legal Issues That People Face “

Learned Hands machine learning labelling project, to build a labeled dataset of people’s legal problem stories.

See the LawNext write-up: Stanford and Suffolk Create Game to Help Drive Access to Justice

Karl Branting, The Justice Access Game: Crowd-Sourced Evaluation of Systems for Pro Se Litigants , 3435 in CEUR Workshop Proceedings (2023), https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3435/short5.pdf

Karl Branting & Sarah McLeod, Narrative-Driven Case Elicitation , 3435 in CEUR Workshop Proceedings (2023), https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3435/short1.pdf

How could AI’s performance on legal tasks be measured & regulated?

ChatGPT as an Artificial Lawyer

Jinzhe Tan, Hannes Westermann & Karim Benyekhlef, ChatGPT as an Artificial Lawyer? , 3435 in CEUR Workshop Proceedings (2023), https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3435/short2.pdf

Abstract: Lawyers can analyze and understand specific situations of their clients to provide them with relevant legal information and advice. We qualitatively investigate to which extent ChatGPT (a large language model developed by OpenAI) may be able to carry out some of these tasks, to provide legal information to laypeople. This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the provision of legal information as a process, evaluating not only its accuracy in providing legal information, but also its ability to understand and reason about users’ needs. We perform an initial investigation of ChatGPT’s ability to provide legal information using several simulated cases. We also compare the performance to that of JusticeBot, a legal information tool based on expert systems. While ChatGPT does not always provide accurate and reliable information, it acts as a powerful and intuitive way to interact with laypeople. This research opens the door to combining the two approaches for flexible and accurate legal information tools.

Access to AI Justice: Avoiding an Inequitable Two-Tiered System of Legal Services by Drew Simshaw, Yale Journal of Law & Technology, 2022

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been heralded for its potential to help close the access to justice gap. It can increase efficiencies, democratize access to legal information, and help consumers solve their own legal problems or connect them with licensed professionals who can. But some fear that increased reliance on AI will lead to one or more two-tiered systems: the poor might be stuck with inferior AI-driven assistance; only expensive law firms might be able to effectively harness legal AI; or, AI’s impact might not disrupt the status quo where only some can afford any type of legal assistance. The realization of any of these two-tiered systems would risk widening the justice gap. But the current regulation of legal services fails to account for the practical barriers preventing effective design of legal AI across the landscape, which make each of these two-tiered systems more likely.

Therefore, this Article argues that jurisdictions should embrace certain emerging regulatory reforms because they would facilitate equitable and meaningful access to legal AI across the legal problem-solving landscape, including by increasing competition and opportunities for collaboration across the legal services and technology industries. The Article provides a framework that demonstrates how this collaboration of legal and technical expertise will help stakeholders design and deploy AI-driven tools and services that are carefully calibrated to account for the specific consumers, legal issues, and underlying processes in each case. The framework also demonstrates how collaboration is critical for many stakeholders who face barriers to accessing and designing legal-AI due to insufficient resources, resilience, and relationships. The Article then advocates for regulatory priorities, reforms, and mechanisms to help stakeholders overcome these barriers and help foster legal AI access across the landscape. 

AI, Pursuit of Justice & Questions Lawyers Should Ask in Bloomberg Law, by  Julia Brickell , Columbia University,  Jeanna Matthews , Clarkson University, Denia Psarrou, University of Athens &  Shelley Podolny , Columbia University

Bender, E. M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S. (2021). On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big? FAccT 2021 – Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency , 610–623. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922  

Bickmore, T. W., Trinh, H., Olafsson, S., O’Leary, T. K., Asadi, R., Rickles, N. M., & Cruz, R. (2018). Patient and consumer safety risks when using conversational assistants for medical information: An observational study of siri, alexa, and google assistant. Journal of Medical Internet Research , 20 (9). https://doi.org/10.2196/11510

Neel Guha et al., LegalBench: Prototyping a Collaborative Benchmark for Legal Reasonging , (2022), https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.06120 .

Weidinger, L., Uesato, J., Rauh, M., Griffin, C., Huang, P. Sen, Mellor, J., … Gabriel, I. (2022). Taxonomy of Risks posed by Language Models. In ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (Vol. 22, pp. 214–229). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3531146.3533088

How do people use AI tools for problem-solving?

The User Experience of ChatGPT: Findings from a Questionnaire Study of Early Users , July 2023 12 page study by Marita Skjuve, Asbjorn Folstad, and Petter Bae Brandtzaeg

Should My Agent Lie for Me? A Study on Attitudes of US-based Participants Towards Deceptive AI in Selected Future-of-work

What are the risks of AI answering people’s questions about life & legal problems?

On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? by Emily M. Bender, Timni Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell, March 2021

Abstract: The past 3 years of work in NLP have been characterized by the development and deployment of ever larger language models, especially for English. BERT, its variants, GPT-2/3, and others, most recently Switch-C, have pushed the boundaries of the possible both through architectural innovations and through sheer size. Using these pretrained models and the methodology of fine-tuning them for specific tasks, researchers have extended the state of the art on a wide array of tasks as measured by leaderboards on specific benchmarks for English. In this paper, we take a step back and ask: How big is too big? What are the possible risks associated with this technology and what paths are available for mitigating those risks? We provide recommendations including weighing the environmental and financial costs first, investing resources into curating and carefully documenting datasets rather than ingesting everything on the web, carrying out pre-development exercises evaluating how the planned approach fits into research and development goals and supports stakeholder values, and encouraging research directions beyond ever larger language models.

Deceptive AI Ecosystems: The Case of ChatGPT , July 2023, 6-page Extended Abstract from Xiao Zhan, Yifan Xu, Stefan Sarkadi

Patient and Consumer Safety Risks When Using Conversational Assistants for Medical Information: An Observational Study of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant 2018 Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Abstract: Conversational assistants, such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, are ubiquitous and are beginning to be used as portals for medical services. However, the potential safety issues of using conversational assistants for medical information by patients and consumers are not understood.

Objective: To determine the prevalence and nature of the harm that could result from patients or consumers using conversational assistants for medical information.

Methods: Participants were given medical problems to pose to Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant, and asked to determine an action to take based on information from the system. Assignment of tasks and systems were randomized across participants, and participants queried the conversational assistants in their own words, making as many attempts as needed until they either reported an action to take or gave up. Participant-reported actions for each medical task were rated for patient harm using an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality harm scale.

Results: Fifty-four subjects completed the study with a mean age of 42 years (SD 18). Twenty-nine (54%) were female, 31 (57%) Caucasian, and 26 (50%) were college educated. Only 8 (15%) reported using a conversational assistant regularly, while 22 (41%) had never used one, and 24 (44%) had tried one “a few times.“ Forty-four (82%) used computers regularly. Subjects were only able to complete 168 (43%) of their 394 tasks. Of these, 49 (29%) reported actions that could have resulted in some degree of patient harm, including 27 (16%) that could have resulted in death.

Conclusions: Reliance on conversational assistants for actionable medical information represents a safety risk for patients and consumers. Patients should be cautioned to not use these technologies for answers to medical questions they intend to act on without further consultation from a health care provider.

Doctor GPT-3: Hype or Reality? report from medical tech company Nabla about their attempt to build an AI-powered application to help people with medical issues.

Read a write-up at The Register , “Researchers made an OpenAI GPT-3 medical chatbot as an experiment. It told a mock patient to kill themselves”

Ali Borji, A Categorical Archive of ChatGPT Failures , 1 (2023), http://arxiv.org/abs/2302.03494

Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2023 , Human-centered artificial intelligence (2023), https://aiindex.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/HAI_AI-Index-Report_2023.pdf