“Solutions like Josef Q help us close the access to justice gap and increase our capacity to help by 10x, 100x, 1000x.”– Sateesh Nori, Adjunct Professor, NYU School of Law
Housing Court Answers launches first AI assistant for NYC tenants in collaboration with NYU and Josef
NYC tenants’ rights organization Housing Court Answers, in partnership with NYU, and legal automation company Josef, has launched a first-of-its-kind AI-powered tool designed to help tenants easily navigate housing repair issues.
The AI assistant helps renters in New York City learn about and enforce their repair rights, including by providing them with actionable information on issues like documenting repair problems, preparing letters to landlords, or even filing HPD complaints.
Jenny Laurie, Executive Director of Housing Court Answers says:
“With the launch of our AI assistant Roxanne, New York City renters can now get instant answers to all their rental repair questions. Renting law and regulations in New York are notoriously complicated and hard to digest, so with Roxanne, we’ve made rental repairs guidance both easy to access and understand.”
The new tool gives renters instant access to the information they need, anytime they need it. Powered by Josef’s platform, and leveraging the expertise and experience of HCA and NYU, the tool scales assistance and frees the team up to help with more complex cases.
"New York City renters can now get instant answers to all their rental repair questions"
Scaling legal assistance for those who need it
Legal aid lawyer, author and Adjunct Professor at NYU School of Law, Sateesh Nori was a key contributor to the tool’s development. He explains:
“One of the biggest challenges of working as a legal services lawyer or a nonprofit lawyer is that you don’t have enough time, or resources, to help everybody who seeks your help.”
He adds, “Legal aid organizations often have to turn away half the people who seek help which can be extremely frustrating and demoralizing for everyone involved. Solutions like Josef Q help us close the access to justice gap and increase our capacity to help by 10x, 100x, 1000x.”
Tenants can rely on Roxanne
While HCA recommends that the community continues to reach out via their phone hotline for more complex situations, if renters need guidance on all things NYC housing repairs, they can rely on Roxanne.
This is down to the technology sitting under the hood, and the expertise that it draws from. The legal automation company Josef specializes in helping legal and compliance teams create hyper-accurate, self-service tools using its suite of AI guardrails, human-in-the-loop controls and proprietary LLM pre-processing designed for complex legal content.
Roxanne only answers questions based on trusted and validated sources
Josef Co-founder and COO Sam Flynn says, “Our groundbreaking research with NYU and Cornell has enabled us to create AI tools that legal aid organizations like HCA–and their clients–can trust.”
“LLMs give us the ability to really turn the tide on the access to justice gap, but we do need to make sure that we’re creating technology that’s not just efficient, but also safe. Our tool only draws from trusted and validated sources, is extensively tested and trained prior to launch, and will continue to be updated and maintained thereafter.”
“Our technology is used by law firms like Orrick, and in-house legal teams at companies like L’Oréal. We apply the same care to tools that we launch to the public: reliability, accuracy, and transparency are paramount.”
He adds, “HCA’s AI-powered assistant will undergo ongoing moderation and human review, ensuring the tool delivers guidance that the organization’s community can trust. We will also continue to build out new modules to ensure that we can help more people over time.”
A pivotal moment for delivering legal aid
The launch represents a tipping point for the delivery of legal aid not only in New York, but across the US.
Sateesh says, “legal aid organizations everywhere have been seeking ways to focus on the what–their core competencies–instead of the how–the mechanisms of service delivery. Today, we can confidently say that we see the future. Access to justice is no longer just for the rich and powerful but for everyone.”
About
Housing Court Answers is a not-for-profit that works with pro se litigants in New York City – tenants and landlords – who arrive at Housing Court without attorneys, unable to afford them, and confused by the procedures.
Housing Court Answers collaborate with community groups, legal services providers, eviction prevention specialists, academicians, and elected officials to further the goal of justice in Housing Court as a means to reducing homelessness in New York City.
Josef is an award-winning legal automation company used by leading legal and compliance teams—from in-house legal departments at companies like L’Oréal, to leading law firms like Orrick—to build digital self-service tools that scale legal work, whether it’s generating documents, answering FAQs, or setting up new matters.
Sateesh Nori is a lawyer, law professor, and author. For twenty years, he represented tenants across New York City at various legal services organizations. He was a commissioner of the 2019 Charter Revision Commission. He is currently a member of the ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty. He co-created and co-teaches the Housing Rights Clinic at NYU Law.
In 2023, he was a recipient of the New York City Bar Association’s “Legal Services Award.” He is also the author of “Sheltered: Twenty Years in Housing Court.”
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