The Community Legal Centres Australia AI Pilot Project (the pilot) is exploring how artificial intelligence can support the community legal sector to deliver services more efficiently, strengthen organisational capability, and improve access to justice. To do this, we’re leading a national pilot program to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can be safely, ethically and effectively used within community legal centres. The purpose of the pilot is not to prove that AI should be adopted, but to determine where it may be useful, where caution is required, and what good practice looks like within a community legal setting.

About the pilot

The pilot is an eighteen-month initiative that will:

• Work with a select group of community legal centres to test AI technologies in community legal service settings;
• Evaluate where AI delivers meaningful value and where it does not;
• Identify risks, challenges and mitigation strategies;
• Develop sector-specific governance and ethical frameworks;
• Build practical knowledge and capability across participating centres;
• Generate evidence to support future sector decision-making.

The pilot will provide an opportunity for the sector to learn from practical experience rather than assumption, ensuring that any future use of AI is informed by evidence and guided by community legal sector values.

Why a pilot?

AI technologies are developing rapidly and are already being adopted across the legal sector. While these technologies may offer opportunities to improve efficiency and support service delivery, they also raise important questions about privacy, confidentiality, professional obligations, accuracy and client trust.

Before considering broader adoption, the community legal sector needs reliable evidence about:

• What works in a community legal centre environment;
• What risks need to be managed;
• Where AI can provide genuine value;
• What safeguards should be in place;
• What support staff require to use AI responsibly.

This pilot has been established to answer these questions and create an evidence base that can contribute to future sector decisions.

What the pilot will test

The pilot will explore a range of potential applications for AI within community legal centres, including considering where AI could assist and improve operational, administrative and/or service delivery functions.

Through structured testing and evaluation, the pilot will seek to understand:

• Which use cases provide the greatest benefit
• The impact of AI on workflows and efficiency
• Staff experiences and confidence levels
• Governance and risk management requirements
• Barriers to adoption
• Lessons that can be shared across the sector

Pilot outcomes

By the conclusion of the pilot, CLCs Australia aims to deliver:

Evidence and insights

Findings about the practical benefits, limitations and risks of ai within community legal centres.

Governance and ethics frameworks

Sector-specific guidance to support safe, responsible and ethical use of ai technologies.

Sector resources

Practical tools, guides and implementation resources informed by lessons from the pilot

Increased capability

Improved AI literacy and understanding across participating organisations and the broader sector

Recommendations for the future

Evidence-based recommendations to help inform future sector approaches to AI

Participating community legal centres

The pilot will involve a selected group of community legal centres representing different service models, communities and operational contexts. More information about the selection process will be shared as it becomes available.

Guiding principles

The principles that will govern any AI initiative CLCs Australia undertakes are:

1. Human first – AI may support the work of community legal centres, but it should never replace or diminish the human relationships, judgment and care at the heart of CLC work. Our clients come to centres often at the worst moments of their lives, and they come to speak to someone. AI will not be used to diminish the human centred approach to legal services and support, or to exclude CLC clients on the basis of any choices they make about the use of AI.
2. Access to justice is the purpose – We will pursue AI only where it improves outcomes for our clients and communities. Efficiency is a means to serve more people, better. It is never an end in itself, and never a reason to compromise the quality or safety of a service. AI must narrow the justice gap, not build new barriers into it.
3. Safety above all else – Our clients have rights of privacy, confidentiality and legal professional privilege, and cultural rights and interests in their data and its sovereignty. They are among those most exposed to algorithmic bias and potential harm. Our sector has spent decades helping people harmed by automated systems. We know how unsafe technology detrimentally effects a person’s life, and we will hold this technology to the standard of that knowledge. Safe AI is “non-negotiable”.
4. Sector led – We will take a collective, sector-led approach so that access to safe AI capability does not depend on a centre’s size, location or budget. Our approach to AI understands that not every safe AI tool is suited to all CLCs. We will recognise the diversity of the sector, including in size, location and resources. Participation is always voluntary, and centres that choose not to adopt AI will be equally respected and supported.
5. Support the workforce – AI should relieve pressure on CLC staff and volunteers, not displace or devalue them. We will invest in the sector’s capability and involve our workforce in shaping how these tools are used. AI belongs where it takes work off our people, not where it takes our people out of the work.
6. AI is not a substitute for funding – The chronic underfunding of the community legal sector cannot be solved by technology. Efficiency gains must expand what centres can do for their communities. They must never be used to justify reduced investment in community legal services, or to compel CLCs to divert limited resources to AI use or tools.

Learning together

A key objective of the pilot is to create opportunities for shared learning across the sector.

Through participating centres, an AI Champions Network, training activities and project updates, the pilot will promote collaboration and knowledge sharing to help build sector-wide capability and understanding.