Can an AI assistant give legal advice to court visitors?

No, and CETRAI is configured not to. It explains procedure published on the court's own self-help pages — forms, deadlines, fees, hours, what happens next — and discloses that it is an AI assistant rather than a lawyer. Requests for advice on a specific case, strategy, or the meaning of an order are refused and routed to the self-help centre or the referral resources the court publishes.

How does it handle eviction questions after hours?

It answers the published procedural sequence at any hour: the deadline to respond, where a response is filed, the form the court's pages name for that step, the filing fee and the fee-waiver form, and what the next step is — each cited to the court page it came from. Anything beyond published procedure is handed to staff, with the request and full transcript captured for the next business day.

What languages can court visitors use?

75+ languages across both voice and text, with automatic detection and the ability to switch language mid-conversation. The substance still comes from the court's approved content and is cited to it, so answers stay anchored to what the court published rather than to a separate translation that can fall out of date.

How does it stay accurate when fees or forms change?

The knowledge base is refreshed by automated crawls of the court's published content, so a changed fee schedule or a replaced form propagates without a manual re-authoring cycle. Staff can also correct an answer in the review console and see the correction apply immediately, with the change captured in the audit log.

Can it transfer someone to the self-help centre?

Yes. Low-confidence and out-of-scope conversations escalate to a person: live handoff during centre hours, or a captured request with the full transcript outside them. Where the court offers appointments, the assistant can book a slot into a staff calendar instead of leaving the visitor to call back.

Is it usable by screen-reader users and people who cannot use a phone tree?

Deployments can be configured to support Section 508 / ADA (WCAG 2.1 AA) requirements, and a VPAT / Accessibility Conformance Report is available on request. Because the same assistant answers by voice and by text, a visitor who cannot navigate an audio menu can type, and a visitor who cannot use a keyboard can speak.

CETRAI

AI Court Self-Help Assistant for Filing, Forms and Hours Questions

An AI self-help assistant that answers court procedure questions from your own published content 24/7 in 75+ languages, cites every source and never gives legal advice.

Self-help centres close at five; eviction deadlines do not. CETRAI answers procedural questions from a court's own published self-help content — 24/7, by voice or text, in 75+ languages — cites the page each answer came from, refuses anything that would be legal advice, and hands the visitor to the self-help centre when a person is needed.

What a grounded court self-help assistant can and cannot do

It can explain what a published process looks like: which form a filing uses, what a filing fee is, where the self-help centre is and when it is open, what a hearing notice means procedurally, and what documents a checklist asks for. It cannot tell a visitor what to do in their case, predict an outcome, interpret an order, or fill a form in on their behalf. That boundary is configured, not hoped for: the assistant answers only from the court's indexed public self-help content, states that it is an AI assistant and not a lawyer, and routes anything past that line to court staff.

Worked examples

These are illustrations of what CETRAI answers when it is grounded in a court's own public self-help pages. They are not descriptions of a specific court deployment, and no court is named because none is being cited as a customer.

Eviction and ejectment process questions

A tenant asks what a summons they received means and how long they have. The assistant explains the published procedural sequence — answer deadline, where an answer is filed, which form the court's self-help pages point to, the filing fee and the fee-waiver form, and what the next hearing step is — each with a citation to the court page it came from. It does not tell the tenant whether to fight the case or what to argue, and it surfaces the self-help centre and any legal-aid referral the court already publishes.

Answer deadlines and where an answer is filed, as published
The specific form numbers the court's self-help pages reference
Filing fees and the fee-waiver form
What happens at the next step in the sequence
Handoff to the self-help centre or the court's published referral list

Protection order filing steps

A visitor asks how to request a protection order. The assistant walks the published steps: which petition packet the court lists, where and when it can be filed, whether an emergency or after-hours route exists, what identification and information the checklist asks for, and what the court publishes about the hearing that follows. Because this is a safety-sensitive path, the configuration prioritises the court's own crisis and advocacy contact information and moves to a person quickly rather than continuing a long Q&A.

The petition packet and forms the court publishes
Filing locations, hours, and any published emergency route
What the checklist asks the petitioner to bring
What the court publishes about the hearing that follows
Immediate surfacing of published advocacy and crisis contacts

Self-help centre hours, location, and navigation

The most common question a self-help line takes is the simplest one: are you open, where are you, and do I need an appointment. The assistant answers from the published schedule, including which services are walk-in versus appointment, which building and floor to go to, what to bring, and which days the centre is closed. Answered at 9pm, this is the difference between a wasted trip and a completed filing.

Opening hours, closures, and holiday schedules as published
Walk-in versus appointment services
Building, floor, and accessibility entrance details where published
What to bring for a given service
Booking a call or appointment slot where the court offers one

Forms, fees, and fee waivers

Visitors rarely know a form by number. The assistant maps a plain-language description — 'I need to reply to the papers I was served' — to the form the court's own pages name for that step, states the fee published for it, and points to the fee-waiver application where the court publishes one. Every answer cites the page, so a visitor and a staff member can both check it.

Plain-language description mapped to the published form
Current published fee for the filing
Fee-waiver eligibility questions answered from the court's own page
Citation to the source page on every answer

Multilingual access for non-English speakers

A visitor can ask in Spanish, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, or any of 75+ languages, by voice or by text, and switch language mid-conversation. The substance still comes from the court's approved English-language self-help content, cited as the source, which keeps the answer anchored to what the court actually published rather than to a separately maintained translation that can drift.

75+ languages across voice and text, with automatic detection
Language switching mid-conversation
Answers still grounded in and cited to the court's approved content
Voice or text interchangeably, for visitors who cannot use one or the other

Guardrails

What the assistant is configured never to do, and what happens instead.

No legal advice, stated out loud — The assistant discloses that it is an AI assistant, not a lawyer, and that it explains published court procedure rather than advising on a case. Requests for advice, strategy, or interpretation of an order are refused and routed to the self-help centre or the court's published referral resources.
Citations are mandatory — Every answer is grounded in the court's approved content with a mandatory citation to its source page. There are no open-web answers, so the assistant cannot repeat another jurisdiction's procedure as though it were yours.
Low confidence goes to a person — When the indexed content does not support a confident answer, the assistant says so and escalates rather than approximating. Escalation is live handoff during centre hours, and a captured request with the full transcript outside them.
Fee and form changes propagate — Automated crawls refresh the indexed content when a published page changes, and staff can correct an answer directly in the review console with the correction taking effect immediately — so a fee change on the court's site does not leave a stale figure in circulation.
Retention is your decision — Transcript retention is configurable at 7, 30, 90, or 365 days, or purged at the end of the session, with a zero-retention mode where conversation content is never stored. The visitor-side transcript can also be wiped when the window closes. Transcripts and configuration remain the sole property of the court.

Access and compliance

Court self-help is used disproportionately by people without a lawyer, without English as a first language, and often without a desktop computer. CETRAI deployments can be configured to support Section 508 / ADA (WCAG 2.1 AA) requirements, with a VPAT / Accessibility Conformance Report available on request for a bid file. Hosting is US-only (Azure or AWS US regions) with AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit, single-tenant logical isolation, automatic PII detection and masking configurable to your policy, SSO via Entra ID, Okta, or other SAML/OIDC providers with MFA, and full audit logging of content and configuration changes. Compliance ownership remains with the court; CETDIGIT configures and evidences the technical controls.

Frequently asked questions

The questions court staff and self-help centre managers ask first.

Can an AI assistant give legal advice to court visitors? No, and CETRAI is configured not to. It explains procedure published on the court's own self-help pages — forms, deadlines, fees, hours, what happens next — and discloses that it is an AI assistant rather than a lawyer. Requests for advice on a specific case, strategy, or the meaning of an order are refused and routed to the self-help centre or the referral resources the court publishes.
How does it handle eviction questions after hours? It answers the published procedural sequence at any hour: the deadline to respond, where a response is filed, the form the court's pages name for that step, the filing fee and the fee-waiver form, and what the next step is — each cited to the court page it came from. Anything beyond published procedure is handed to staff, with the request and full transcript captured for the next business day.
What languages can court visitors use? 75+ languages across both voice and text, with automatic detection and the ability to switch language mid-conversation. The substance still comes from the court's approved content and is cited to it, so answers stay anchored to what the court published rather than to a separate translation that can fall out of date.
How does it stay accurate when fees or forms change? The knowledge base is refreshed by automated crawls of the court's published content, so a changed fee schedule or a replaced form propagates without a manual re-authoring cycle. Staff can also correct an answer in the review console and see the correction apply immediately, with the change captured in the audit log.
Can it transfer someone to the self-help centre? Yes. Low-confidence and out-of-scope conversations escalate to a person: live handoff during centre hours, or a captured request with the full transcript outside them. Where the court offers appointments, the assistant can book a slot into a staff calendar instead of leaving the visitor to call back.
Is it usable by screen-reader users and people who cannot use a phone tree? Deployments can be configured to support Section 508 / ADA (WCAG 2.1 AA) requirements, and a VPAT / Accessibility Conformance Report is available on request. Because the same assistant answers by voice and by text, a visitor who cannot navigate an audio menu can type, and a visitor who cannot use a keyboard can speak.

Scope a court self-help deployment

Book a call with the CETDIGIT public-sector team. We will walk through your published self-help content, the refusal boundary you want enforced, how handoff to your centre should work, and the security and accessibility documentation your procurement process needs.