In Pakistan, NAZ Assist, the first multilingual legal advice chatbot, was introduced by the Legal Aid Society (LAS). The chatbot will be able to provide free legal assistance in English, Urdu, Sindhi, and Pashto. Users can converse with the NAZ Assist chatbot, on the LAS website.
First legal advice chatbot of Pakistan, NAZ Assist has the name of Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, the founder of LAS and a former Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court and Supreme Court judge. The chatbot’s main aim is to bridge the justice gap, which has led to Pakistan’s dismal ranking of 130th out of 142 nations in the 2023 WJP Rule of Law Index.
The Sindh Legal Advisory Call Center (SLACC) has collected insights from over 450,000 logged calls for legal aid since 2014, which the chatbot uses to make sure the advice is applicable to Pakistan’s legal system.
The organization’s CEO, Barrister Haya Eman Zahid said in a statement:
The bot will also help make LAS more inclusive as differently abled people who are deaf, or mute can now get preliminary legal advice at a click of a button. This is also in line with the generational change ensuing with youngsters preferring to text over speaking over the phone.
The ability for users to double-check each and every piece of advice provided by the bot—which, because it is artificial intelligence—is a noteworthy feature of NAZ Assist. Users can confirm by contacting a lawyer for free at the Sindh Legal Advisory Call Center’s Helpline at 0800-70806 or by putting their name and number into the bot to get a free callback from a lawyer.
Zahid further added:
We also have programs for women facing gender-based violence, woman being denied their inheritance share, and minority girls facing forced conversion. We are not charging anything nor have kept this behind a paywall. We genuinely want to help people access justice.