Jennifer Chase: “Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, recently pushed back against the idea that AI would trigger a “white-collar apocalypse.” He argued that increased productivity allows us to build more of the things we need. The legal profession is a perfect case study. There are plenty of lawyers, and plenty of demand for them. The problem is far too few people can afford them. That mismatch is called the justice gap, and it is usually presented with somber statistics. We will get to those. But here is the twist: AI might close the gap by giving lawyers more work than ever … until it doesn’t. The scale is staggering: a 2022 justice gap study found low-income Americans received no or insufficient legal help for 92 percent of their substantial civil legal problems, and a 2024 California study showed only 18 percent of residents sought help for any civil legal problem. When people do not pursue a legal problem, it escalates and returns as an emergency. Evictions become homelessness. Benefit denials become health crises. Family disputes become years of instability. The justice gap is measured not only in unmet needs, but in the downstream costs of inaction…”