Bay Area Legal Services' newest legal assistant comes in the form of a blinking bumblebee icon balancing the scales of justice.
Its name is Bailey B.
The free AI chatbot, which launched to the public on Feb. 17, appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the computer screen when a user navigates to the "Get Help" section of the nonprofit law firm's website.
Kezia Hill, the legal content manager at Bay Area Legal Services, oversees training the chatbot.
"Bailey — I would say — is a 1L (first-year) law student. A little stressed, but eager and ready to shine," she said.
Once prompted, the AI chatbot can reply with legal information on common Florida landlord-tenant issues, including navigating eviction notices, requesting repairs, giving notice to vacate and recovering security deposits.
The AI tool can also be prompted to draft a handful of basic legal documents, like a motion to determine rent, and provide links to trusted resources or referrals to additional support.
Eventually, Hill said the bot will learn to draft up to 40 legal documents.
While the tool is designed to help users understand their legal rights in Florida, Hill said their conversations with Bailey B. should not be taken as legal advice.
“So with AI, it's really important to understand that it's just simply giving you all your options. Here they are, and they've been fact-checked, they've been verified because attorneys have put this information in — now do with it what you will," she said.
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Unlike other generative AI models, like Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT, which ingest publicly available sources, Bailey B. was trained on carefully selected material by legal staff.
Hill said the chatbot's knowledge base must be continually updated to ensure it's working properly.
"Laws are constantly changing," she said. “If you're not giving the bot every single piece of information that you have on this topic, when it's asked a question, it's either going to attempt to hallucinate...[or] the answer is not quite right, which is not quite enough for what we're going for."
There are also guardrails in place to prevent the bot from hallucinating or becoming overconfident, as well as back-end controls to fine-tune the bot's attitude and tone when responding to users.
Bay Area Legal Services partnered with justice tech automation company LawDroid to provide the bot's wireframe and back-end controls.
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Bailey B. is the first of its kind in Florida and the third legal aid service nationally to launch an AI chatbot with LawDroid. It joins LIA, short for legal information assistant, operating through the Legal Aid of North Carolina, and LAVA, short for legal aid virtual assistant, with Atlanta Legal Aid.
In Tampa, Hill said the bot is designed to be a resource for people who don't qualify for Bay Area Legal Service's free legal aid, but still can't afford an attorney.
"The intended users are the ones who kind of fall through the gaps," she said. "Attorneys are a privilege. They're extremely expensive to have, so we wanted to reach that gap and still provide support to those thousands — dare I say, millions — of people that really need legal help.”
Hill said the idea is to expand the bot's knowledge base to assist users with several family-law matters, which are often expensive and paperwork-heavy.
A Spanish-language version of Bailey B. is set to launch in coming months as well.
Gabriella Paul covers the stories of people living paycheck to paycheck in the greater Tampa Bay region for WUSF. Here’s how you can share your story with her.
