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Today Justicia Lab - Pro Bono Net’s nonprofit innovation incubator for technology solutions supporting the worker and immigrant rights movement - announces the launch of Reclamo AI (Beta), a multilingual, mobile-first digital assistant that helps low-wage and immigrant workers to prevent, assess, and document workplace violations in New York State.
The initial iteration of Reclamo launched in 2022 to help screen and file wage theft complaints in New York State. It was originally designed to empower non lawyer advocates – including worker organizers and staff from worker and employment centers – to support workers in addressing wage theft violations in the construction and buildings trades. The tool has been used to file over $1.5 million dollars in wage theft claims on behalf of workers since its launch.
With the integration of generative artificial intelligence, Reclamo AI (Beta) is now available for workers to use directly and applies to the needs of workers across sectors covering critical areas of employment law in New York State. Users can access Reclamo AI (Beta) by text and voice through any smartphone browser or WhatsApp in both English and Spanish. By integrating Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology into a widely accessible chat interface, Reclamo AI (Beta) aims to significantly broaden access to legal information and scale access to quality guidance.
Wage theft is a national epidemic with losses to workers estimated at $50 billion annually nationwide, disproportionately impacting low-wage workers, communities of color, immigrants and women. Filing a wage theft claim is difficult and time-consuming, with forms filled with legal jargon that’s hard to understand, especially for non-English speakers. As a result, many potential wage theft claims are not filed, and workers suffer.
Wage theft is enabled by a host of factors including: a lack of knowledge by workers around state wage and hour rules, poorly designed and enforced bureaucratic complaint processes, and lack of free or low bono legal assistance.
Reclamo AI (Beta) was developed in partnership with the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG). The tool leverages vetted workplace justice educational materials as well as Documented NY’s Wage Theft Monitor database of over 35,000 proven claims of wage theft filed with the New York State and Federal Departments of Labor, data from the NYC Comptroller’s Employer Violations Dashboard, and other proprietary materials developed by Justicia Lab and their partners. This ensures that workers will be learning directly from vetted data and verified legal information from trusted sources rather than from the wider internet.
By integrating the New York Legal Assistance Group’s knowledge and expertise into a widely and easily accessible platform, a greater number of low wage and immigrant workers will be able to receive accurate and timely legal education. Reclamo AI’s user data is stripped of personally identifiable information, anonymized, and deleted from the system every 48 hours. The tool also leverages enterprise AI models, and does not use or share user data for AI retraining.
Through Reclamo AI (Beta) workers are able to:
Reclamo AI (Beta) was developed with funding and technical support from GitLab’s AI for Economic Opportunity Fund and the J.M. Kaplan Innovation Prize.
About Justicia Lab
Justicia Lab is Pro Bono Net’s immigrant justice technology lab and a nonprofit legal tech initiative whose mission is to transform immigrant justice through collaboration, creativity, and technology. It works hand in hand with immigrants and their advocates to identify common challenges and incubate scalable digital tools to help immigrants navigate the immigration system, find workplace justice, and more. Justicia Lab has developed over a dozen legal tools for immigrant justice, helping over 500,000 people annually find critical immigration information and relief.
About Pro Bono Net
Pro Bono Net is the country’s leading nonprofit access-to-justice innovator with a 25-year history of impact. From connecting attorneys to those in most need to creating legal tools to help individuals advocate for themselves, Pro Bono Net makes the law work for the many and not the few.
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