ABSTRACT
This article examines how AI-supported tools may improve access to justice in labour and family cases, understood as relational access-to-justice disputes. Rather than treating AI as a substitute for judicial decision-making or expert legal assessment, the paper conceptualises it as an accountable guidance mechanism that helps parties understand procedural options, costs, timeframes, safeguards, and possible outcomes. The study starts from the premise that the introduction of AI into justice depends not only on legal admissibility or technical feasibility, but also on the characteristics of the legal domain, the digital maturity of judicial institutions, and the attitudes of the professionals expected to use these systems. Drawing on the EU Justice Programme projects IDEA and CREA3, it compares responses from professionals in seven EU countries and complements this cross-national picture with a focused Italian sub-sample of judges and Office for Trial Staff. The Italian evidence provides a revealing confirmation of the broader pattern: professionals are more receptive to digital support and AI-based guidance than to predictive uses; while the expected benefits of predictive justice remain below those already associated with existing digital tools, especially for access to justice. The article argues that AI-supported resolution can contribute to relational access to justice only when it remains a bounded form of guidance, adapted to the legal domain and professional context in which it operates, and embedded in institutional arrangements capable of ensuring reliable information, meaningful human oversight, and effective protection of procedural rights.
Molinari, Marianna and Giacalone, Marco and Ferraris, Andrea Filippo, Relational Access-to-Justice, Smarter Remedies: AI-Supported Resolution in Labour and Family Disputes (September 30, 2026).
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