AI-Powered Civil Law Assistance Platform for Sri Lankan Citizens

Background & Literature Survey

Access to legal information in Sri Lanka has long been limited for ordinary citizens who struggle to interpret legal documents and understand their rights. Although digital legal platforms exist — such as LankaLAW and LawMate — they are primarily designed for lawyers, researchers, and law students, and do not offer multilingual support or plain-language guidance for the general public.

Internationally, AI has been adopted in legal domains through platforms such as DoNotPay, LawDroid, and LegalZoom. However, these systems are built around Western legal frameworks and do not apply to Sri Lankan law or local languages. LegalEase LK bridges this gap using LLM-based conversational models, information retrieval systems, and modern web frameworks like React and Node.js.

Research Gap

• No Sri Lankan platform provides citizen-friendly legal explanations in Sinhala or English via an AI conversational interface.
• Existing systems (LankaLAW, LawMate) use professional terminology inaccessible to the general public.
• No platform integrates a lawyer recommendation mechanism matching users with professionals by location and specialization.
• International legal AI systems focus on Western legal frameworks and do not apply to Sri Lankan law.
• Current tools focus on professionals rather than public legal education, leaving a wide gap in legal awareness and accessibility.

Research Problem

Ordinary Sri Lankan citizens struggle to access and understand legal information due to complex legal language and professional-focused platforms. Existing digital legal systems are designed mainly for lawyers and students and do not provide simple, multilingual explanations or conversational support. As a result, people lack legal awareness, depend on unreliable advice, and face difficulties finding suitable lawyers, especially in rural areas. This highlights the need for an accessible, AI-powered legal assistance platform tailored for the general public.

Research Objectives

Main Objective: To design and develop an AI-powered, multilingual legal assistance platform that provides Sri Lankan citizens with simple, accessible legal information and helps them connect with suitable legal professionals.

• Develop a multilingual chatbot using LLaMA 3 8B that explains legal concepts in simple Sinhala and English.
• Build a legal information retrieval mechanism delivering accurate responses based on Sri Lankan legal sources.
• Create a lawyer recommendation system suggesting suitable lawyers by specialization and geographic location.
• Design a user-friendly web interface using React and Node.js for easy public access.
• Integrate "Edineda Jiwithayata Neethiya" (Parts 1–3) into a structured knowledge base for AI processing.
• Evaluate the system's effectiveness through user testing, focusing on accuracy, usability, and legal awareness impact.

Methodology

1. User enters a legal question through the React web interface in Sinhala or English.
2. The question is securely sent to the Node.js/Express backend.
3. The custom fine-tuned LLaMA 3 8B model processes the question using vector similarity on the legal knowledge base.
4. The model identifies the law category and retrieves the most relevant legal sections from MongoDB.
5. The platform uses the identified category to fetch suitable lawyers from the lawyer database.
6. A clear legal explanation and best-matched lawyers are displayed to the user bilingually.

Technologies Used