The Legal Development Network Modernizes Tools and Develops Standards for Legal Assistance in Ukraine

Publication date: February 5, 2025

Author: Yuliia Bilyk, Communications Manager of the Legal Development Network

In 2024, the Legal Development Network (hereinafter – LDN) continued to enhance existing tools and implement new mechanisms for providing legal assistance in response to contemporary challenges. Currently, LDN operates an online chat, a chatbot, the “Pravomen” platform for consultations with Ukrainians abroad, and a legal component within the innovative Link mechanism for local coordination of humanitarian response. This article explores these tools and the steps taken to improve the quality of legal assistance.

Online Chat

This legal assistance tool is available 24/7, with support provided by 12 lawyers from member organizations of the Legal Development Network. The online chat serves both Ukrainians residing in different regions of the country and those currently abroad who need legal assistance related to matters in Ukraine. In 2024, the online chat was used by 1,707 users.

The most common inquiries received last year concerned mobilization and deferment from service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, guardianship arrangements for elderly individuals and persons with disabilities, border crossing regulations, utility debt issues, and compensation for destroyed or damaged property.

Chatbot

The Legal Development Network provides legal consultations disposing its structured knowledge base through a chatbot (@LawLink_bot on Telegram) integrated with artificial intelligence. Currently, the chatbot’s functionality includes responding to users’ legal inquiries related to alimony, compensation claims, and land lease agreements.

The key advantage of the chatbot is that it provides remote and free access to legal services, particularly for individuals who, due to various circumstances, are unable to physically reach a lawyer. In the near future, there are plans to expand the range of topics the chatbot can provide consultations on, as well as to enhance its functionality. Planned improvements include generating document templates upon request, with options for editing and downloading. Additionally, there are plans to integrate the chatbot with the online chat, where lawyers from member organizations of the Legal Development Network provide consultations. This integration will ensure that all user inquiries are addressed, including those not covered by the automated system.

 Experience shows that user demand for legal assistance in this accessible format remains high. To further develop its potential and enhance access to legal services, the Legal Development Network aims to secure the necessary resources. This is one of the key objectives the team has set for the current year, 2025.

Platform for Ukrainians Abroad

Pravomen is an online platform developed by the Legal Development Network in collaboration with the U.S. company Paladin and the Ukrainian NGO LinGo. It provides automated consultations based on an analysis of individual user inquiries. The platform offers real-time consultations via chatbots on Telegram, Facebook, Viber, and through the chat function on the LDN website.

In 2024 alone, the platform provided 301,372 legal consultations. Since its launch in 2022, a total of 1,168,305 legal consultations have been delivered to 241,774 unique users.

Legal Component of Link

Since 2024, the Legal Development Network, in partnership with the Czech humanitarian organization People in Need and with funding from the UK government, has launched Link — a mechanism for identifying unmet community needs in southern Ukraine, including access to legal assistance.

The Link mechanism operates by redirecting identified unmet legal needs either to the member organizations of the Legal Development Network, which are ready to take on the case, or to partner organizations (referrals), such as the state system for free legal assistance. Since May 2024, the Link team has identified 140 legal inquiries within the communities of Mykolaiv and Kherson regions.

In addition, the lawyers of the Legal Development Network and Link create and distribute legal awareness brochures on relevant topics in communities. Some examples include: “How to Use Compensation for Repairing Damaged Property”, “How to Use Compensation for Destroyed Property“, “How to Accept an Inheritance After the Deadline Has Passed”, “Documents That Confirm Property Ownership”, etc. These brochures are distributed in collaboration with the Association of Public Advisors of Ukraine, and they organize group legal awareness events in communities. The team also implements legal education for adults and youth in a game-based format, such as the “RightGames” board game.

Impact on the Quality of Legal Assistance

By developing own modern tools, the Legal Development Network directly influences the accessibility of legal assistance in Ukraine. At the same time, the Network’s experts understand that expanding the network of legal services requires updating approaches to receiving feedback from citizens seeking legal consultations, assessing effectiveness, and setting standards for the provision of legal services. This applies not only to how the Network and its member organizations operate but also to the generally accepted basic standards for the provision of primary legal assistance by non-governmental providers.

Currently, there are no unified basic standards used by non-governmental providers; instead, organizations have their own procedures and policies. However, in 2024, the Legal Development Network began to unite major players around the topic of preparing basic standards for legal services. This initiative includes informing the public about its human rights activities, speaking at public forums, discussing the quality of legal services provided by non-governmental legal aid providers, and analyzing trends and developments in access to justice.

At the end of November 2024, the Legal Development Network gathered lawyers from its member organizations to update the experience of applying its own standards and to prepare the initial drafts of basic standards that non-governmental legal aid providers could adopt.

 “During this meeting, which was the first after a long break, we managed to hear each other, learn about the conditions and issues lawyers in Sumy, Vinnytsia, Uzhhorod, and Kramatorsk are working with. We also discussed that the standards we all aspire to should not just be a declarative document, but something more like a handbook for every lawyer: if they have a specific question, they should always be able to refer to it,” says Dariia Kovalchuk, the Legal Services Manager of the Legal Development Network.

“Our goal is to develop a community of lawyers who, through their experience and continuous training, synchronization of actions, and response to emerging challenges, will be able to ensure the development and operation of the legal services we offer,” says Iryna Chaika, the Director of Organizational Development at the Legal Development Network.

In 2025, the Legal Development Network plans to implement an initiative by inviting other players in the human rights sector to collaborate.

“In recent years, the public sector in the field of human rights protection and access to justice has proven itself as a team player. The state system of free legal aid suffers from changes yet remains a stable provider of legal assistance. However, civil society organizations do not operate in isolation, ‘living their own life,’ but work to assist, and sometimes even outpace the state system — providing legal aid in remote and frontline communities, where legal aid lawyers cannot reach, taking on cases that the state system of free legal aid refuses due to the absence of eligibility for free legal services, and so forth. That is why we need to unite our efforts and agree now. However, there is a problem: the lack of unified standards for providing legal aid in the non-governmental sector. We call on major players in the field of access to justice in Ukraine to start a dialogue on developing these standards. This will be the first step toward broad public consensus in recognizing the status and capacity of the non-governmental sector,” emphasizes Olha Nastina, the Executive Director of the Legal Development Network.

Creating common rules for providing legal assistance is achievable for the entire human rights community, for which they will serve as a guide, at least for the coming years.

This material was created with the support of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The content of the publication is the sole responsibility of the Legal Development Network public association.

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