How we’re building digital skills and legal resilience across Australia
22 Sep 2025
Together with Telstra, Justice Connect has been empowering Australians with the digital skills they need to prepare for legal challenges before they arise.
When disaster strikes, people often flee with nothing except the clothes on their back. Justice Connect are helping people prepare for the worst with a free online self-help tool to identify, capture, and store digital copies of the essential documents required to prove who they are, where they live, and what they own. We’re also creating tools that help people understand, identify, and use safe, ethical artificial intelligence (AI) for legal help.
What started as an ambitious goal to help 55,000 people build digital confidence has grown into a movement that has already supported more than 61,000 Australians.
In FY25 alone, 52,814 people actively engaged with our suite of tools that help people develop new skills to store important legal documents, gain confidence with insurance processes, and explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can support them with legal issues.
Behind these numbers are real people gaining the knowledge and confidence to protect themselves and their families when it matters most.
Spotlight on Get ePrepared
Get ePrepared helps people learn how they can securely store electronic copies of their important legal documents, a crucial step in disaster preparedness.
In FY25, we launched a major upgrade shaped by user feedback and accessibility testing. The tool is now easier to navigate, more accessible, and more welcoming for people of all digital abilities.
- 50% of Get ePrepared users were over 65
- 87% were women
- Get ePrepared was most accessed via mobile devices
Beyond individual use, Get ePrepared has grown into a community resource, with hundreds attending webinars, workshops, and downloading our Group Session kit to share with others in their community.
- 96% of users found Get ePrepared’s checklist helpful
- 100% said they felt more confident choosing a storage method for their important documents
- 81% said they felt more confident taking the next steps
One user shared: “This is a great idea […] I fled without anything except for supplies for my son. Trying to find a rental without ID was a nightmare, important documents like birth certificates etc.”
Spotlight on SmartAssist
Legal issues are often hard to identify and even harder to explain. That is where SmartAssist comes in: an AI-powered tool to find the right legal information using your own words.
SmartAssist is our AI-powered legal information finding tool, built using our own ethically trained AI model that was developed with the University of Melbourne. It helps people describe their issue in plain language, and find accurate, relevant legal help.
Most users engaged through our animated explainer video on how you can spot safe and ethical AI, while others used FAQs or the tool itself to explore their legal issues.
By combining ethical AI with practical legal information resources, SmartAssist is helping people confidently take the first step toward resolving complex legal challenges and building capacity to use AI-powered help-seeking strategies.
Spotlight on our insurance resource
Disasters often leave people struggling to navigate insurance claims. To help, we created a series of six short, trauma-informed videos walking people through how to create a digital inventory of their home and contents before disaster strikes.
With a 76% completion rate and 90% of surveyed users finding them helpful, these videos are making a clear difference in teaching practical legal skills in a safe and encouraging format.
One user reflected: “I would recommend this. Had a big burglary some years back and the insurance company demanded itemisation and proof of everything.”
What we’ve learned
- Trust is key: People want simple tools that respect their intelligence and time, and meet them where they are at on their digital inclusion journey.
- Choice builds confidence: Offering a diversity of formats (video, audio, text, and print) makes our tools more accessible and helps people engage in a way that suits their confidence and comfort with digital technology.
- Connection drives action: People are far more likely to engage when the tool is recommended by someone they know, emphasising the importance of targeting trusted advocates in the community to help share our message.
Looking ahead
In the year ahead, we will continue to promote these tools, whilst also expanding our offering of resources into new areas, including financial literacy, fraud and identity protection, online accounts, and AI literacy.
Together, this partnership is strengthening digital inclusion and legal resilience, creating a foundation for lasting impact across Australia. We are extremely grateful for Telstra’s vision and support, which means more than 61,000 Australians have already built their confidence and skills to face future legal challenges. We look forward to working together to build a world where technology and the legal system can be made more accessible, and more human.
