Beagle+
Beagle+ is a chatbot from People’s Law School. Now powered by ChatGPT-4, Beagle+ guides people to relevant, high quality legal information. It’s one of many ways People’s Law School helps British Columbians resolve and avoid legal issues.
What is a chatbot exactly?
A chatbot is a computer program that has a conversation with people.
That’s right, Beagle+ is not a real person. Or a real dog. Beagle+ is powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) technology paired with first-rate content tailored to the legal issues encountered by British Columbians. How so? Beagle+ has been trained to provide responses drawn from the content on our People’s Law School and Dial-A-Law websites.
In this way you get the best of all worlds: empathetic, concise responses from leading AI technology paired with high quality, accurate legal information from a trusted source in People’s Law School.
What is the technology behind Beagle+?
Beagle was first launched in 2020 powered by conversational AI technology (Rasa, in case you’re curious). Then large language models came along and moved the goalposts. LLMs are a type of artificial intelligence that use deep learning techniques and very large data sets to understand and generate text. They can be convincingly human-like, and (critically) they can be trained to work with just your own information.
In February 2024, Beagle was relaunched as Beagle+, now powered by ChatGPT-4, a large language model from OpenAI.
Behind the scenes, we’re using a couple of other key technologies to make everything work. The content for our two principal websites, People’s Law School and Dial-A-Law, is managed in Contentful, a unified content management system. And we export that content on a regular basis to Pinecone, a vector database, so that responses provided by ChatGPT-4 can be limited to our curated, high quality information.
Who are the people behind Beagle+?
Front and centre are the People’s team who create and maintain the content on our websites. In this work, they’re supported by volunteer lawyers who review the content for legal accuracy, an essential part of creating high quality legal information.
Leading the technology development of Beagle+ is the amazing team at Tangowork, a digital transformation consultancy.
Also playing key roles have been Agentic Digital Media, who helped with the initial development of Beagle, and the Law Foundation of BC, which provided funding support for Beagle and more broadly for People’s Law School.
Does Beagle+ come with a disclaimer?
With legal, there’s always fine print! Our full terms of use apply when you use Beagle+, as well as our privacy policy, which explains how we collect and use your information.
As a chatbot, Beagle+ can tell you about the law in British Columbia. But it can’t apply the law to your specific situation or recommend a specific course of action. To do so is to provide legal advice, something we can’t offer. (Here are some free and low-cost options for legal advice.) What Beagle+ can do is explain the law in general terms, discuss options, and let you know about possible next steps you can take.
Like any artificial intelligence, Beagle+ isn't perfect. We're monitoring its responses and making adjustments as we go. And we welcome your feedback, to help us continue to improve Beagle+ and reach more British Columbians than ever with free, helpful legal information.