For everyday people navigating the aftermath of a serious injury, access to justice often hinges on whether a law firm has the time and resources to champion the case truly. J&Y Law, a Los Angeles-based personal injury firm, is proving that artificial intelligence (AI) can do more than cut costs while expanding access to justice.
J&Y Law: A 100-person firm taking on big cases with smarter tools
Founded fifteen years ago by Jason B. Javaheri and Yosi Yahouydai, J&Y Law has built a reputation of serving clients who might otherwise be overlooked in a city better known for entertainment than everyday legal battles. With just over 100 employees and a growing caseload, the firm faced the hurdle of scaling its services without sacrificing the quality of care each client deserves.
The answer came through a partnership with EvenUp, a San Francisco-based AI platform built exclusively for personal injury firms and valued at over $2 billion. Led by COO and Senior Attorney Monica Washington Rothbaum, J&Y has steadily expanded its use of EvenUp’s suite of tools across the full lifecycle of a case.
According to the law firm, the results are impressive, saving 320 hours of work each week. Meanwhile, MedChrons, EvenUp’s interactive medical chronology tool, has cut medical review time in half, transforming thousands of pages of raw records into clear timelines attorneys can act on immediately.
AI Drafts enables lawyers to generate depositions, mediations, and motions in minutes, while AI Playbooks extract critical information from intake transcripts before attorneys even speak with a client for the first time.
The cumulative effect has allowed J&Y to expand its footprint beyond California into other states while competing at a level that would have been difficult to sustain through manual processes alone.
EvenUp CEO Rami Karabibar noted that firms pulling ahead are the ones embedding AI across every stage of a case, not just using it at the edges. Karabibar added that J&Y is a model for what that looks like in practice, highlighting EvenUp’s utility in evaluating claims earlier and focusing legal talent where it creates the most value.
Here’s what 320 hours buys
The efficiency gains are only half the story. The more consequential question for a firm serving everyday people is what happens to the time that gets freed up.
In an interview with Charity Journal, Rothbaum noted that personal injury cases are fundamentally human documents. She added that they go beyond a collection of medical bills and treatment dates to paint a story of how an injury has changed someone’s ability to pick up a child or return to work.
“By reducing the time our team spends on repetitive review or administrative work, we are able to spend more time communicating with clients, understanding their lived experience, and making sure their story is fully developed throughout the life of the case,” said Rothbaum.
The investment shows up in more thorough file reviews and stronger case scoring. Furthermore, AI use positively impacts J&Y Law’s GFRL process (getting files ready for litigation), allowing attorneys to identify issues earlier and prepare from a position of greater clarity.
The intake transcript problem
Meanwhile, one of the sharper concerns about AI in legal practice is whether the technology flattens the human details that matter. Intake transcripts, in particular, contain some of the most important context in a personal injury case.
However, the context is often buried in long conversations and fragmented notes. In an interview with Charity Journal, Rothbaum noted that AI Playbooks addresses the problem by surfacing key facts, themes, gaps, and follow-up areas, giving attorneys the information they need to ask better questions.
“The human story still has to be understood, shaped, and advocated by people,” said Rothbaum. “AI does not replace that judgement. It helps ensure our team has the information needed to exercise that judgemnt more effectively.”
For a 100-person firm competing against larger operations in one of the country’s most competitive legal markets, the case for AI is ultimately a case for scale without sacrifice. The technology allows J&Y to handle more cases without losing sight of the individual client at the center of each one.