Vals AI and NextLadder Ventures Release Access to Justice Benchmark: Top Model Qwen 3.8 Max Scores 76.4%, Below 80% Threshold

Vals AI and NextLadder Ventures released the Access to Justice Benchmark on November 10, testing 23 AI models on 252 simulated legal-aid conversations; no model reached the 80% threshold for a reliable first point of contact, and the top scorer, Alibaba's Qwen 3.8 Max, reached 76.4%. Models met 78–87% of criteria for general legal explanations but only 30–50% for identifying specific local resources, with 21 of 23 falling back on national directories in at least 70% of final answers. Free-tier chatbots averaged 69.7% versus 70.4% for premium ones, and only xAI showed a clear premium edge, with Grok 4.7 beating Grok 4.6 by about 2.3–2.4 points.