KatarunganAI: Barangay Lupon mediation and enforceable Kasunduan settlement copilot

Problem Statement

For millions of Filipinos who cannot afford a lawyer, the Barangay Lupong Tagapamayapa (peacekeeping council) is the only accessible justice system. Under the Local Government Code (RA 7160, Sections 399–422), neighbors must undergo barangay conciliation for civil disputes and minor offenses before any court will accept a case. However, barangay secretaries and Lupon members are community volunteers, not lawyers. Two critical failures happen daily:

1. Unenforceable Settlements: Written Kasunduang Pag-aayos (Amicable Settlements, KP Form No. 16) are often drafted with vague promises (“magbabayad kapag nagkapera”) that Municipal Trial Courts cannot execute when breached.
2. Illegal Mediation of VAWC Cases: Despite strict prohibitions under RA 9262, some barangay desks still pressure domestic violence survivors to “kiss and make up” in mediation instead of issuing an immediate Barangay Protection Order (BPO).

Proposed Solution

KatarunganAI is an access-to-justice copilot for both citizens and Barangay Lupon volunteers:

1. Statutory Jurisdiction & VAWC Safety Gate: Before a complaint is docketed, KatarunganAI evaluates the intake facts against Section 408 of RA 7160 and RA 9262. It immediately blocks mediation and triggers a mandatory Barangay Protection Order /PNP-WCPD referral if the complaint involves Violence Against Women and Their Children, offenses punishable by more than 1 year imprisonment or a fine exceeding ₱5,000, or parties from different cities.
2. Bilingual Testimony De-escalation & Summarization: During a mediation session, the Lupon secretary records or types both parties’ statements in Tagalog, Cebuano, or Ilocano. KatarunganAI strips out personal insults, extracts the core disputed facts (dates, unpaid amounts, property boundary markers, damages), and proposes three neutral settlement options grounded in the Civil Code.
3. Court-Enforceable KP Form Generator: Once both neighbors agree, KatarunganAI generates the official DILG Katarungang Pambarangay Form No. 16 (Kasunduang Pag-aayos) with unambiguous dates, exact peso schedules, default clauses, and the statutory 10-day repudiation notice so the agreement carries the force of a final court judgment under Section 416 of RA 7160.

Target Market

• Primary users: Barangay Secretaries, Punong Barangays, and Lupong Tagapamayapa members across 42,000+ barangays, plus low-income citizens preparing for barangay conciliation.
• Public-sector buyers: Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Local Government Academy, city and municipal legal offices, Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) barangay outreach clinics, and Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) legal aid chapters.
• Community benefit: Keeps minor neighborhood disputes out of clogged courts while protecting domestic abuse survivors from unlawful forced compromise.

How AI Is Used

• Rule-grounded legal classification (LexGLUE pattern): Classifies complaint narratives against statutory jurisdiction exceptions (RA 7160 Sec. 408, RA 9262 VAWC, Katarungang Pambarangay Administrative Circular No. 14-93) with explicit statutory citations.
• Dialect speech-to-issue extraction: Transcribes emotional Tagalog/Bisaya spoken statements and separates verifiable factual claims (dates, receipts, witness names) from subjective invective.
• Ambiguity detector for settlement clauses: Scans draft Kasunduan text for unenforceable vague phrases (such as “sa abot ng makakaya” or “kapag nakaluwag”) and prompts the mediator to replace them with specific calendar dates and deliverable actions.

Community & Ecosystem Integration

• Generates official DILG KP Forms 1 to 25: Outputs print-ready PDFs matching the exact DILG Katarungang Pambarangay Handbook templates (Summons, Notice of Hearing, Amicable Settlement, Certificate to File Action).
• Mandatory VAWC safeguard: Built-in hard guardrail that educates barangay workers on why VAWC cases cannot be compromised under RA 9262 Section 33.
• Saves PAO and court dockets: Prevents defective barangay settlements from being remanded by Municipal Trial Courts.

Demo Scenario (3 minutes for judges)

1. Test 1 — VAWC Safety Gate: Input a complaint where a husband hit his wife and threatened to withhold child support. KatarunganAI flashes a red Mediation Prohibited (RA 9262 Sec. 33) alert, blocks KP Form 7, and opens the Barangay Protection Order (BPO) generator instead.
2. Test 2 — Neighborhood Debt & Boundary Mediation: Two volunteers speak in Tagalog for 45 seconds arguing over a ₱15,000 sari-sari store debt and a damaged fence.
3. KatarunganAI transcribes both sides, filters out the shouting, lists the 3 agreed facts on screen, and flags a vague draft clause (“Magbabayad sa susunod na buwan”).
4. The mediator selects a 3-installment schedule; KatarunganAI prints a complete, legally enforceable Tagalog Kasunduang Pag-aayos (KP Form 16) ready for signatures.

30-Hour Build Plan

Suggested stack: Python FastAPI, Whisper ASR, Gemini or GPT-class LLM with RAG over Philippine statutes, ReportLab / WeasyPrint PDF form generator, Next.js, PostgreSQL. Public data / APIs: Local Government Code of 1991 (RA 7160 Book III Title I Chapter 7), DILG Katarungang Pambarangay Handbook and official KP Form templates, Supreme Court Administrative Circular No. 14-93, RA 9262 (Anti-VAWC Act).

Research & Literature References

1. Ilias Chalkidis, Abhik Jana, Dirk Hartung, Michael Bommarito, Ion Androutsopoulos, Daniel Katz, and Nikolaos Aletras, “LexGLUE: A Benchmark Dataset for Legal Language Understanding in English,” Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), pp. 4310-4330, 2022. DOI: 10.18653/v1/2022.acl-long.297
   • How KatarunganAI uses this study: Applies the LexGLUE multi-label legal issue classification and statutory provision retrieval methodology to map unstructured citizen blotter narratives onto specific articles of the Local Government Code and Civil Code.

Risks & Privacy Notes

• Not a replacement for counsel: KatarunganAI clearly states that it is a procedural drafting aid for barangay conciliation under RA 7160 and does not provide formal attorney representation.
• Strict blotter confidentiality (RA 10173): Barangay blotter narratives and VAWC intake records contain sensitive personal information. All mediation transcripts are encrypted at rest and accessible only to authorized Lupon officers.
• Agrarian and labor dispute routing: Automatically detects employer-employee (NLRC/DOLE SEnA) and tenancy/agrarian reform (DARAB) disputes and routes citizens to the proper agency instead of barangay mediation.

AI Use Disclosure (draft)

KatarunganAI uses speech-to-text for Tagalog and Bisaya testimony transcription and a retrieval-augmented LLM grounded in the Local Government Code (RA 7160) and DILG Katarungang Pambarangay Handbook to screen jurisdiction and draft KP Form 16 settlements. AI coding assistants helped build the PDF form generator and UI components. All statutory rules were verified against official Philippine laws.

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