This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Picture a forlorn man walking into a lawyer's office after his marriage has collapsed. The bank is threatening foreclosure, and his finances are in tatters.
His problems may be legal on paper, but in person they can look far more complicated: panic, shame or the numb resignation of someone who can no longer imagine a way out. He did not come for counseling, and his lawyer is not a therapist. Still, the attorney may be sitting beside him at the worst moment of his life—with a chance to help before despair slides into tragedy.
That overlooked encounter sits at the heart of research by Swabha Swayamdipta, WiSE Gabilan assistant professor of computer science in the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science at USC Viterbi and the Stevens School of Computing and AI, her computer science Ph.D. student and paper lead author, Jaspreet Ranjit, and John R. Blosnich, an associate professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and interim co-director of the USC Center for AI in Society (CAIS). "What we have shown is that legal professionals interact with people who later die by suicide much more often than we previously knew," Ranjit said.
"You can't design or evaluate any type of intervention until you know where the opportunities exist." Their paper, "Uncovering Intervention Opportunities for Suicide Prevention with Language Model Assistants," was presented at the Association for Computational Linguistics' 64th annual meeting in San Diego in July 2026. Co-authors include Jonathan May, research associate professor of computer science and principal scientist and AI division director at USC's Information Sciences Institute; Hyundong J. Cho, May's former Ph.D. student and now a member of the technical staff at Intology; Claire J.
Smerdon, a software engineer at Palo Alto Networks who holds a USC Viterbi master's degree in computer science; USC Viterbi computer science alumnus Yoonsoo Nam; and Myles Phung. The researchers studied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Violent Death Reporting System. Its records combine standardized categories with written accounts drawn from coroners, medical examiners and law enforcement.
The narratives can describe the circumstances before a death in detail, but the database has no standard category for contact with a lawyer. Most of that contact was hidden in plain sight. A report might mention divorce proceedings, a custody fight, bankruptcy, eviction or an arrest without naming an attorney.
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