MIT Technology Review is reporting that artificial intelligence tools are driving a significant increase in lawsuits filed by self-represented individuals, prompting new legal and ethical questions for the judicial system. Federal magistrate Judge Maritza Braswell in Colorado noted a noticeable uptick in such filings, correlating it to AI use, as she recognizes how large language models write.
A study examining 4.5 million federal civil cases from 2005 to 2026 found that the share of lawsuits brought by self-represented people rose from 11% in 2022 to 16.8% in 2025. The number of filings within these cases more than doubled compared to before 2023. The study, co-authored by Anand Shah at MIT and Joshua Levy at USC, also used an AI-text detector on 1,600 randomly sampled court documents, finding the share flagged as AI-generated rose from 1% in 2023 to 18% in 2026.
Judges are also grappling with whether conversations between individuals and chatbots dispensing legal advice should be privileged, similar to attorney-client privilege. Federal magistrate Judge William Garfinkel in Connecticut has been considering this question. Courts have remained split on the issue; a federal court in Michigan ruled that a self-represented person’s conversations with ChatGPT were work product, while a New York federal court held that documents generated using Claude were not privileged. Judge Braswell also ruled that a self-represented person’s use of a chatbot should stay off limits, citing an expectation of privacy despite data collection by AI systems.
Another concern is liability when chatbots provide incorrect legal advice. Judge Allison Goddard, a federal magistrate judge in California, has observed plaintiffs receiving wildly inaccurate case valuations from ChatGPT during settlement negotiations. Nippon Life Insurance Company sued OpenAI in March, alleging ChatGPT practiced law without a license and helped reopen a settled lawsuit. OpenAI has asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing ChatGPT does not practice law. States, including New York, have introduced legislation to hold AI companies liable for bad legal advice and to ban chatbots from impersonating lawyers, though these bills have yet to gain traction in Congress.
Full Article: How courts are coping with a flood of AI-generated lawsuits