Using AI as a Litigant in Person
Mark Maguire
AI and the Litigant in Person
9:04 PM (3 minutes ago)
to me
I can use AI to help me in legal matters can't I, so I don't need any legal support do I?
Using the likes of Chat GPT, Gemini and Co Pilot in every day life is becoming common place. However, no matter how useful these technologies are, they can't be relied upon as being accurate and stating the right case law.
There are a number of cases not only against Litigants in Person using AI in drafting court were the cases mentioned are nothing more than made up. While to many this may not seem like an issue in court it's an entirely different matter. Using so called “hallucination” cases (made up by AI) can actually be detrimental to your case. A judge may see this as an attempt to mis lead the court which can lead to dismissal of your submissions and/or case. These cases are not law and nothing more than fabrication - made up to make things look different.
Solicitors and Barristers have recently been referred to the relevant disciplinary panels of the Solicitor Regulation Authority and the Bar Council and may face being struck off the relevant registers and never allowed to practice again. This means a loss of career for those professionals.
Another issue that has been highlighted by the courts concerns two areas - the first is by entering your documents into AI to change this is potentially a waiver of your legal privileges as the document now becomes in the public domain. Another issue of which the judge did dismiss the submissions of a Litigant in Person in a family case was that the judge raised an issue not only with false cases but whether the witness statement filed was actually their own words as AI constructed the whole witness statement and it was relied upon. When using a solicitor or McKenzie friend the statement is drafted to reflect your own words, not what a computer thinks looks right.
While Artificial intelligence can help in some tasks the reliability is not there in a legal capacity. Remember AI tools pull information from all around the world based on what is available on the internet and then puts it together to give you an answer.
Asking us at Môn Legal Support can help you avoid the AI mistakes.