A new study of federal court filings suggests that artificial intelligence may be transforming one of the oldest — and most expensive — services in American society: representation in court. 

The paper, now circulating for comments before publication, reports a nationwide surge in civil lawsuits filed by people acting pro se (as their own attorneys). The researchers conclude that many of these filings were researched, drafted, or otherwise heavily assisted by large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT and Claude. 

The study examined millions of federal court docket entries across multiple years and dozens of categories of litigation. Using large databases of filings, linguistic analysis, statistical comparisons with pre-ChatGPT baselines, and software to detect AI-generated language patterns, the researchers conclude that the rise of generative AI coincides with a major increase in pro se litigation in federal courts. 

That increase is substantial. Federal civil filings surged after the public release of advanced LLMs. The overwhelming majority of the increase came from pro se plaintiffs. The authors report:

In the post-[AI] period, we find that the AI detection rate rises consistently, from near zero at the end of 2022 to 18 percent by early 2026, tracking the trajectory of LLM capability gains and diffusion of LLM adoption rather than any single event. By early 2026, roughly one in five complaint filings contains text that the detector classifies as AI-generated [emphasis added]. 

The right to represent oneself in federal court dates to the founding era and was codified by the First Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789. In practice, however, the right often existed more in theory than reality. The Sixth Amendment and subsequent rulings assured a right to an attorney for those accused of a criminal offense, but no such protection exists in civil or administrative courts. Federal litigation is intimidating, technical, document-heavy, and expensive. Filing fees may be affordable, but legal representation often is not. 

For generations, many Americans who believed they had been cheated, harassed, wrongly terminated, denied compensation, defamed, discriminated against, or otherwise mistreated under the law reached the same reluctant conclusion: it simply was not worth paying a lawyer and risking unpredictable legal costs to pursue a civil case. Artificial intelligence abruptly alters that calculation.