May 29, 2026
Up to now in this 2026 Resolution for the Legal Profession series, the focus has been on lawyers and how AI can help to make our services more efficient and accessible for the people who need our help. As our profession continues to grapple with that challenge, we also need to recognize that more people every day are turning to AI to try to navigate legal issues on their own.
Whether that trend is a good thing is a mixed bag—thus the title for this post—but it is only growing by the day. Our profession needs to take the lead in helping people make good decisions about using AI, and that should include giving them practical guidance for using AI (including realistic warnings and accountability for misuse) as well as creating legally vetted AI tools that people can have confidence in turning to for legal guidance.
Recognizing the New Reality
More people are using AI for their court cases and other legal issues by the day, and who can blame them? The backdrop for this year’s Resolution is that, at a time when we have a record number of lawyers practicing in Illinois and throughout the country, most people struggle to find affordable legal help when they need it.
That’s the fundamental reason why we see more people turning to AI to try to solve their legal problems, even as we see high levels of distrust of AI among the public. As one commentator noted in a recent op-ed in the Washington Post:
“The models aren’t perfect, but the relevant comparison isn’t between Claude and Clarence (Thomas or Darrow). It’s between Claude and nothing.”
So, whether we like it or not, the first step in charting the path forward is to recognize this is the new reality. The AI genie is not going back into the bottle, and it has good, bad, and potentially ugly consequences for access to justice as things currently stand.
The Good
The “good” here is the enormous potential for AI to help people without lawyers understand their legal rights and responsibilities, handle lower-stakes legal issues and less complex aspects of their cases, and better navigate often daunting procedural requirements in the courts.
While their reliability is not consistent at this point, publicly available AI tools like Claude, Copilot, Gemini, and ChatGPT can be useful resources for people looking for help navigating their legal issues.
I encourage you to use your AI tool of choice to test it out with a few common questions that people face in the court system. In a recent meeting where we tried this exercise as a group, some of the sample questions the group posed to AI were: How do I e-file? How do I prepare and file a motion? How can I stop an eviction? How can I get a disability accommodation?
Try it out to see how that plays out for you; if nothing else, it is illuminating to better understand the guidance people are getting when they turn to AI for answers. The answers are not always fully accurate, but you can see the great potential for these tools with better legal vetting and guidance.
The Bad
The fact that the answers AI tools give on legal questions aren’t always fully accurate is the core of the “bad” for AI as a self-help tool, particularly with the false confidence that can come with those answers. Those of us who are lawyers or other legal professionals can evaluate the accuracy of answers AI is giving us (and it is our responsibility to do so), but it is far more challenging for everyday people without legal training to know if they are getting the right guidance.
Unrepresented litigants inappropriately using AI in their court cases increasingly are getting admonished or sanctioned by the Court. That is necessary and makes good sense when litigants are knowingly misusing these tools, but it is a more complex matter when people using them in good faith are making mistakes.
In a case earlier this year, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals gave some helpful guidance for cases where unrepresented litigants using AI make inaccurate factual and legal representations in briefs or other court filings. The entire opinion is worth your time, including the following observations:
“In the circumstances before us, then, and mindful that before today’s decision we have not supplied any guidance on the use of AI by pro se litigants, we stop short of imposing any form of sanction…
But pro se litigants shoulder responsibility too and, while our understanding of honest mistakes and common presentational foot faults will remain, in no way will we allow a court filing to include misrepresentations on legal or factual points that an unrepresented party reasonably knows or should know exist.”
The Seventh Circuit’s measured approach underscores that admonishing unrepresented litigants for mistakes can only be a part of the solution. Both our profession and the courts need to prioritize giving people practical guidance and legally vetted tools as well, so that people acting in good faith have a fair chance to do so responsibly. It is also far easier to hold litigants accountable if they have been allowed the opportunity to use reliable tools and guidance and choose not to do so.
The Ugly
The “ugly” for AI in this context is the unprecedented ability it gives people with less pure aims to file frivolous and improper cases.
Filings by unrepresented litigants already are rising in the federal courts, and unfortunately, many of these cases fall into the frivolous and improper category. In addition to the ability to more easily file inappropriate cases, AI also enables people to use deepfakes and other AI-generated false evidence in their cases.
To be clear, these litigants are a small minority of the overall population of people without lawyers who are just trying to navigate their way through a complex legal system. However, AI gives that small group an outsized ability to cause havoc.
Responding fairly and effectively to this growing risk requires additional steps beyond the more general steps outlined above.
Establishing a restricted filer list like the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has had for years is one practical step that courts can take when people knowingly continue to file frivolous or improper cases after being warned and directed to legally vetted resources they can turn to for assistance. At a minimum, considering such a screening process for when people seek fee waivers after repeatedly filing frivolous actions or pleadings should be considered.
The Opportunity and The Responsibility
Our profession and justice system increasingly are being challenged to think about these issues, whether we want to or not. The bottom line is the growing potential for AI to be used as a self-help legal tool offers both tremendous opportunities and some real challenges for our profession and justice system.
There are three overarching actions that we can and should do together as a profession:
- Develop legally vetted tools that people can reliably turn to for assistance, likely in partnership with one or more of the established entities already working in this space.
- Give people reliable and practical guidance on how they should and should not use existing AI tools available now.
- Help people using the tools make good decisions about when they really need a lawyer, how much lawyer they may need, and where they can turn to find quality and affordable legal assistance.
While getting this right will not be easy, AI as a self-help tool really can be a game-changer for access to justice when combined with the other steps outlined in the prior posts in this 2026 Resolution Series.
Next month will be the grand finale, highlighting the key elements of the action plan for this year’s Resolution and the path forward to making it a reality. Until then, thanks as always for taking the time to read these meditations, and please always feel free to reach out if you have feedback or suggestions for future posts.