During fiscal year 2025, the number of federal court civil filings with a pro se litigant rose from 11% to 16.8%, and there’s a sense that many self-represented parties research and write their motions with generative artificial intelligence.

Because AI relies heavily on prompts, input can heavily skew results, says Bobby Williams Jr., director at iDiscovery Solutions. Also, others say the technology can help people who can’t afford lawyers. And in terms of responding to disgruntled clients' poorly written complaints with unsophisticated AI research, both sides agree the technology is creating more work for lawyers and courts.

At least some of the uptick in AI use by nonlawyers has led to more attorney conduct complaints, which may be off the mark, according to experts who spoke with the ABA Journal.

“If you give it a prompt with the intention of having yourself appeased—the tool already wants to appease you. So if you don’t prompt it in a way that’s insisting it think critically, [AI] can just tell you what you want to hear, and that could be inaccurate and could lead to some of the more frivolous complaints,” Williams says. 

Seana Willing, the State Bar of Texas chief disciplinary counsel, calls AI tools “somewhat sycophantic” and explains that can lead to disgruntled former clients bringing all sorts of claims.

“They’re telling the grievant that ‘Yes, your attorney didn’t call you back last week, and therefore that’s a violation of the [ethics] rules, and she should be disbarred.”

According to Willing, these grievances can get past the screening stage with state bar associations because they meet the basic test of making an allegation that, if true, would be a violation. 

“So we have to investigate it even though it’s not true,” she says. “It also may require attorneys to expend time on responding, or perhaps hire an attorney to help them to respond,” a factor that she says only adds to the anxiety and frustration level of attorneys.

Along similar lines, Aria Eee, the executive director of the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar, said her state is seeing an increase in complaints from people raising disciplinary concerns about lawyers and judges. Overall, she attributes at least 30% of the complaint spike in Maine to the use of AI. 

“They may just put in some prompt to say, ‘This is what the lawyer did. Tell me what rules are violated in Maine,’” Eee says, while also noting the AI-generated results might produce a “dump of information” that is not altogether relevant.

“Certainly, people are using AI to assist them but also to lead them down paths that aren’t accurate here in Maine,” Eee told the ABA Journal. “AI doesn’t know the actual rules implicated in a claim against a judge. We have particular rules in Maine that are on the courts’ website.”

And, she adds, “It’s important that lawyers and judges know that we’re not just taking these claims at face value, particularly when they’re generated by AI.”

From a practitioner’s standpoint, New York City attorney Katia Asche, a partner with Arent Fox Schiff and co-leader of its Consumer Products Industry Group, says pro se litigation has always been prolific in U.S. courts. But she contends that it has become “more of a slog” to reach a resolution with the advent of AI tools.

“There are multiple unnecessary, nonsensical filings, and exponentially more discovery requests because [pro se litigants] are just using AI tools to spit out discovery requests, and then you get these requests that make zero sense,” Asche says.

“A pro se litigant will see something that they don’t quite understand happening in a litigation and feed it into an AI tool, and it’ll pump out a response that is not necessarily procedurally appropriate or even allowed under the rules.”

But it’s not all alarming news, according to Colorado’s Presiding Disciplinary Judge Bryon M. Large, who says people sometimes “miss the upside” when it comes to AI use.

“Sometimes it’s apparent that pro se parties have used AI, and it gives them a new argument that they may not have had before,” Large says. “Easier access to information isn’t a bad thing.”

Before AI, Large notes that information was much harder for pro se litigants to find, but he says these tools can point them in the right direction. 

“I would hope [pro se] parties will get a better understanding of courts’ procedure more easily with the help of AI. There are times when a document has been filed that I’m guessing an AI tool has been used, but everyone should have a chance to have their matter heard,” he says.

Adams & Reese partner Lucian Pera agrees. 

“AI lowers the cost of pursuing claims that no lawyer would touch. Our system is designed to work with lawyers involved, and lawyers are too expensive to handle most cases,” says Pera, a member of the ABA Ethics 2000 Commission.

Lawyers "live in a glass house on AI,” he adds, noting that the problems raised by ChatGPT, Claude and other tools, including hallucinated cases, are not unique to pro se litigants. 

“I’m certainly not inclined to blame AI. Pro se parties are entitled to use tools like this, full stop,” Pera says. 

Eee agrees, but says she is always telling lawyers about the importance of maintaining their relevance. 

“Don’t think that AI is going to put you out of a job or me out of a job. What’s going to put us out of a job are people who know how to accurately leverage AI,” Eee says. “They’re the ones who are automating systems and increasing their efficiency with the use of AI.”