A veritable procedural tidal wave, fueled byartificial intelligencefalls on the American federal justice system. Joint MIT and University of Southern California study finds dramatic rise in complaints filed for yourselfthat is to say by complainants representing themselves. Historically stable around 11% for two decadesthis rate increased to 16.8% in 2025. This increase alone represents 59% of the total growth in civil lawsuits, with 41,490 such cases in fiscal year 2025 alone.
How has AI transformed the profile of complainants?
AI has significantly lowered the barriers to entry into the justice system, particularly for drafting legal documentsa once major obstacle for the uninitiated. Chatbots like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot make it possible to generate complaints and briefs that appear professional, even if the substance is sometimes fragile. This phenomenon is particularly visible in simple cases where documents are standardized, such as consumer credit disputescivil rights or property foreclosures, while areas requiring specialized expertise are not affected.
The effect is national, observed in 44 of 50 stateswhich excludes purely local explanations. Online guides on platforms like Reddit even detail the process: using Copilot to write a complaint, having it verified for a small fee by an attorney on a freelance platform, and filing it in Vermont, a district known for its speed of processing.
What are the concrete consequences for the courts?
While the number of cases has only moderately increased, activity within each case literally explodes. The volume of legal filings (motions, responses, orders) filed by plaintiffs for yourself within the first 180 days of a case jumped 158% compared to the pre-AI average. Each document must be read, cataloged and processed, which clogs up the system. The example of Donald Sauve, a man from Minnesota, is striking: after the rejection of a first handwritten complaint, he used ChatGPT and Claude to file a new one, accompanied by 50 additional documents.
Faced with this deluge, Justice Patrick J. Schiltz characterized the trend as « existential threat to federal courts ». He ordered that any new request from Mr. Sauve be “ shredded without notice ”, because a court cannot sift through hundreds of pages to find valid arguments. This situation illustrates the immense pressure which weighs on clerks and magistrates.
Between democratization and chaos, what solutions should we consider?
This situation raises a profound dilemma. On the one hand, AI appears to partly fill the “justice gap” by giving tools to those who cannot afford a lawyer. Magistrates like Judge Michael Y. Scudder see it as a « great promise for improving access to Justice ». On the other hand, it creates an administrative burden which risks paralyzing the system. The authors of the study fear « arms race » procedural where opposing parties, often government agencies, will not be able to keep pace.
To break the deadlock, several avenues are being mentioned: authorizing judges to use AI to write their decisions, directing simple cases to magistrate judges, or even creating a new level of jurisdiction lower level which would handle the simplest files “ mainly with AI “. At the same time, the legal world is starting to react, like the Berkeley Law Faculty which, from 2026, will ban the use of AI for writing graded work.
