AI in Legal Proceedings Fuels Sharp Rise in Pro Se Litigants, Straining US Courts

AI-Generated Lawsuits Transform Federal Court Landscape

A dramatic shift is underway in US courts as individuals without legal representation turn to AI in legal proceedings to file their own lawsuits. New research from MIT's Anand Shah and USC's Joshua Levy reveals that pro se litigants now account for 16.8% of all federal civil cases in fiscal year 2025, a significant jump from the long-term average of approximately 11% 1

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. The federal appellate court system separately reported a 9% increase in appeals by self-represented litigants using AI in fiscal 2025 1

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The case of Las Vegas resident Nicole Silverberg illustrates this trend. After calling 20 lawyers without finding one willing to take her case on contingency, she turned to ChatGPT and Grok to file a federal lawsuit against her former landlord, alleging retaliatory eviction over water contamination issues 1

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. The AI chatbots for legal documents guided her through filing preliminary injunction motions and holding defendants in default, pushing her case further than she believed possible on her own.

AI Flooding Court Dockets with Unprecedented Volume

The surge in AI-generated lawsuits is creating substantial strain on the judicial system. Shah and Levy's analysis of more than 4.5 million non-prisoner federal civil cases and 46 million PACER docket entries found that docket entries per case increased 38% in mid-2025 compared to the pre-AI mean 1

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. In a sample of 1,600 complaints from 2019 to 2026, more than 18% of 2026 complaints were flagged as likely containing AI-generated text 2

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The volume of docket entries per court generated by these cases in the first 180 days had risen 158% above the pre-AI average by 2025 3

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. Steven Donohue, a staff attorney for the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, observed a roughly 50% uptick in filings from nonprisoners starting around March 2025 4

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Access to Justice Meets Systemic Strain

Large Language Models like Claude and ChatGPT are filling critical gaps in legal aid services. The Legal Services Corporation estimated in a 2022 report that low-income Americans don't receive any or enough legal help for 92% of civil legal problems 1

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. Unlike criminal cases where defendants receive public defenders, those in civil disputes must pay their own way, leaving many potential plaintiffs unable to pursue legitimate claims.

Anthropic recently announced several partnerships aimed at getting more AI legal tools into the hands of people and small businesses that can't afford traditional legal services, as part of a broader rollout of Claude's AI features for lawyers 1

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. Sonja Ebron, CEO of Courtroom5, an AI-powered paid online service helping pro se litigants, said AI is enabling more filings "that at least get past the clerk's gate" 1

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The Dark Side: Hallucinated Case Law and Frivolous Lawsuits

Donald Sauve's case in Minnesota exemplifies the challenges federal courts face. After his handwritten complaint seeking $275,000 in damages was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction in less than a month, he returned three months later with help from ChatGPT and Claude 4

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. His new neatly typed complaint came with 50 additional filings, including a "case law synthesis" of legal research 2

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. Judge Patrick J. Schiltz dismissed the case again, this time in a 14-page opinion, and ordered that any further filings would be "shredded without any additional notice" 4

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Jeffrey Cohen, an associate professor at Boston College Law School who leads a group of law students assisting pro se litigants in federal court, sees filings that are far too long rather than providing judges with short, plain statements of claims 1

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. "AI can generate so much information in moments, the litigant starts thinking that volume is the key to winning a case," he said 1

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The most troubling aspect for Cohen is when would-be plaintiffs ask AI if they have a claim to begin with. If someone asks a chatbot whether they have a retaliation claim after being fired, "It's going to say yes," Cohen said. "It never says: No, you don't, you're barred by the statute of limitations" 1

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What This Means for the Judicial System

Judge Schiltz characterized the overall problem as "an existential threat to the federal courts," noting that the arrival of AI has caused the number, length and complexity of meritless filings to "increase dramatically" 4

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. "The courts will probably struggle to keep up if trends continue as they are," said Joshua Levy, the economics Ph.D. student who co-authored the study 1

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Each year, U.S. District Courts handle roughly 300,000 new lawsuits, with another 42,000 new cases filed in the courts of appeal. One third of that combined caseload comes from individuals without legal representation 4

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. Between 1998 and 2017, pro se plaintiffs lost 96% of the cases they brought 2

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Judge Michael Y. Scudder of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote this year that the technology offers "great promise" for improving legal accessibility 2

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. However, courts are warning that self-represented litigants remain responsible for AI-generated errors. In January, the Seventh Circuit emphasized that accuracy and honesty still matter after a pro se filing appeared to contain AI-generated false citations 2

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The fundamental problem lies in AI's ability to create a veneer of legal legitimacy without the substance behind it. While AI enables individuals to structure claims as legally legitimate documents complete with proper citations, formatting, and legal jargon, what it cannot offer is the substance of the claim itself 5

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. Every filing, however meritless, demands judicial resources and staff time, with each document requiring reading, logging, captioning by clerks, and entry into public records before judges can rule on their validity.