British courts flooded with people representing themselves using AI
Key Points
- British courts and tribunals are being flooded with AI-assisted applications that are causing them to postpone and delay cases.
- Dentons noted that AI is becoming increasingly popular amongst those who defend themselves without representation, leading to increased costs for defendants and courts.
- Britain has seen a surge in the number of interim relief applications to Employment Tribunals, with cases increasing tenfold and often supported by AI-generated documentation.
- Dentons said opposing parties should look at novel ways of addressing AI-generated litigation to mitigate its disproportionate demand on resources.
British courts and tribunals are seeing a significant rise in the number of people representing themselves in civil litigation with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
According to an analysis by Dentons, AI is becoming an increasingly popular tool for litigants in person (LiPs), those who represent themselves in court to handle their own cases.
While AI can be helpful to support LiPs who would struggle to find appropriate representation in civil litigation, the use of the technology is placing a significant burden on courts and opposing parties.
The frustration of courts with the flood of civil litigants relying on AI is made starkly apparent in the recently issued Presidential Guidance for Employment Tribunals. The guidance is a direct response to the significant increase in applications to Employment Tribunals for interim relief, which often are made with the assistance of AI tools, and the corresponding flood of documentation that accompanies these AI-assisted applications.
Interim relief is an emergency measure that, if granted, prevents a dismissal from taking place until the tribunal has heard the complaint of unfair dismissal.
Whereas the Employment Tribunals across Great Britain previously only received around 20 applications per year, most offices are now receiving around 20 every month. This surge in AI-assisted applications and the accompanying documentation is placing significant strain on the tribunals, often leading to other hearings being postponed or delayed.
The negative impacts of AI are not just limited to the Employment Tribunals. Dentons said it has seen a rapid turnaround of correspondence by LIPs in construction disputes, much of which proves eventually to be incoherent or misleading.
AI used by LIPs in this way is leading to increased costs and labour to analyse and process the generated documentation in order to assess the merits of the correspondence.
“One can see how AI may be used to facilitate non-meritorious or vexatious litigation and may also give rise to problems in the pre-action stage: longer, more repetitive correspondence and the ability to produce a response almost instantaneously risks defendants incurring significant additional costs even before a claim has been filed, given the need to distil the AI drafting into its core points and reframing the case to address those points,” Dentons said.
Dealing with AI in British courts and tribunals
Courts have repeatedly found appellants who have used AI for their appeals to rely on misleading or entirely hallucinated information, leading to instances of appellants being penalised for wasting the court’s resources or to lawyers being found to have put false material before the courts.
Dentons notes that while courts and tribunals in the UK appear ready to sanction those who misuse AI to rely on fabricated authorities or claims, there is no guidance in place for addressing the general use of AI by LIPs.
It said that opposing parties and solicitors faced with AI-assisted litigation should combat disproportionately long submissions with requests for clarification and underlying sources, and focus on unsupported assertions, misdescribed authorities, or disproportionate length.
Dentons said that elements which can be used to help identify AI use include:
- Accidental inclusion of an AI prompt or rejection in the text
- Use of American spelling or court terminology rather than British
- Excessive use of bullet points or em dashes
- Repeated summaries and conclusions
- Reference to invented facts
- Use of overly technical language without context
- Very rapid turnaround of correspondence or court documents
The firm noted that parties facing regular AI-assisted litigation may also need to consider procedural approaches to dealing with the phenomenon, including inviting the presiding tribunal or court to prescribe a page limit to the applicant.
