Litigants in person (LiP) are not new. For years, courts, defendants, claimant representatives, insurers and legal practitioners have navigated proceedings involving parties who either cannot afford legal representation or choose not to instruct solicitors.
What is new is the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) as a readily available legal assistant, at a time when the civil justice system is already seeing increasing numbers of claims involving unrepresented parties.
From an access to justice perspective, the appeal is obvious. Legal advice remains out of reach for some; litigation costs continue to rise and court procedures can be daunting. For others, AI may appear to offer a way to pursue claims without entering funding arrangements that involve a deduction from damages or uncertainty around recoverability.
Tools that explain legal concepts, organise evidence, draft correspondence and guide users through procedural steps may therefore be attractive, particularly to claimants who believe they can use AI to progress a claim themselves and retain 100% of any damages recovered.
There are potential benefits across the justice system. Better-structured claims, clearer chronologies and more coherent submissions can assist opposing parties, advisers and courts alike. The Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr, has even noted that AI-assisted submissions from LiP “are more helpful, easier to digest, than submissions that are drafted without the support of AI.”
However, improved presentation does not necessarily equate to improved legal merit. For those responding to claims, AI can create a more complex challenge than many initially anticipated. A claimant who previously might have submitted a brief or poorly supported allegation can now produce detailed letters of claim and lengthy correspondence.
The difficulty is that these documents may look convincing while being fundamentally flawed. AI tools can generate persuasive language, but they are equally capable of misunderstanding legal principles, applying outdated law or producing entirely fictitious authorities. As courts in England and Wales and elsewhere have already discovered, confident drafting is no guarantee of accuracy.
This has practical consequences for the wider legal market. Lawyers, claims professionals and courts may need to spend more time separating potentially valid issues from speculative or legally unsustainable arguments. The result may be greater procedural friction, increased correspondence and longer periods before claims can be accurately assessed.
AI may also affect settlement behaviour. Generative AI tools are designed to be responsive and helpful, often producing confident answers rather than balanced risk assessments. A litigant who relies heavily on AI may therefore become more confident in a weak case, particularly where the tool appears to validate their position. That can make settlement discussions harder and prolong disputes that might otherwise have resolved earlier.
There are broader concerns too. Questions are already emerging about witness statements drafted with AI assistance or heavily influenced by it. At what point does assistance with presentation become influence over substance? How should other parties test evidence that may have been generated, revised or refined through technology rather than by the witness alone? These issues are likely to become increasingly important as AI adoption grows.
AI also raises questions around confidentiality and legal professional privilege. LiP may input sensitive material, correspondence or draft arguments into public AI tools without appreciating how that information may be stored, used or disclosed. Because AI tools are not legal advisers, communications with them will not generally attract legal professional privilege. Inputting sensitive material into public tools may also put confidentiality, and any existing or potential claim to privilege, at risk.
None of this means AI should be viewed as a threat. Nor does it mean LiP should be discouraged from using it. The reality is that AI is now part of the legal landscape and its use by unrepresented parties will only increase, as recent national news articles have made clear.
The question is no longer whether the civil justice system, legal professionals and market participants embrace AI, but how they respond to its growing use in litigation. For claimants, defendants, insurers, judges and the court service alike, a pragmatic approach will be needed, one that balances the risks of inaccuracy, costs friction and potential fraud against the benefits of lower legal spend, quicker issue identification and more direct resolution with claimants and customers.
AI may help narrow some access to justice gaps, but it will not replace legal judgment, evidential analysis or professional accountability.
Lauren Gosnell is a partner, Nicola Aspinwall is a legal director and Fiona Hamilton-Wood is a knowledge lawyer, all at Kennedys, London
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