Federal judges and legal experts say they are increasingly seeing filings like Sauve’s flooding court dockets and clogging an already overburdened system as AI supercharged pro se litigation – even as it opens up the legal system to people who might not otherwise be able to afford to bring a case.
The eventual outcome for Sauve was the same – his suit was dismissed again – but first, each one of his filings had to be read, captioned by the clerk and entered on the public docket.
In his ruling, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz entered an order that any further filings would be “shredded without any additional notice”.
As he dismissed the case, the judge said: “A litigant cannot dump hundreds of pages of documents on a court and expect the court to sift through them to find facts or arguments that might support claims against a defendant.”
Legal experts say the use of AI by pro se litigants can offer potential upsides, and some federal judges are also discussing ways that AI could be used responsibly to help with workflow in their own chambers, noting that it’s possible that AI could someday be used to help clerks to read and assess a larger number of filings.
In the meantime, however, many judges emphasised the seriousness of the immediate workload problem created by AI-enabled pro se filings.
Schiltz, who declined to discuss any particular case, characterised the overall problem as “an existential threat to the federal courts”.
The arrival of AI had caused the number, length and complexity of pro se filings to “increase dramatically”, he said, adding: “There’s just no end in sight, and no satisfactory solution in sight either.”
Each year, US district courts handle roughly 300,000 new lawsuits; another 42,000 new cases are filed in the courts of appeal. One third of that combined caseload comes from pro se litigants, according to data compiled by the Administrative Office of the US Courts, which helps oversee the federal court system.
Many of them are prisoners using law libraries to assert their civil rights or otherwise challenge prison conditions. Others are people who either can’t afford a lawyer or believe themselves to be their own best advocate. Between 1998 and 2017, pro se plaintiffs lost 96% of the cases they brought.
But judges, lawyers and academics say the volume of filings by pro se litigants has risen dramatically with AI’s widespread adoption. The proportion of pro se cases filed by non-prisoners increased from 11% of all civil cases five years ago to 16.8% in 2025, according to a new study by two doctoral candidates (that has not been peer-reviewed).
The study found that much of the increase came from the use of AI by pro se plaintiffs. The number of pro se complaints flagged as likely containing AI-generated text rose from virtually zero in 2019 to more than 18% in 2026, the study found.
For litigants, the power of generative AI lies in its ability to turn a few short prompts into lengthy documents with headers, citations and other earmarks of a legitimate legal brief.
Steven Donohue, a staff attorney for the US District Court for the District of Minnesota in charge of reviewing pro se filings, said he observed a roughly 50% uptick in filings from non-prisoners starting around March 2025.
Despite the drawbacks, judges and advocates said AI could be democratising for the legal system – opening the courts to people who might otherwise not be able to afford lawyers.
Donohue said: “Used appropriately, it could be an incredibly powerful tool for someone who believes themselves to have been wronged and has a good-faith belief in entitlement to redress.”
Experts said there was little the courts can do to stem pro se filings even if they wanted to. People had a right to file lawsuits if they believed they had a claim. Peter Kaplan, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the US Courts, said his office was “aware of this issue” and “is gathering information” on its effects on the legal system.
In recent months, some courts have started issuing standing orders warning prospective pro se filers that using generative AI could expose them to penalties.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Mattathias Schwartz and Zach Montague
Photograph by: Jenn Ackerman / The New York Times
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