Pro Se Filings: Six Federal Courts Will Use AI to Triage Self-Represented Cases — Flagging Defects, Not Deciding Them
A quarter of federal civil cases are filed without a lawyer, and most stall on paperwork before anyone reads the claim. The pilot aims at the paperwork.
Key points
- Six district courts — Arizona, Eastern New York, Northern Illinois, Middle Florida, New Mexico and Northern California — begin an eighteen-month pilot in November.
- The tool classifies filings, flags procedural defects and unresolvable citations, routes cases and drafts deficiency notices; a clerk reviews every output before it is sent.
- Merits screening, recommendations to judges and advice to filers are excluded; the Federal Judicial Center will compare pilot and non-pilot districts on time to first order and dismissal rates.
WASHINGTON — Six federal district courts will begin using an artificial intelligence tool next month to sort the filings of people who represent themselves — flagging missing signatures, unpaid fees and wrong forms, routing cases to the right unit, and drafting the plain-language notices that clerks now write by hand — under a pilot approved by the Judicial Conference's task force on artificial intelligence. The program, the first use of generative AI in the federal courts' case intake, is confined by its own rules to the procedural end of the process: it is not permitted to assess whether a claim has merit, to recommend an outcome to a judge, or to tell a filer what to do.
"Most self-represented cases do not fail on the law. They fail on a form, three weeks after filing, in a notice the filer cannot understand. That is the problem we are trying to solve," the clerk of one of the pilot courts told The Counsel.
The scale of the problem
Litigants without lawyers file roughly a quarter of the civil cases in federal district courts and more than half of the appeals in some circuits. Most are prisoners filing habeas petitions and civil rights claims; the rest include employment discrimination, consumer, housing and police misconduct plaintiffs who could not afford a lawyer or find one willing to take the case. The courts handle them with pro se law clerks, standardized forms, self-help centers and, in a few districts, electronic filing for self-represented parties. The bottleneck is intake: a filing that lacks a fee-waiver application, a signature or the right form generates a deficiency notice, a deadline and, in a large share of cases, a dismissal before any judge reads the complaint. Clerks' offices in large districts process thousands of such filings a year, and the notices they send are drafted from templates written for lawyers.
What the tool does
| Function | What happens | Human role |
|---|---|---|
| Classification | Identifies the type of filing (complaint, habeas petition, motion, letter) and the case category | Clerk confirms before docketing |
| Defect flagging | Missing signature, fee or fee-waiver application, required form, exhibits, service information; filing in the wrong court or division | Clerk reviews the flag list |
| Citation check | Flags cited cases and statutes that do not resolve to a real authority, a growing problem as filers use consumer AI tools | Noted for the pro se law clerk; no action against the filer |
| Routing | Assigns to the pro se unit, prisoner unit or general docket | Clerk confirms |
| Deficiency notice | Drafts a notice in plain language at a sixth-grade reading level, in English or Spanish, listing what is missing and how to fix it, with the deadline | Clerk edits and signs; nothing is sent automatically |
| Resource matching | Suggests the court's self-help guides, legal aid referrals and form packets relevant to the filing | Included in the notice at the clerk's discretion |
What it is not allowed to do
- Screen for frivolousness or failure to state a claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1915; that remains with judges and pro se law clerks.
- Make recommendations to a judge about any ruling.
- Communicate with a filer directly or give legal advice; every notice is reviewed and sent by a clerk.
- Use filings to train a model outside the judiciary, or retain filer data beyond the case.
- Operate without an audit log recording every output and every clerk edit.
The rules track the judiciary's 2025 interim guidance on generative AI, which permits administrative uses with human review and bars substantive judicial decision-making by machine.
Most self-represented cases do not fail on the law. They fail on a form, three weeks after filing, in a notice the filer cannot understand.
Clerk of a pilot court, to The Counsel
The concerns
Access-to-justice organizations consulted on the pilot supported it with reservations. A tool trained on past filings, they warned, will be best at recognizing the ordinary case and worst at the unusual one — the valid claim framed in a way no prior filer used. Deficiency notices produced at scale, even clear ones, could deter filers who would have been helped by a conversation at the counter. And the line between a procedural flag and a merits judgment is clearer in a rulebook than in a filing that is both deficient and hopeless. The pilot's answer is review, measurement and recourse: a clerk sees every output; a filer who believes a notice was wrong can ask the pro se law clerk to review it; and the Federal Judicial Center will compare the six districts with matched non-pilot districts on time to first judicial order, deficiency dismissal rates and the share of filers who cure defects.
The filers' side of the technology
The pilot arrives as self-represented litigants have themselves become heavy users of consumer AI tools. Clerks in several districts report that a majority of new pro se complaints now show signs of AI drafting — better organized than before, and more often citing cases that do not exist. The sanctions courts have imposed on lawyers for fabricated citations are rarely applied to pro se filers, who are more often warned; the pilot's citation check is designed to catch the problem at intake and prompt a warning rather than a dismissal.
What happens next
Intake begins in the six districts in November, with the tool running in parallel to existing processes for the first three months. The Federal Judicial Center's interim report is due in a year; the task force will decide on expansion after the eighteen-month term. Several state court systems, which handle far larger pro se volumes, are running their own pilots, and the federal results will be read alongside them.
What does pro se mean?
Representing yourself without a lawyer. Pro se litigants file about a quarter of federal civil cases, most of them prisoners; courts construe their pleadings liberally but hold them to the rules of procedure.
What will the pilot do?
Flag procedural defects, check citations, route cases and draft plain-language deficiency notices in six districts, with a clerk reviewing every output before it is sent.
Will AI decide pro se cases?
No. Merits screening, recommendations to judges and advice to filers are excluded under the pilot's rules and the judiciary's 2025 AI guidance.
What are the concerns?
Misclassification of unusual claims, deterrence by scaled notices, and the difficulty of separating procedure from merits; the pilot responds with clerk review, audit logs, a review path for filers and an independent evaluation.
The Counsel will report the Federal Judicial Center's interim findings. Self-represented filers in the pilot districts should read deficiency notices carefully and use the cure deadline; a notice from the pilot will say how to ask the pro se law clerk to review it.
Maya Castellanos
Maya covers AI in practice, e-discovery and the courts' response to new tools.
This report is for general information only and is not legal advice. Readers should consult a licensed attorney about their own circumstances; many federal courts list free legal aid and self-help resources on their websites.