AI in Judgments: Where the Line Sits (and What Solicitors Should Expect)

Headlines about “judges using ChatGPT” make great copy, but they don’t give practitioners much to work with. For UK solicitors, the questions are more practical:

how might AI realistically be used around the production of judgments;
what risks does that create for fairness, transparency and the duty to the court; and
what should you be doing differently in your own submissions and advice?

This article looks at AI in and around judgments from a solicitor’s perspective, and offers a checklist you can use when AI has touched any part of your advocacy.

How AI is actually being used around judgments

There are at least three layers to think about.

1. Research and preparation

Judges, their clerks and legal staff may use AI tools to:

get orientation on unfamiliar areas;
summarise submissions and authorities;
draft outlines of judgments or sections dealing with background law.

2. Administrative support

Courts are experimenting with automation in:

scheduling and case management;
template orders and routine directions;
transcript processing and bundling.

These tools may or may not use “AI” in the narrow sense, but they change how quickly and consistently information flows to and from the judge.

3. Public‑facing tools

There is interest in using AI to:

summarise judgments for litigants in person;
help court users understand procedures; and
improve access to information about cases.

In all of these, the basic legal position remains: only the judge decides the case. AI may influence how quickly material is reviewed or how it is expressed, but responsibility for the reasoning and outcome remains human.

Risks everyone is worried about

From the perspective of fairness and the rule of law, three themes recur.

Accuracy and “phantom authorities”

If AI‑generated text introduces cases or propositions that neither party has cited, there is a risk that:

a judgment relies on material that the parties have not had an opportunity to address; or
error creeps in through hallucinated examples or mis‑summaries.

Opacity

If part of the reasoning has been influenced by a system that is effectively a black box, parties may worry that arguments have been accepted or rejected on the basis of undisclosed logic.

Bias and consistency

Any system trained on large historical datasets may reflect existing biases. Even simple tools (for example, automatic risk scoring) can embed assumptions that are hard to interrogate.

These concerns are driving the cautious stance many courts are taking: using AI as support, not as a substitute for reading the papers and applying the law.

What this means for your duty to the court

From the solicitor side, professional obligations have not materially changed:

You must not mislead the court, whether intentionally or recklessly.
You must ensure submissions are properly researched and sourced, even if AI assists with drafting.
You remain responsible for the accuracy of authorities you cite.

If AI was involved anywhere in your process – for research, drafting skeleton arguments, or summarising evidence – think about:

Verification – have you checked all authorities on trusted services and read the key cases yourself?
Attribution – are you clear in your own notes which parts of the analysis are AI‑suggested and which are your judgment?
Audit trail – could you, if pressed, explain what you did, what tools you used and how you verified the output?

The court cares less whether you used AI and more whether your submissions are accurate, fair and properly supported.

Practical checklist for AI‑touching submissions

When AI has been used in preparing written advocacy or significant correspondence to the court, consider building these steps into your routine.

Clean research record
- Maintain a short note of which tools you used and for what (orientation, summarisation, drafting).
- Keep a separate list of every authority you actually rely on, with where and how you verified it.
Manual review of each authority
- Read the full text of key cases.
- Confirm that the proposition you cite is genuinely supported, and not overstated by an AI‑generated summary.
Plain‑language explanation of the law
- Use AI to help make explanations clearer, but sense‑check that no nuance has been flattened or misrepresented.
- Pay particular attention to limitations and exceptions: are they still accurately captured?
Disclosure to the court (if appropriate)
- If a court issues specific guidance on disclosure of AI use in documents, follow it carefully.
- Even where there is no formal requirement, you may choose to explain in broad terms that certain summaries were AI‑assisted but all authorities were independently verified.
Internal sign‑off
- For important or novel matters, consider a short internal checklist before filing, covering verification completed, key risks considered and any AI‑related issues noted.

Talking to clients about AI and judgments

Clients are increasingly hearing that “AI will tell the judge what to do” or that they can “plug the case into a system and get the likely outcome”.

It helps to set expectations clearly.

AI can help with understanding trends and surfacing arguments, but no system can guarantee how a particular judge will decide a real case.
The court’s reasoning is constrained by the evidence and arguments properly before it, not by what an algorithm says is likely.
Your own use of AI is about making your work more efficient and thorough, not outsourcing judgment.

Being transparent about these limits both manages risk and, in many cases, reassures clients that you are using technology thoughtfully rather than blindly.

How this connects back to your internal AI strategy

Thinking about AI in judgments naturally feeds back into how you design your internal workflows.

Research processes should make it easy to track authorities and verification, not just paste AI output into advice.
Case management and document systems should support audit trails for AI‑assisted drafting.
Training should include the court’s perspective on AI, not just productivity tips for fee‑earners.

That way, if and when guidance from the judiciary becomes more specific, you will already be close to compliance rather than scrambling to retrofit controls.

This article is general information for practitioners — not legal advice.

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