By Tyler Morgan, Esq.

For generations, representing oneself in court meant entering a system built around lawyers without the vocabulary, training or resources lawyers possess. A claimant had to identify the proper court, locate the correct form, understand filing and service requirements, calculate deadlines and translate a personal grievance into a legally sufficient claim.

Generative artificial intelligence is lowering that initial barrier. It cannot confer legal judgment, but it can provide an inexpensive, always-available guide through the first layers of the process. A person can describe a dispute in ordinary language and ask a chatbot to explain unfamiliar terms, organize the facts, identify possible issues and produce a first draft. For many people, that is enough to turn “I do not know where to begin” into “I may be able to file this myself.”

That shift is particularly important in Las Vegas, where self-representation is already embedded in the court system. In 2025, the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada’s self-help centers served 141,784 people—more than 2,725 each week. Users completed 25,473 online Guide & File interviews, generated 78,437 court documents and electronically filed documents directly through the platform in 16,662 instances. Seventy-eight percent of those
who e-filed were facing eviction. The most frequently e-filed matters included 12,983 evictions, 1,877 family-law cases, 1,336 protective-order applications and 459 child-custody matters.¹

These figures do not measure generative-AI use. Guide & File is a structured document-assembly system, not an open-ended chatbot. The numbers nevertheless establish something critical: tens of thousands of Southern Nevadans are already willing to use interactive technology to prepare and file legal documents without traditional full-service representation. AI adds a new layer to that existing behavior by offering customized explanations and drafts beyond the controlled questions and verified forms of a court-supported platform.

The demand is especially visible in family court. More than 70% of contested family-law cases in Clark County reportedly involve two unrepresented parties.² AI did not create that population. Cost, limited legal-aid capacity and the difficulty of finding counsel for lower-value matters have driven self-representation for years. Nationally, low-income Americans receive no help, or inadequate help, for 92% of their civil legal problems; 46% of those who did not seek assistance cited concerns about cost.³ AI is arriving in the middle of that gap.

From Blank Page to Virtual Legal Assistant

The AI-assisted pro se litigant does far more than ask, “Do I have a case?” A tenant may upload an eviction notice and request a plain-English explanation of the deadline and available responses. An employee may paste a termination letter into a chatbot and ask it to organize possible claims. A contractor or small-business owner may use AI to create a chronology, draft a demand letter, compare the facts with the elements of a claim and prepare an initial complaint.
After a case is filed, the same user may ask AI to summarize the opposing party’s motion, prepare draft discovery requests, identify inconsistencies in documents, develop questions for a witness, organize exhibits or rehearse a short presentation for a hearing. Litigants can repeatedly ask for simpler explanations without the embarrassment or expense that sometimes accompanies repeated calls to an attorney.

That does not mean the answers are correct. A chatbot may misunderstand the facts, apply another state’s law, miss a local rule, invent authority or recommend a claim that is barred by immunity, jurisdiction or a statute of limitations. It may also produce a polished document that obscures the user’s strongest facts beneath pages of unnecessary legal language.

Still, consumers are using these tools. Clio’s 2025 Legal Trends Report, based in part on a nationally representative survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, found that more than half of consumers had used, or would consider using, AI to answer a legal question. Just over half of those who had used it believed the AI sufficiently answered their question. Twenty-eight percent were directed to contact a lawyer, while 12% were persuaded that their problem was not worth pursuing. Consumers asked about housing, employment, contracts, constitutional rights and numerous other legal subjects.4

Those findings suggest that AI is becoming a new front door to the legal system. It may help a person decide whether to file, settle, abandon a claim or seek counsel. It also means that the attorney is increasingly no longer the client’s first source of legal information.

More Filings, but Not Necessarily Better Results

Emerging research suggests a relationship between widespread generative AI and increased federal self-representation, although the evidence remains preliminary. A 2026 preprint analyzing approximately 2.8 million federal civil filings reported that the pro se plaintiff rate rose from 11.33% before broad public access to generative AI to 16.94% afterward. Researchers classified 13.9% of post-AI, non-form complaints as containing AI-consistent drafting patterns. The study cannot prove that AI caused the increase or that any particular pleading was generated by AI.5

More importantly, the study found no improvement in win rates. AI-flagged complaints were more likely to be dismissed and to end earlier.5 The lesson is straightforward: legal formality is not legal efficacy. AI can help a claimant sound like a lawyer without teaching that person how to evaluate evidence, select defendants, preserve objections, comply with local procedure or make strategic concessions.

Accuracy remains another serious concern. A Stanford evaluation found that even specialized legal-research AI products produced hallucinated or unsupported information in 17% to 33% of tested responses.6 The National Center for State Courts has separately warned that courts do not yet have reliable data proving how much generative AI is driving filing volume, even though the technology plainly makes drafting easier.7 In 2026, the organization reported more than 350 documented U.S. instances in which self-represented litigants cited nonexistent cases, statutes or quotations generated by AI.8

The result may be a mixed blessing for courts. AI can produce better-organized facts and more legible pleadings. It can also produce longer filings, fictional authority, excessive motions and arguments that appear sophisticated but collapse under scrutiny. Judges and opposing counsel must spend time separating potentially valid claims from artificial legalism.

The AI-Educated Client

The profession’s greatest adjustment may not involve the person who remains pro se from beginning to end. It may involve the client who uses AI before hiring counsel.

These clients may arrive with a drafted complaint, a timeline, a list of alleged causes of action and a chatbot-generated valuation of the case. Some will be meaningfully better prepared. Others will be anchored to an incorrect conclusion repeated in confident language. Attorneys will increasingly have to explain not only the law, but why a machine’s apparently precise answer omitted a dispositive fact or misunderstood Nevada procedure.
The wrong response is ridicule. Lawyers should ask what tools the client used, what questions were asked, which documents were uploaded and what conclusions were produced. Reviewing the prompts and outputs can reveal factual omissions, false authority, confidentiality problems and unrealistic expectations before they distort the representation.

Firms should also reconsider how they package legal services. A client who has already drafted a motion may not want full representation but may gladly pay for a fixed-fee pleading review, strategy consultation, jurisdictional audit, discovery plan or hearing-preparation session. Limited-scope representation can provide professional judgment at the moments when errors are most costly.

Attorneys can further distinguish themselves by emphasizing what AI cannot reliably provide: credibility assessment, negotiation, local courtroom knowledge, evidentiary strategy, witness preparation, risk analysis and accountability. The value proposition should shift from “we produce legal documents” to “we determine which arguments are viable, which evidence matters and what course best protects the client.”

Client service must evolve as well. People accustomed to instant AI responses will be less tolerant of unanswered inquiries, opaque billing and days of silence. Online scheduling, clear scopes of work, predictable pricing and prompt status updates will become competitive necessities. Firms can use secure, legal-specific AI internally to summarize records, organize discovery and generate initial drafts, allowing lawyers to respond faster while reserving their time for judgment and advocacy.

That efficiency must be paired with professional discipline. Nevada lawyers remain responsible for competence, confidentiality, candor and supervision when using generative AI. They must understand the tools, protect client information and independently verify authorities and factual assertions before anything reaches a client or court.9

AI will not eliminate lawyers. It will reduce the value of merely producing legal-looking text. The firms that thrive will be those that make human expertise visible such as by correcting unreliable information without condescension, offering flexible levels of service and showing clients the difference between receiving an answer and receiving sound legal judgment.

The courthouse of the near future will not be divided simply between represented and unrepresented parties. It will include traditional pro se litigants, AI-assisted litigants, clients who consult lawyers only at decisive moments and fully represented clients who arrive with substantial AI-generated research. For Las Vegas attorneys, the question is no longer whether AI will influence the courts. It is whether the legal industry will redesign its services quickly enough to meet a public that is more informed, more confident and sometimes more dangerously mistaken than ever before.

References
Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada. 2025 Annual Report. Accessed July 13, 2026.
Eighth Judicial District Court. Informal trials officially launch at Family Court to improve access to justice and improve litigant satisfaction. Published November 15, 2024. Accessed July 13, 2026.
Legal Services Corporation. The Justice Gap: The Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income Americans. Published 2022. Accessed July 13, 2026.
Clio. 2025 Legal Trends Report. Published 2025. Accessed July 13, 2026.
Cohen-Sasson O. The new pro se: generative AI and the surge in federal civil self-representation. arXiv. Published May 28, 2026. arXiv:2605.29493. Preprint.
Magesh V, Surani F, Dahl M, et al. Hallucination-free? Assessing the reliability of leading AI legal research tools. arXiv. Published May 2024.
National Center for State Courts. Is GenAI revolutionizing court filings? Published June 24, 2025. Accessed July 13, 2026. (National Center for State Courts)
Heaton C, Cleary S, Navin M. AI-generated evidence is a threat to public trust in the courts. National Center for State Courts. Published February 24, 2026. Accessed July 13, 2026. (National Center for State Courts)
Hoffman M, Johnson M. Ethical considerations for Nevada lawyers in the age of generative AI. Nevada Lawyer.June 2025. (State Bar of Nevada)