Judges in one of the country’s largest court systems have begun using artificial intelligence, testing a tool that can quickly sift through hundreds of pages of legal proceedings and use samples of a lawyer’s writing style to help reach conclusions and even draft tentative decisions.
The program, launched last month, has given a dozen Los Angeles County civil court judges access to AI software called Learned Hand. While it may seem critical to a short court system that is dealing with a workload problem in many areas, the announcement also drew concern from some members of the county’s legal community who fear that technology could create errors and erode public trust in the legal system.
Court officials said judges in the pilot program “need to review and draft before accepting tentative rulings” produced by Learned Hand, and praised the new effort to use technology to assist with basic judicial functions and eliminate inaccuracies in cases.
“Judicial officers have long been supported by research attorneys and legal clerks who assist with briefs, legal research, analysis and writing assistance,” said Rob Oftring Jr., a court spokesman. “This assistance does not take the representative role of the law enforcement officer in making decisions.”
Shlomo Klapper, CEO and founder of the company behind Learned Hand, said it is already being used by court systems in 10 states. The Michigan Supreme Court began using the software last summer to review requests for leave to appeal in civil and criminal cases, according to a court spokeswoman.
Klapper described the AI tool as a collaborative intelligence, like a “judge’s chef,” that will support bench members without replacing them.
Klapper, who worked as an attorney and law clerk before starting Learned Hand in 2024, said it’s a necessary help to keep jurors immersed in the “red tape,” especially with public access to AI models like ChatGPT that lead to private defendants filing lawsuits in civil courts.
“This is what gives me great urgency. We need to build the right tools so that the courts are equipped to deal with this tsunami,” he said. “The system is drowning and the flood has not even started.”
County of Los Angeles County. He said. Nathan Hochman expressed some concerns about the district plan. He said AI could be useful in reducing the time judges spend on repetitive tasks such as reviewing motions for summary judgment in civil court, which often cite the same case law and sections over and over again. But he described the use of AI to make decisions as “problematic.”
“Even if a judge’s assistant or a law clerk comes up with a decision on what position the judge should take, before the judge takes his place, that has a big impact on what the judge’s position should be,” said Hochman, warning that the decision produced by AI may sideline the judge before considering the law.
Acknowledging the growing public concern about the integration of AI into different parts of society, Klapper turned to pop culture to allay fears. He said he’s not building Skynet – the artificial intelligence that brought about the end of days in the “Terminator” films – but something like Jarvis, Iron Man’s computer assistant.
“I don’t come from a disruptive mindset. … I’m here to build,” he said.
AI has created incidents in the legal system that critics say warrant concern. Last year, a Los Angeles attorney was fined for submitting a letter full of legal citations that ChatGPT showed. Last month, a federal prosecutor in North Carolina resigned after submitting an almost intelligence-generated letter of the same practice.
But a Reuters poll conducted last summer also found that more than 70% of respondents believe that AI is a positive force in the legal field that could significantly reduce the number of human labor hours put into tedious tasks, including reviewing long documents.
Klapper says that Learned Hand has broad fundamentals to prevent AI from making preemptive mistakes and making other big mistakes. He said the program uses a fact-checking process called “Deep Verify,” which examines every sentence of a generated order to ensure that the facts set forth are consistent with case law citations, which are available for review by hyperlink.
“We don’t just tell the judges to trust us,” he said. “We say you can verify for yourself and see from certain sources where things come from.”
One L.A. County judge, who spoke on condition of anonymity because California court rules generally prohibit judges from speaking to the media, echoed Hochman’s concerns that a default decision generated by AI could create bias.
“Even if you don’t make the AI’s decision to shake, mentally it has become your reference and any decision-making made after that can be considered,” said the judge, who is not part of the pilot program and has never used Learned Hand.
Judges will not be required to disclose that they use the system to assist in an investigation or decision, according to court officials. David Slayton, chief executive of the LA County Superior Court, said state court rules require judges to consider disclosing the use of generative AI in their system, but there is currently no law to compel them to do so.
The district’s contract with Learned Hand will see the pilot program through to early 2027 at a cost of just over $300,000. The pilot program will see the tool widely used to review and summarize a wide range of civil court motions — including motions for summary judgment and motions for approval of a class action — though there may be limited future applications in criminal courts for post-conviction relief applications, according to the contract. The software is not used in criminal courts.
Klapper said he understands why there might be skepticism among judges or the public, but he recalled that the cases sat on his desk for a year because he didn’t have five spare hours to read aloud. The Learned Hand, he said, does not aim to replace judges but rather to give them more time to make decisions rather than sitting down under impossible charges.
“There is no reason to fear that any technology company in the world, let alone mine, has to make important decisions for the public,” he said.
