Someone already tried. In January 2023, the startup DoNotPay planned to have AI argue a speeding ticket in a California courtroom. The defendant would wear smart glasses that recorded the hearing, and an AI would feed answers into a small speaker in their ear. The hearing was set for February 22, but it never happened.
CEO Joshua Browder told NPR that bar officials in several states contacted the company. "One even said a referral to the district attorney's office and prosecution and prison time would be possible," he said. Practicing law without a license is a misdemeanor in some states, punishable by up to six months in county jail. Browder dropped the plan.
Two years later the Federal Trade Commission finished the job. Its final order in February 2025 required DoNotPay to pay $193,000 and barred it from claiming its service performs like a real lawyer without evidence to back it up. The FTC's complaint said the company never tested whether its "AI lawyer" worked as well as a human one and didn't hire attorneys to check its legal features.
Then came the avatar. On March 26, 2025, Jerome Dewald stood before a New York appeals court in his own employment case and asked to play a video for his argument. A man appeared on screen and started talking. When a judge asked if that was his lawyer, Dewald said he'd generated it with AI. The Associated Press reported that Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels shut it off and told him, "I don't appreciate being misled." Dewald had no lawyer and said he used the avatar because he tends to stumble over his words.
So the short answer, as of late 2026, is no. In the U.S., only a licensed person can represent someone else in court, and an AI can't get a law license, take an oath, be sanctioned, or lose its license for lying to a judge. That accountability is a big part of why the rule exists.
You can represent yourself, though, and nothing stops you from asking Claude or ChatGPT for help. Plenty of people are doing exactly that. A database kept by legal researcher Damien Charlotin tracks court decisions where a party relied on AI-invented material, like fake case citations or quotes that don't exist. It lists 2,231 cases so far, 1,288 involving people representing themselves and 880 involving lawyers. The count went from 54 in the first quarter of 2025 to 455 in the first quarter of 2026.
When the chatbot plays lawyer anyway
The first big lawsuit over this landed in March. Nippon Life Insurance Company of America sued OpenAI in federal court in Chicago, saying ChatGPT practiced law without a license. According to the complaint, a woman whose case involving the insurer had already been resolved shared an email from her lawyer with ChatGPT, which affirmed her suspicions about his advice. She fired him and used ChatGPT to write filings to reopen the case. Nippon says the motions had no legitimate purpose and cost it money to answer. It wants $300,000 in damages, $10 million in punitive damages, and a ruling that OpenAI broke Illinois law. OpenAI said the complaint "lacks any merit whatsoever."
There's a quieter risk for anyone using AI on their own case: what you type may not be private. In United States v. Heppner, a federal court in Manhattan ruled this year that about 31 documents a criminal defendant created with the consumer version of Claude, about his legal exposure and possible defenses, weren't protected by attorney-client privilege or work-product rules, according to a Boston Bar Association analysis. He was talking to an AI company, not his lawyer, and showing the files to his lawyer afterward didn't fix that.
None of this means AI is useless for legal problems. It's very good at explaining what a lease clause means, what a court form is asking for, or what a debt collector is and isn't allowed to do. That matters, because most people with legal problems never get a lawyer at all. The Legal Services Corporation found that low-income Americans got no or inadequate legal help for 92 percent of the civil legal problems that substantially affected them. For an eviction notice or a small claims case, a careful AI explanation beats nothing.
For the next few years, I expect AI to do more and more of the work behind a human lawyer, with the lawyer still signing the filing and standing up in court. That lawyer is the one a judge can fine, which is exactly what courts want. AI arguing in court by itself would take rule changes from state supreme courts and bar regulators, and the hallucination numbers above give them every reason to wait.
The AI faces that have made it into American courts with permission so far work for the courts. In 2025, Arizona's Supreme Court started using two AI avatars, named Daniel and Victoria, to present summaries of its rulings to the public.
Why it will probably happen eventually
Give it enough time, though, and I'd bet AI ends up being a capable lawyer. The rules blocking it are court rules, and courts have already shown they'll change who can deliver legal help when the gap gets big enough. Arizona dropped its ban on nonlawyer ownership of law firms in 2021, and it now licenses what it calls alternative business structures, firms where nonlawyers can have a financial stake or a say in how legal services are delivered. The state's court system says the goal is to improve access to justice. Utah's Supreme Court ran a legal regulatory sandbox to test whether loosening the rules could help people without causing more harm. It's closed to new applicants and set to end in August 2027, but a state supreme court was willing to run the experiment at all.
The biggest thing holding AI back is what the hallucination database measures, and that's something that can be fixed over time as AI models keep improving. A model that cites only cases it can check against real court records, and says so when it isn't sure, takes away the strongest argument judges have against it. The accountability question has an answer too. A licensed firm can run the AI and answer for its mistakes, the same way a law firm answers for a junior associate today.
My guess is it starts very small. A state lets people who represent themselves use an approved AI tool in traffic court or small claims, the judge knows it's AI from the start, and a company carries the liability. If those cases go fine, the line moves to bigger ones. It won't happen this year, and maybe not this decade. But with low-income Americans going without real help on 92 percent of their serious civil legal problems and can't afford $500+ hour lawyers, the pressure to let it happen isn't going away.
Sources
NPR: A robot was scheduled to argue in court, then came the jail threats - DoNotPay's smart-glasses traffic court plan, the February 22 hearing date, Browder's quote about bar threats, and the misdemeanor penalty in some states.
FTC: Final order with DoNotPay prohibiting deceptive AI lawyer claims - The $193,000 in monetary relief, the ban on claiming the service performs like a real lawyer without evidence, and the complaint's allegations about testing and attorneys.
Associated Press: An AI avatar tried to argue a case before a New York court - Jerome Dewald's March 26, 2025 hearing, Justice Manzanet-Daniels' remarks, Dewald's explanation, and Arizona Supreme Court's AI avatars.
Damien Charlotin: AI Hallucination Cases database - 2,231 cases identified, with 1,288 involving self-represented litigants and 880 involving lawyers, and the quarterly counts, as of October 28, 2026.
Canadian Lawyer: Nippon Life Insurance Company of America sues OpenAI - The March 2026 complaint in the Northern District of Illinois, the claimant's use of ChatGPT, the damages sought, and OpenAI's response.
Boston Bar Association: Attorney-client privilege and work-product protection when lawyers and clients use AI - The Heppner ruling on roughly 31 documents created with the consumer version of Claude.
Legal Services Corporation: Low-income Americans face immense justice gap - The 92 percent figure from the 2022 Justice Gap report.
Arizona Judicial Branch: Alternative Business Structures - What an ABS is and the program's access-to-justice goal.
Legal Futures: KPMG to break new ground by launching ABS in America - Arizona dropping its ban on nonlawyer ownership of law firms in 2021.
Utah Office of Legal Services Innovation - The Utah Supreme Court's legal regulatory sandbox, its purpose, its closure to new applications, and its August 14, 2027 sunset date.
