AI in the Courtroom

What this record covers

AI in the Courtroom records matters in which an artificial intelligence system was used in litigation and a court, a rulemaker or a regulator then did something about it. It covers lawyers' filings, expert reports, the evidence itself, judges' own orders, what was shown or said in a courtroom, and the rules written in response. It does not cover lawsuits brought against the companies that build these systems. Those cases are about AI. The matters here are about how professionals and courts used it.

The distinction matters more than it sounds. A suit against a model developer turns on what the company did when it built the system. A matter here turns on what a professional did when using one, which is the only question an expert, a lawyer or a judge can do anything about in advance.

The record is organized into six topics: expert witnesses and ai; fabricated citations and facts in filings; AI-generated and altered evidence; judges, courts and ai; AI inside the courtroom; rules, orders and guidance. Every entry states what the professional or party did, what the tribunal did, where the matter stands and the date the entry was last checked. Each also names the clause of the Expert Record Standard that the conduct engaged. That last field is the one place the record goes beyond its sources. It describes conduct. It does not judge the person.

How this differs from the case record

The case record carries only the matters the book describes, and a matter enters it only after the order or opinion has been read in full. This section is broader and it moves faster. Many matters are reported days before the order is public, and some orders never are. So the record here is built on two kinds of source and every entry says which one it rests on.

An entry labeled Primary document read was checked against the order, opinion, rule or published guidance itself. An entry labeled Reported; document not located rests on reputable reporting because the underlying document had not been located on the day it was checked. The label appears on the entry, in every index row and in the topic lists. Of the 103 matters recorded so far, 98 were checked against the underlying document. When a document is later obtained the label changes and the entry's date advances. An entry that rests on reporting is not a lesser entry, but it is a different kind of claim, and a reader deciding whether to cite one needs to know which kind it is without having to work it out.

The six topics

Guides drawn from the record

Each guide answers one question that cuts across the six topics, from the matters in the record, and links every matter it relies on. The full list is on the guides page.

Every matter, most recent first

The full record in one table. Each row links to its entry, and each entry names its topic and the other matters filed beside it.

What an entry will not tell you

No entry characterizes a holding. An order that fines a lawyer $5,000 is described as fining a lawyer $5,000. It is not described as establishing a rule about AI, because a single order rarely does and because that argument belongs in the book, where a reader can see it and disagree with it. Nothing here is legal advice. Whether any matter bears on your own is a question for counsel.

The AI in the Courtroom record is not complete and does not try to be. One public tracker of decisions that address hallucinated content (material an AI system presented as real that does not exist) listed more than 2,000 by September 2026. A list that repeated all of them would bury the matters worth studying. What appears here was selected because it shows a distinct pattern, involves an expert or a court, or produced a written ruling other tribunals are likely to read.

Where the disagreements are

Two questions are unsettled enough that an entry on one side of either should not be treated as the law. The first is whether a party's own session records with a system are protected from discovery. Three trial courts have now answered differently, and no court of appeals in the United States has answered at all. The second is whether an expert's prompts form part of the method and are therefore discoverable, which one magistrate judge has held and which remains stayed on objection. Both questions are tracked here through the individual matters rather than summarized, because a summary would suggest a settled position that does not exist.

On the first question the positions are now stated plainly enough to name. Morgan v. V2X held that a self-represented party's use of a system falls within work product, because such a party is simultaneously the party and the advocate, while still ordering the platform named. Warner v. Gilbarco held that using a system is not itself a waiver, since waiver of work product requires disclosure to an adversary. Tym v. Cerno followed Morgan and required a privilege log. United States v. Heppner went the other way on a represented defendant's documents, and Shealy v. Seaside Investments went the other way again where the prompting was done by a party's partner with no attorney directing it. Two courts declined to follow Heppner on consecutive days in June 2026, under work-product rules worded differently from the federal one. The practical consequence is that the answer depends on the forum and on who did the typing.

A third question is forming behind those two. In Fry v. Fry a court declined to seal material a party had already uploaded to a consumer system, reasoning that the information had gone to a private company and was no longer confidential. That is not a discovery question at all. It is whether confidentiality survives the act of asking.

Reading a new report in this area

Most reports travel as a headline and a quotation. Before relying on one, establish 4 things. Whose document contained the problem: a lawyer's brief, an expert's declaration, a party's exhibit or the court's own order. What the tribunal actually did, in its own terms. Whether the matter is final. And whether the account comes from the order or from someone describing it. A dozen articles summarizing one order are one source.

Then read for conduct rather than for rule. What transfers from one matter to the next is the sequence of steps a professional took and the point at which that sequence could no longer be defended. The disposition turns on the posture and on the record before that tribunal, and it will rarely match your situation. The eight obligations that sequence has to satisfy are set out in the Standard.

How the record is kept

Entries are added to AI in the Courtroom as matters are reported and verified, and they are revised when a matter moves: an appeal is decided, a sanction is imposed, an order is withdrawn or a rule takes effect. Each entry carries the date it was last checked, which is a different fact from the date it was added. A matter that is vacated or withdrawn stays here with its new posture, because in this area the reversal is often as instructive as the original order. That differs from the case record, where a vacated matter comes off the page and the removal is noted in the errata.

How the research is done, including the use of AI systems in it, is set out on the methodology page. If you know of a matter that belongs here, or an entry that is out of date, write to [email protected].