There’s lots of big talk about the best approach to improving access to justice for self-represented litigants. Dennis Kennedy is not big on theory and bloviation. His most recent article on this topic is available for free republishing in favor of cheap, practical, and effective approaches.
Dennis ran several prompts below through Gemini, with good results. I decided to run his key prompt through ChatGPT 5.1 as well, with these results. Looks like a pretty good result.
Here’s Dennis’s original prompt:
I’m a family court judge dealing with high volumes of self-represented litigants in family law cases (e.g., custody/child support/divorce). My biggest challenge is the vast majority of SRLs do not file accurate and complete forms, generating large amounts of extra work for my staff and me and making each hearing and step in the process longer and more cumbersome for everyone than it should be. Assume that you are a world-class expert in the application of AI to assist courts with SRL issues. What are 5 practical, low-cost ways I could address this issue, particularly using technology or process improvements? Consider solutions that could be implemented within 3-6 months with a very limited budget.