AI Has a Place in Family Law; But Only If You Use It Right

Artificial intelligence absolutely has a place in family law. It has a place in every area of law. Contrast that with the face that like every technological revolution before it, AI rewards the people who understand it and punishes the people who don’t.

Revisit and think back to the last great technology shift. Computers shrank from room-sized machines to laptops while storage capacity exploded in the form of tinier hard drives and SSDs, and all the while the internet arrived and changed everything. That revolution generated billions, even trillions of dollars. Entire careers were created that had never existed before. Many of those same careers are now ending, and some will never exist again in human form.

A major reason is artificial intelligence. Anthropic, OpenAI, Grok, Perplexity, Copilot, DeepSeek, a multitude of companies, domestic and international, are competing for dominance in a market worth billions. Whatever you think of the ends and the means, the technology is here, and family law has already been deeply affected by it.

Where Self-Represented Litigants Go Wrong

Many pro se litigants (people representing themselves in court) are already using AI in their cases. Unfortunately, most of them use it improperly, poorly, and to their own detriment.

Here’s the typical pattern. A self-represented litigant opens an AI platform and types something like “give me divorce documents.” What comes back are documents that are irrelevant, improperly titled, and blind to the specific facts and issues of their case. Sometimes AI produces settlement offers that are blank, generic, or wildly one-sided because the AI has no context and the user doesn’t know how to prompt it.

The user prompts once, doesn’t follow through, and even when the AI produces something usable, the litigant often doesn’t know what it means, how to apply it, where to file it, or what happens when they make mistakes or omissions. AI unintentionally generates and causes any number of sins that can sink a family law case.

What That Means for the Other Side

When one party files AI-generated pleadings that are incomplete or defective, the opposing party — the one with a competent lawyer, or who has genuinely done the work — gains a clear advantage, though it comes with a cost.

The advantage: Defective pleadings invite motions to dismiss, motions to strike, and motions for judgment on the pleadings. And issues left out of the pleadings can be used against the filing party later in court. Those errors don’t disappear; they wait for just the opportune moment.

The cost: While those motions are being filed and argued, the case stalls. At our firm, we charge flat fees for specific portions of a case, which means addressing an opposing party’s AI-generated nonsense may require an additional flat fee for our clients. But that investment is usually well worth it. Either the other side is forced to plead properly and the case moves forward on the correct course, or their defective pleadings remain on the record ready to be used against them at the time most appropriate and convenient for us.

How Law Firms Get AI Wrong

AI can genuinely help law firms move faster firm infrastructure, software systems, document workflows. But firms make serious mistakes, too.

One of the biggest is building internal document systems online rather than locally, effectively creating document dumps that put clients’ private information on the internet. That is a massive security risk waiting to become a massive security breach.

Then there are the now-famous stories of lawyers filing memoranda of law built on hallucinated case citations. Here’s the thing people miss about those stories: AI tells you what you want to hear unless you explicitly tell it not to and then verify anyway. Most people go to AI seeking affirmation and confirmation, not pushback. To them, AI’s purpose is to support their thinking, not challenge it. That creates a yes-man effect inside an echo chamber, and it can greatly diminish the quality of legal work.

Where AI Actually Shines

Used properly, AI is a powerful tool. Here’s one of my favorite examples.

Every lawyer has received an email from opposing counsel that is threatening, menacing, and out of bounds. The natural human response is to fire back in the same tough-guy tone; “I’ll show them what’s what.” But then you’re playing their game.

Instead, without putting any names or identifying details into the prompt, AI can rewrite your response in a completely different tone of voice. Rather than harsh and reactive, your reply becomes professional, calm, and deliberate: exactly the right counter to an aggressive posture taken without justification or rational forethought. You win the exchange by refusing to descend to it.

The Bottom Line

AI is neither a magic litigation weapon nor a threat to be ignored. For self-represented litigants, misusing it can hand the other side the case. For law firms, careless adoption creates security risks and embarrassing errors, but thoughtful use makes good lawyers faster, calmer, and more effective.

The technology is here. The only question is whether you’ll use it properly.

Thanks for listening and for reading.