Episode 4. Page limits on AI court filings and what law firms do.

0:08 Three hundred pages. That was the length of one skeleton argument a litigant in person put before the court not long ago, and last week the judge who takes charge of civil justice in four weeks' time offered his answer to it.

0:22 Five pages to say what your case is about, and not a page more.

0:27 Good morning, and welcome to The Legal AI Brief, the Monday round of the AI news that matters to smaller law firms.

0:35 I am Saqib Khan. My legal career began in large commercial law firms and includes fourteen years as an owner of a law firm and four years as a fee-paid county court judge.

0:48 I run Adliora, an AI consultancy that helps small and mid-sized firms adopt AI safely, profitably and within the rules.

0:58 Every Monday I take the developments from the past week, separate the noise from the parts that touch your practice, and set out in plain terms what a sensible firm does about them.

1:09 Let us get into the week.

1:11 Four things worth your attention. Sir Colin Birss, who becomes Master of the Rolls on the first of November, told the International Conference of Legal Regulators in London that litigants in person using AI might be held to about five pages when they set out their case.

1:30 That is the main story. On Thursday the first of October the Legal Ombudsman published research on AI and complaints.

1:39 In a random sample of one hundred of its complaint files about legal services, fifty one showed signs that AI had helped write them.

1:47 The Ombudsman also published guidance for firms on answering those letters, and we have set it out in an article on the Adliora site.

1:56 On Wednesday the thirtieth of September the SRA paused the rules that would stop an owner who runs a firm from also acting as its compliance officer for legal practice or for finance.

2:08 The regulator says it will consult over the coming weeks on another way to meet the same aim.

2:15 If you were planning a January restructure around those rules, hold off until the consultation appears.

2:22 And at noon on Tuesday the twenty ninth of September the first digital service under the Online Procedure Rules opened for possession claims, for social landlords with homes in the areas served by the county courts at Bradford, Huddersfield and Wandsworth.

2:39 Wales follows through Caernarfon on the fifteenth of October.

2:42 The speech was reported by Legal Futures on Friday, and the speaker matters as much as what he said.

2:49 Sir Colin Birss is Chancellor of the High Court. Since 2023 he has been the judiciary's lead judge on artificial intelligence.

2:58 When Sir Geoffrey Vos retires at the end of this month, Sir Colin becomes Master of the Rolls, the most senior civil judge in England and Wales.

3:07 So when he describes a problem in the civil courts and the remedy he favours, he is describing work he will soon be in a position to direct.

3:16 The problem is one most litigators know by now. A person without a lawyer opens a chatbot, describes the dispute, and receives back a document that looks like a lawyer wrote it.

3:28 Then another, and another. The volume reaching the courts has grown, and judges have to read it.

3:36 Sir Colin mentioned a skeleton argument that ran to three hundred pages.

3:41 Nobody reads three hundred pages of skeleton argument and finds the point quickly, and the judge, the court staff and the solicitor on the other side all pay for that length in time.

3:54 His proposal was plain. A litigant in person would explain the case in no more than about five pages, and would remain free to attach as many exhibits as they liked.

4:06 He called it an incredibly simple solution, and he pointed out that the appeal courts already work with page limits, so the question is why the lower courts do not.

4:16 What makes the speech worth your time is that he did not stop at the complaint.

4:20 He accepted that AI is helping people without lawyers. The material judges now see from litigants in person, he said, often explains the case more clearly and makes more relevant points than the person would have managed alone.

4:33 A tool that helps a person describe a broken boiler, a lost deposit or an unpaid invoice serves access to justice, and he did not want to lose that.

4:43 The page limit is aimed at length, and it leaves the tool alone.

4:47 He also gave a line for the profession that deserves a place on your office wall.

4:52 You do not have to trust it, he said, but you have to remember that you are not trusting it.

4:58 Read that twice. It describes the right relationship between a fee earner and any AI tool.

5:04 You use what it produces, and you never forget that the output has not earned your confidence until you have checked it.

5:11 Place this beside last week's story and a pattern appears. Seven days ago I reported that Sir Robert Buckland, the former Lord Chancellor, wants the courts to use their costs powers to discipline AI generated material.

5:27 Now the incoming Master of the Rolls proposes a limit on length.

5:31 Neither man wants a special rule for AI. Both reach for tools the courts already understand, being money in one case and pages in the other.

5:42 That fits the Civil Justice Council's own update in July, which said that documents a solicitor or barrister signs need no AI specific declaration, because professional responsibility already covers them.

5:57 The council's wider review of AI and of the difficulties litigants in person face is still running, and Sir Colin said he would take an active interest in it.

6:08 Be clear about where this stands. It is a proposal in a speech.

6:12 Nothing has been drafted, there is no consultation, and a limit applied as a matter of course would need a rule or a practice direction behind it.

6:22 What exists today is the court's general power in Part 3 of the Civil Procedure Rules to manage a case, which includes power to direct how long a document may be.

6:34 Any district judge can use that power at the next hearing. A remark from the next Master of the Rolls makes it more likely that judges will.

6:49 A word about what I do. Adliora advises small and mid-sized law firms on adopting AI without falling foul of the rules that govern you. Where to begin, which tools earn their place, what your duties on supervision and confidentiality mean in practice, and how to write a policy your people will follow. If this subject sits on your desk and nobody in the firm owns it, that is the problem I am paid to solve.

7:23 For a smaller firm the speech lands in three places. The first is the case where you act against someone in person.

7:31 High street firms see these every week, in debt recovery, in boundary disputes, in landlord and tenant work and in family matters.

7:40 When the other side files forty pages that a chatbot wrote, your client pays you to read every one, because you cannot tell which paragraph holds the point that matters until you have read it.

7:53 A short statement of case on the other side cuts that cost at source.

7:57 You do not need to wait for a rule to ask for it. The second is your own drafting.

8:03 A court that holds an unrepresented person to five pages will look harder at a represented party who files thirty.

8:11 If your fee earners have started producing longer documents because the tools make length cheap, the costs judge will ask why, and last week's story tells you that the question can now come with a sanction attached.

8:25 Length was never a sign of quality, and from here it may carry a price.

8:31 The third is an opportunity. Many people who act for themselves would pay a modest fixed fee for a solicitor to take their chatbot draft and reduce it to the five pages that state the case properly.

8:45 Unbundled help of that kind is legitimate work, it suits a small firm, and a page limit would create steady demand for it.

8:54 If you offer it, scope the retainer in writing, check what you put your name to, and remember that the person remains a litigant in person for everything outside the agreed task.

9:06 And whichever side you stand on, the Birss line applies to your own people.

9:10 You may use the tool. You may not trust it until you have checked it.

9:16 Start with your next case management conference against a litigant in person.

9:21 If the other side's papers show the marks of a machine, the repeated headings, the authorities nobody recognises, the length out of proportion to the claim, ask the court for a direction limiting the length of any statement of case or skeleton argument.

9:36 Frame it neutrally, so that it binds both parties, and cite the court's case management powers.

9:42 A judge is more likely to grant a direction that treats both sides alike.

9:47 Then set an internal length target for your own documents. Agree with your litigators a page count for a standard skeleton in each type of case you run, and require a short note on the file whenever a document goes over it.

10:01 The note does not have to be long. It has to show that a person decided the extra pages were needed.

10:08 Next, decide whether you want to offer document help to people acting in person.

10:13 If you do, write a one page terms of business for the limited retainer and a fixed price, and train one fee earner to deliver it.

10:23 Here is the one instruction to take from today. Before Friday, add a line to your case management conference checklist that reads, where the other side acts in person and files long or machine drafted material, ask the court for a direction on length.

10:39 The ruling of the week was reported this morning, and it concerns solicitors rather than software.

10:45 In Broughton against the liquidators of Grosvenor Property Developments, the Court of Appeal overturned a finding that a partner in a firm of solicitors had dishonestly assisted two directors who misappropriated seven million pounds raised from investors.

11:02 Some two point four million pounds of the company's money had passed through his firm's client account.

11:08 The judge below found that he had turned a blind eye. Lady Justice Falk, for a unanimous court, held that the judge had gone wrong twice.

11:18 The deputy judge had compressed the two stage test for dishonesty into one, when the court must first find what the defendant in fact knew and believed, and only then ask whether his conduct was honest by the standards of ordinary decent people.

11:35 And blind eye knowledge requires two things, a real suspicion and a deliberate decision not to confirm it.

11:44 The findings showed negligence at most, the appeal succeeded, and the claim was dismissed.

11:51 Read it as a judge reads it. The law draws a firm line between careless and dishonest, and it protects a solicitor who did not suspect.

12:01 The other side of that line is equally firm. Once you suspect, and choose not to look, you are on the wrong side of it.

12:10 Bear that in mind if you suspect your people are pasting client files into a free chatbot and have decided not to ask.

12:24 And a word about my technological venture, so you know where I stand. Bracton is a case management system for firms in England and Wales with agentic AI designed in from the ground up, rather than bolted onto software written twenty years ago. Overnight it reads every live matter, so the morning list is waiting with the action drafted and the research carrying a source you can open. A person signs everything off. Bracton legal dot co dot uk.

12:56 That is the week. If you take one point from it, take this. A person in your firm has to own what these tools produce, and that will not change whatever the tools cost or how capable they become.

13:10 If you want an honest view of where your firm stands, there is a two-minute readiness check on the Adliora site, and you are welcome to send a short message and talk it through with me directly.

13:22 I am Saqib Khan. This has been The Legal AI Brief, and I will be back next Monday with the week that was.

13:29 Thank you for listening.

13:30 The transcript of this episode, with a timestamp on every line, sits beside the two minute readiness check at adliora dot com. Have a great week.