That enormously slows down the proceedings – and self-represented people are turning to AI for help.
“What we’re now finding is that a litigant in person, unsure of their rights because no-one’s helping them, goes to the internet and inputs it into an AI service,” says Glynn.
“They then get a voluminous case, bringing up every single possible claim there is, and every single fact that could possibly be in the person’s favour, and indeed sometimes also imagining those rights.
“Now you have claims, which used to be, say, one or two pages long, that are now 30 to 40 pages long.”
And every time this happens the delays get longer because judges need more and more time to consider the claims being submitted to them.
The ELA is recommending a new dispute resolution body to cut the number of workplace disputes going to court.
It wants the tribunal service to start using an AI model to evaluate claims, rather than expand them, and to split the caseload into different “tracks” depending on their complexity and their value.
Simple claims could be handled by a legal officer of the court, rather than a judge – vastly cutting the time and expense.