Flood of Lawsuits in Germany Possibly Driven by AI

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The Regional Court of Frankfurt was faced with an increasing number of cases and suspects that law firms are using AI to attract large numbers of plaintiffs for filing small cases.

The regional court president Wilhelm Wolf calls this new business model “legal tech proceedings,” and told DPA news that although these cases typically appear in the district courts, the regional court has also reportedly seen an influx.

Wolf stated: “We suspect that there is a systematic attempt to achieve a lot of sales with little effort,” and adds that he believes that law firms are automating their efforts in order to try and seek new customers.

According to Cybernews, mass cases are typically very similar, affecting many customers and involving issues like flight delays, gambling winnings, or bank fees.

Nevertheless, along with the flood of cases, there are hopes that courts could also benefit from the new technology to filter out or automate this kind of proceedings.

LLM-powered cases have already become known in the US, with at least two New York lawyers who were fined over ChatGPT-generated briefs that included fabricated case citations. Said lawyers admitted to using the chat bot to help them research a specific case against the Colombian airline Avianca.