Can I use AI to defend a personal injury claim?
If you have the benefit of insurance cover then defending a personal injury claim will often be a simple matter of telling your insurers if you are notified that someone is seeking to bring a personal injury claim against you. They will take over from there. However, if you do not have insurance cover, then you may need help with what to do next.
Litigants in person as well as qualified lawyers are increasingly using AI in order to help them defend personal injury cases. However, it is clear that AI is not a substitute for appropriate legal advice and there are significant risks associated with the inappropriate use of AI.
In a recent case in December 2025 called Re D (A child) (Recusal) 2025 Lord Justice Baker in the Court of Appeal gave some useful guidance on the use of AI. Although the case was concerned with family law, it can be applied equally to defending personal injury claims. The Court said that “Used properly and responsibly, artificial intelligence can be of assistance to litigants and lawyers when preparing cases. But it is not an authoritative or infallible body of legal knowledge. There are a growing number of reports of “hallucinations” infecting legal arguments through the citation of cases for propositions for which they are not authority and, in some instances, the citation of cases that do not exist at all. At worst, this may lead to the other parties and the court being misled. In any event, it means that extra time is taken and costs are incurred in cross-checking and correcting the errors. All parties-represented and unrepresented-owe a duty to the court to ensure that cases cited in legal argument are genuine and provide authority for the proposition advanced”.
The risks of using AI to defend personal injury claims extend beyond those identified by the Court of Appeal in the passage quoted above. In the above case the litigant in person was treated leniently by the court, but as time passes it will become more and more likely that the courts will impose sanctions on parties misusing AI in legal cases. Public AI tools are generally not protected by privilege that would otherwise attach to communications passing between a client and their lawyer so may become disclosable evidence used against you by the opposing party in your case. A case run with over-reliance on AI will inevitably lack the understanding of the precise circumstances of your case or the subtleties of human emotion and legal strategy involved. It is possible that you will miss defences that would otherwise be open to you in responding to a claim and that you may breach confidentiality laws by inputting sensitive personal, medical or financial details into Public AI tools.
Suitable AI tools may be used effectively in a variety of ways. They may speed up the analysis of large volumes of medical records or accident reports. They may help with legal research and document drafting as long as the results are checked and verified.
It is highly recommended that you seek professional help from a qualified solicitor if you need to defend a personal injury claim. Trethowans can help you with this whether you are an individual or a business.
Kelvin Farmaner is a Partner and heads the Insurance and Regulatory Team at Trethowans. Contact Kelvin by email at [email protected] or telephone on 023 8082 0527.
