One of the largest court systems in the United States is now testing AI inside its courtrooms. The Los Angeles Superior Court has given a small group of civil judges access to Learned Hand, an AI tool that summarizes case filings, organizes evidence, and generates draft tentative rulings.

What Learned Hand Does

Judges are not handing decisions to the AI. Court officials say judicial officers must "review and edit the draft before adopting tentative rulings." The system is designed to cut through administrative paperwork — handling what its CEO calls the "paper blizzard" — so judges can focus on legal reasoning rather than document processing.

Learned Hand founder Shlomo Klapper, a former attorney and federal law clerk, says the tool uses a closed set of legal materials with verification layers built to catch hallucinations before output reaches a judge. "Most of the expense of our large language model is in the verification, not the generation," Klapper told Decrypt.

Why Now

The urgency is data-driven. A February 2026 report by law firm Fisher Phillips found that AI-assisted legal filings rose 49% year-over-year, jumping from roughly 4,100 to 6,400 cases. Courts are being flooded by AI-generated documents at the same time they face staffing shortages.

Learned Hand is already deployed in 10 states, including the Michigan Supreme Court. The Los Angeles pilot — covering just six civil court judges for now — is being watched closely as a test of whether AI can help a struggling public institution without compromising judicial independence.

Presiding Judge Sergio C. Tapia II said in a statement that the pilot "will not replace, or in any way compromise, the sanctity, independence, and impartiality of judicial decision-making."