The $20 plaintiff and the million-dollar defense: a playbook for legal departments, defense counsel
Generative AI that costs $20 a month allows a self-represented plaintiff to file a civil complaint that costs a corporate defendant hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat.
One recent study of non-prisoner federal civil cases reports that pro se filings rose from a long-running average of about 11 percent to 16.8 percent in fiscal year 2025. The annual count increased from roughly 23,000 in 2022 to 41,000 in 2025, while docket activity during the first 180 days of pro se cases rose 158 percent above the pre-AI mean.
Those numbers do not prove that AI caused every new filing, but the study found a sharp post-2022 increase and growing evidence of AI-generated complaint text.
For GCs, chief legal officers, and in-house or outside litigation counsel, the business problem is not simply whether the company will prevail; it is whether a low-cost filing can force a company into expensive motion practice, discovery and nuisance-value settlement.
The response should be an early-case protocol that clarifies the claim, contains the cost, and converts allegations into evidence for rapid disposition.
1. Force the plaintiff to define the case
Leverage procedure before applying substance. Use Rule 12(e) selectively when a pleading is so vague or ambiguous that the company cannot reasonably prepare a response. The motion must be made before the responsive pleading. It is not a substitute for Rule 12(b)(6), but it can require the plaintiff to identify the actors, conduct, dates and claims at issue. If an amended pleading still fails to cure defects, the record may support dismissal on pleading grounds or, where appropriate, for failure to comply with a court order under Rule 41(b)(2).
2. Don’t let discovery become the settlement strategy
Discovery is the principal cost driver. Ask the court to stay or sequence discovery while a potentially dispositive motion is resolved, relying on Rules 26(b)(1) and 26(c), proportionality, the local rules, and the case-specific burden. A targeted stay is more credible than a blanket demand because it identifies the discovery that can wait and preserves what is needed for threshold issues.
3. Turn allegations into admissions or denials and shift costs
Serve focused requests for admission on outcome-determinative facts and authentic documents under Rule 36. Rule 37(c)(2) authorizes reasonable expenses, including attorneys’ fees, to be awarded when a party unreasonably fails to admit a matter later proved, subject to stated exceptions. Pair disputed admissions with narrow interrogatories or document requests, and consider “omnibus conditional discovery” in a single document to require interrogatories to be answered and documents to be produced only when an RFA is not admitted.
The business problem is not simply whether the company will prevail; it is whether a low-cost filing can force a company into expensive motion practice, discovery and nuisance-value settlement.
4. Treat AI use as evidence, not an annoyance
Pro se litigants do not have attorney-client privilege and, while the issue is not settled, may not have the benefit of attorney work product doctrine for discovery of their AI prompts. Courts apply ordinary relevance, proportionality, privilege and work product principles. Attorney-created litigation prompts have received work-product protection, while client-generated materials created independently and later sent to counsel may not. If AI use bears directly on pleaded facts, preservation, authorship or Rule 11, frame specific discovery requests aimed at the plaintiff’s use of AI.
5. Get the plaintiff under oath early
Once discovery opens, prioritize the plaintiff’s early deposition. The objective is not to exploit self-representation. It is to convert broad allegations into sworn, testable facts, identify the source of factual assertions, and create a record for summary judgment, trial or a disciplined settlement evaluation. With court permission, consider using low-cost AI-assisted video deposition platforms instead of conventional depositions.
6. Design the costs out of litigation before it starts
For recurring B2B relationships, consider an Economical Litigation Agreement or “Civil Litigation Prenup Agreement” that contractually limits discovery and other litigation procedures, instead of conventional ADR or arbitration. The Civil Litigation Prenup is designed to replace potentially open-ended discovery with agreed limits and finite, proportional discovery enforced by a discovery arbitrator. Use lower-cost outside counsel for non-complex matters, and phase-based budgets so that every low-dollar case does not receive a bespoke, high-cost defense.
Courts are studying how to manage the influx of AI-generated litigation. Corporate defendants should not wait for them.
This article was originally published in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly on October 5, 2026.