Court clerks and administrators didn’t need another challenge. They were already managing high case volumes, staff turnover, inconsistent processes across divisions, and a backlog of PDF-based forms that were never designed for the digital era. For most courts, keeping pace has always required more institutional knowledge than any system could hold. 

Then AI arrived — and it arrived in the wrong place first. 

A recent New York Times investigation documented what many court administrators are already feeling: AI tools are enabling a surge in pro se filings that’s putting new strain on an already strained system. Non-prisoner pro se cases climbed from 11 percent of all civil filings five years ago to nearly 17 percent in 2025, according to a recent study. AI-generated text appeared in more than 18 percent of pro se complaints filed in 2026 — up from virtually zero in 2019. Each filing still has to be read, captioned, and entered on the docket, regardless of its merit. 

“There’s just no end in sight, and no satisfactory solution in sight either,” said Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, chief of Minnesota’s Federal District Court. 

Courts have no mechanism to turn this off. People have a right to file. And the volume isn’t going to slow down. 

Meanwhile, the ADA clock is ticking 

At the same time courts are absorbing this workload increase, they’re facing a compliance obligation that has a hard deadline: under the DOJ’s updated ADA Title II rules, state and local government entities — including courts — must bring their public-facing digital services into conformance with WCAG accessibility standards by 2027. 

For many courts, the majority of those public-facing services live behind a PDF. A form someone has to download, print, complete by hand, and return in person or by mail. Inaccessible to anyone using a screen reader. Unusable on a phone. A process that was never designed to be accessible — and now, legally, must be. 

The scope of what needs to change is significant. Courts routinely manage dozens to hundreds of public-facing forms: intake documents for civil filings, fee waivers, protective order requests, juror questionnaires, small claims paperwork, and more. Converting each one manually can take hours. Multiply that across a full forms inventory, and for most courts, the math doesn’t work — not with current staffing, not on this timeline. 

The conversation about AI in courts is happening in the wrong place 

Most of the discussion about AI and courts focuses on what’s happening inside the courtroom: AI-generated evidence, algorithmic sentencing tools, automated transcription. These are real questions, and the legal and ethical debates around them matter. 

But for the court administrator or clerk of court sitting on a backlog of paper processes with a compliance deadline approaching, those conversations aren’t the most urgent ones. The more immediate question is: can AI help courts handle more work with the same staff? Can it close the gap between the modernization courts need and the capacity they actually have? 

The answer is yes — but only if AI is applied to the right problem. 

What AI and Automation in Court Operations Actually Looks Like 

The bottlenecks courts face are often not legal — they’re logistical. Everything that happens before a case or request gets properly routed: an incomplete PDF filing form, a routing process that lives in someone’s head, an approval that moves by email, documentation that has to be reconstructed after the fact when someone asks a question. 

These are the failure points that create backlogs, drive walk-in and call volume, and make court operations dependent on institutional memory that walks out the door when a long-tenured staffer retires. 

Getting those processes off paper and into a digital system is the first step — and historically, it’s where courts have gotten stuck. Converting a PDF form to a structured, editable, HTML form manually can take hours with all the proper set up and field tagging. AI  do it in minutes —  and ensure the form meets WCAG accessibility standards out of the box, works on mobile, and can be translated into the languages your community speaks. 

The form is just the starting point. Once intake is digital, workflow automation can take over: routing submissions to the right reviewer, sending status updates to filers, and creating documentation as a byproduct of the process rather than something staff has to reconstruct later. The logistical problems that get compounded by increased filing volume — inbox approvals, lost handoffs, institutional knowledge that retires — are workflow problems, and they have workflow solutions. 

For courts managing a growing volume of filings, a better process doesn’t eliminate AI-generated filings — but it can reduce the incomplete ones, cut the volume of follow-up calls and walk-ins from confused filers, and significantly reduce the administrative burden on staff. 

A compliance deadline is a starting point, not a finish line 

Meeting the 2027 ADA deadline requires courts to digitize their public-facing forms. That’s the floor. The courts that will be in the best position — both operationally and for whatever comes next — are the ones that treat that digitization as the foundation for broader process improvement, not a one-time conversion project. 

Every form that gets digitized creates structured data. Every workflow that gets connected creates a record. That’s the operational foundation that makes courts more resilient to staff turnover, more accountable to auditors and oversight bodies, and better equipped to absorb whatever workload shifts come next. 

AI is increasing pressure on courts from the outside. But if it’s applied to internal operations, it can also be the tool that helps courts absorb it from the inside. 

SimpliGov helps courts digitize public-facing forms and the processes behind them — from intake to routing to documentation. Learn how courts are meeting the ADA deadline while building operational capacity for what comes next by meeting with a SimpliGov expert.