This browser is not actively supported anymore. For the best passle experience, we strongly recommend you upgrade your browser.
Skip to Main Content

The Pulse

| 1 minute read

Should AI "Jurors" Assess Your Case?

Using AI-generated mock jurors could be quicker, and certainly cheaper, but is it valid and reliable? A recent research analysis (Schweitzer & Salerno, 2025) says “maybe not.” Comparing the predictions made by commercially available AI-generated “mock jurors,” the researchers looked at how Large Language Models (LLMs) fared in predicting outcomes in two cases. They concluded: 

Not only do the predictions differ widely from human decisions, they differ among each other and even within themselves. These results should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with the workings of LLMs, which were never trained on nor intended to replace human judgment. Artificial intelligence – even when trained on mass quantities of actual human behavior – still struggles to predict what shows we might want to watch next, what songs we want to hear, who we want to date, and what products we will buy. 
My own view on using AI for the substance of the jury research response (virtual jurors/judges) is this: AI draws from large language models, so what it is really good at is answering questions that already have tons of answers in the overall corpus of available human communication. AI is great at telling you how to change your oil filter because there is already a great deal of content on the internet on how to do that. When there isn't such content, AI will still answer, often in a highly plausible way that "sounds right," but it does that by approximating based on similar content (aka, guessing or speculating).
 
So the question is, "independent of AI, how much internet content is already out there on how jurors will react to your case?" And the answer—for all but the highest profile cases—is going to be "none at all." So what you are getting from AI responses are plausible-sounding guesses based on commentary about juries on other cases, or jurors in general. What you won't be getting is a reaction to your case because there is literally no foundation for those reactions in the language AI draws from. 
 
This is not to say that AI responses could not be useful in an idea-generating way. But an experience-based answer from a jury consultant is likely to be more valid and reliable than an AI response because it will be based on a much larger set of information and experience that is not part of that large language model of publicly available communication.