A courtroom at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Library of Congress (public domain).Artificial intelligence (AI) writes a rapidly growing share of pro se litigant filings, with two recent studies finding AI-flagged writing in over 18 percent of such filings. That share that has risen each year since ChatGPT’s release. A case pending in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Nippon Life Insurance Co. of America v. OpenAI Foundation, is among the first cases to ask whether AI-assisted legal briefs constitute the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) and whether the AI company that made it is liable.Illinois has two statutes regarding UPL: the Attorney Act, which dates to the mid-1800s and bars unlicensed persons from practicing law, and the Corporation Practice of Law Prohibition Act, enacted in 1917, which bans corporations from providing legal services to customers. The second is the obvious fit for a company allegedly providing legal advice to customers through a chatbot, but the plaintiff didn’t plead it. Instead, the case is bfeing fought under the statute originally written for unlicensed individuals. The decision in Nippon Life will say a good deal about how much century-old licensing laws can apply to technology their drafters never anticipated.Nippon Life v. OpenAINippon claims that in January 2024, Graciela Dela Torre settled with her employer’s insurance company over a long-term disability claim. A year later, she…

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