Contributed

Two of California’s largest courts are testing an AI tool that can draft orders and produce research memos. 

Judges so far are using it primarily for civil cases, but documents obtained by CalMatters indicate the possibility of expanded applications in criminal cases, where people’s freedom and access to justice are on the line. 

The Los Angeles County Superior Court began a pilot program in February to test a tool created by the company Learned Hand. Other courts may follow, according to Learned Hand founder and chief executive officer Shlomo Klapper.

Learned Hand uses a combination of language models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google to act as an AI clerk for judges. The company says it tests for bias and accuracy, but it has not yet published results. 

In Riverside County, which has a $10,000 agreement with the company to test the program, civil and probate attorneys are primarily using the tool to draft research memos that help judges reach their decisions. It’s typical for research attorneys to assist judges as they review cases.  

Los Angeles County Superior Court has a roughly $314,000 contract that includes a roadmap to test the tool’s use in criminal, family and probate divisions. Officials would not describe in detail to CalMatters the criteria they’re using to evaluate whether use of the tool can safely expand to criminal and family courts, where the stakes are often much higher than in civil cases. 

One judge who spoke to CalMatters on condition of anonymity due to judicial rules of conduct was alarmed when their colleagues at a recent luncheon said the technology could be used one day to evaluate appeals from people who believe their conviction or sentence was tainted by racial bias. California courts are handling a wave of those claims after lawmakers passed the Racial Justice Act in 2020. 

“I think it is outrageous,” said the Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. “AI cannot and never will be able to replace human judgment in evaluating complex social dynamics. Ultimately, that will erode the public’s confidence in the competence and fairness of the judiciary.”

A majority of California’s superior courts now have generative AI use policies, according to documents obtained by CalMatters via public records requests, which they were required to create by the state Judicial Council before using the technology. Roughly a dozen of the 51 courts that have responded to CalMatters’ requests said they are using AI-powered tools from LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and Microsoft’s Copilot.

Use of AI in courts has been controversial because of the propensity of AI models to cite falsehoods and to produce sycophantic text. Models from major companies like Google and Anthropic can reduce critical thinking and brain activity, according to a 2025 MIT study.

Language model hallucinations have already made it into the judicial system. Researcher Damien Charlotin has documented hundreds of instances of litigants, lawyers, and judges making mistakes when using AI to do their jobs including nearly 90 cases in state or federal courts based in California since August 2024. 

Last fall, a Los Angeles-based lawyer received a historic $10,000 fine for citing cases that don’t exist, and earlier this month the Sacramento Bee reported that use of AI led to errors in four cases handled by prosecutors in Nevada County. Most of these cases involve lawyers or people who are representing themselves in court, but UCLA Law School professors predict that more judges will make AI-fueled mistakes in the future. In recent months, the U.S. Senate investigated federal judges in Mississippi and New Jersey for drafting decisions with generative AI that had serious factual errors. 

Klapper, who previously worked as a clerk for a federal appeals court and for surveillance technology company Palantir, said the judiciary needs AI in order to reduce backlogs and increase efficiency.

“Could we hire more people?” he told CalMatters. “Maybe, but it’s not going to keep pace with the exponential increase that’s coming, nor is it going to be able to adequately solve the crisis of today. I think the only solution is to give every single judge and staff attorney their own AI clerk.” 

Klapper said he’s aiming to combine the best parts of what human judges can do with the best parts of what machines bring to bear. 

“I’m not saying all machines aren’t biased,” he said. “I’m not saying my machine isn’t even biased. I’m saying we can test it and people have tested it. And that is the benefit over humans.” 

Generative AI use policies for the Los Angeles and Riverside County superior courts only require disclosure if a motion, decision, or other document is written entirely with generative AI. 

Both courts refused to say whether plaintiffs are aware that the tool is being tested on their cases. In a statement to CalMatters, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Superior Court said testing is done on motions that have already been decided, separate from live case environments. However, the contract allows for testing on live cases.

“It is important to note that even with successful evaluation and thorough testing, the Court remains several months, if not years, away from implementing this type of tool,” said the spokesperson. 

The contract allows the tool to be used for two critical motions in the criminal division: A motion to suppress, which is designed to determine what type of evidence the prosecution is allowed to present at trial, and motions for post conviction relief, which are filed by people who have already been convicted and want another shot at freedom. 

That’s the “greatest concern” for Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman. When he reviewed the contract, he referred to the motions as “two incredibly important motions in the criminal justice system.”

“When you’re dealing with someone’s liberty — as opposed to in the civil setting, which is everything other than liberty — the stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Hochman. “I don’t want to take the chance, particularly in a criminal case, that AI happens to get it wrong. And now someone’s constitutional rights have been infringed. Someone has gone to prison who shouldn’t have, or on the flip side, that somehow someone gets off.”

‘An extremely perilous road’

In Los Angeles, some judges first heard about the new Learned Hand contract during a March presentation by Superior Court Judges Yvette Verastegui and Olivia Rosales. They lead the criminal branch and visit courthouses throughout the county as part of an annual roadshow, where they update judges on court operations, discuss workload and field questions. During a luncheon, Verastegui and Rosales said the tool could be used to assist with Racial Justice Act petitions in the future. 

California’s Racial Justice Act allows people to challenge a criminal conviction or sentence that they believe was based upon racial bias. Petitions are filed directly to the court from people in state prison. If a case is found to have merit, the process includes appointing legal counsel, filing briefs and setting evidentiary hearings before a judge would decide whether to grant the petition. 

That process could look different with a tool like Learned Hand. Verastegui and Rosales explained that, following an incarcerated person’s petition, the tool could generate tentative decisions for judges to consider in denying or advancing cases to the next stages, according to one judge who attended the luncheon. 

“The concern, of course, that I have is that the courts will utilize that as a reference point and then get stuck to that initial analysis,” said the judge. “It’s an extremely perilous road to go down. Putting aside the inaccuracy, which will be a significant concern, it dehumanizes the whole process. It does not treat people as individuals with lived experiences. It essentially reimposes a one-size-fits-all style of justice.”

A second Los Angeles Superior Court judge who spoke with CalMatters on the condition of anonymity remembered the presentation and said they would not trust nor use the tool to summarize a Racial Justice Act petition.

AI can replicate or intensify patterns contained in the data used to make a model, including human biases. Large language models have a history of demonstrating race and gender bias, an analysis of predictive policing tech used by LAPD found racial bias, and an analysis of the risk assessment algorithm COMPAS found that it is more likely to label Black people as at risk of committing crimes after incarceration than white people with a similar record. 

Public defenders who spoke with CalMatters echoed those concerns. 

Elizabeth Lashley-Haynes, a deputy public defender at the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, said it would be “highly problematic and bordering on unethical” for a judge to use the tool to review Racial Justice Act petitions, which she described as “incredibly nuanced.”

“They’re like nothing else in the legal system that has ever really been done,” said Lashley-Haynes, who specializes in Racial Justice Act cases. “Words that are used in these cases that have racial undertones or racial meanings are way beyond the realm of anything that artificial intelligence could do.”

In interviews with CalMatters, Klapper and Los Angeles County Superior Court Executive Officer, David Slayton, denied that the court has any plans to use the tool for Racial Justice Act petitions. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Superior Court later confirmed in an email to CalMatters that the contract permits the tool to be used in such a way “but that possibility has not commenced in any way.” 

Klapper said if they were to build out a Racial Justice Act module, the tool would need to be evaluated for bias and co-developed with the court. 

“The timing very fortuitous, right?” he said. “It’s a very fraught decision, I’m not going to lie…extremely high stakes — a scenario where I understand people might be very concerned. Especially with criminal, I have even more hesitancy, even more guardrails than normal about, because there are liberty interests at stake.”

Extending beyond civil cases

In Los Angeles, six superior court judges and their research attorneys are primarily using the Learned Hand tool to conduct research, summarize motions and assist in drafting tentative rulings, according to Slayton. He says the tool won’t move beyond the civil division “until the court leadership is comfortable.” 

“The court is being very deliberate and careful about how we use technology like this,” he said. “So until we evaluate it and determine that it is effective in those areas, we will not extend it to other areas.” 

The tool will be evaluated on a quarterly basis to determine its future application, Slayton said, but he did not specify what kind of evaluation that entails. In an email to CalMatters, a spokesperson later said that Learned Hand is evaluated “against the same substantive expectations applied to law clerks and research attorneys: accurate legal research, sound analysis, neutral and judge-ready writing, and reliable work product that supports judicial decision-making.”

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Samantha Jessner, who chairs the Judicial Technology Advisory Committee, said she was unaware of the possibility that the tool could eventually be used outside of the civil division until recently. Judges are not privy to contract negotiations due to certain ethical limitations, she said. 

“I think we have a duty and obligation to explore whether or not there is a place for artificial intelligence in what we do as a judicial branch and that’s exactly what this pilot is intended to afford us the opportunity to do,” said Jessner.

Riverside County Superior Court signed an agreement with Learned Hand in February. In emails obtained by CalMatters, Klapper proposed to two Riverside County Superior Court executives, Jason Galkin and Sarah Hodgson, that the court use the tool for a common civil court motion and “then expand quickly once we earn our stripes.” He suggested that Hodgson assemble a list of motions and workflows “that generate the most pain,” citing examples that included the Racial Justice Act. 

Roughly two weeks later, Hodgson described the most laborious motions “that want to drive us into retirement,” including discovery motions and attorney fee motions. For criminal cases, the court suggested that Klapper focus on “things with the largest paper records,” citing death penalty habeas petitions and parole revocation.

Since the pilot started, seven civil and probate attorneys have been granted access to the tool. Galkin, the chief executive officer of the Riverside County Superior Court, said they are “kicking the tires on the product” to see what tasks it can do. The tool is not being used to draft tentative rulings, he said. 

“We don’t even know if expansion is likely so there is no set criteria for what expansion might look like or thresholds for that because right now, the core question is: Does this help staff and does it advance what they’re trying to do in their roles?” said Galkin.

As testing is underway, attorneys like Hochman say that use of AI is inevitable, but would be better suited for low-level, repetitive and routine tasks.

“It’s the analysis of the case itself, coupled with the conclusions that will be reached, that I’m very hesitant to trust AI at this point — in large part, because I don’t know all of the inputs that AI is using to make its decision. The only thing I’m 100% sure of is that AI didn’t go to law school,” said Hochman.

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

Guest Commentary written by

Tangela Babbitt

Tangela Babbitt is a senior project manager and consultant based in Elk Grove. She previously worked at the Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance.

California is spending billions on homelessness prevention without the governance infrastructure to know whether it is working. I watched that failure happen firsthand.

I remember when a mother in Sacramento County was facing eviction and trying to find help before she and her children lost their housing. For two months, she called 211 and the county’s Department of Human Assistance looking for answers. Each system referred her to the other. Back and forth, week after week, neither could tell her what assistance was actually available or who owned the process.

I was on the other side of the phone.

For more than 11 years, I worked as a human services specialist for the county, helping administer CalFresh, CalWORKs and Medi-Cal benefits. I have seen California’s safety net from the inside. What recent CalMatters coverage highlighted is not simply a data problem — it is a governance failure.

That mother I tried to help was not “falling through the cracks.” The cracks were built into the system itself. Agencies operate in silos, each assuming the other has the answer. Meanwhile, the person in crisis remains stuck in the middle.

A UC San Francisco study found that a third of California’s unhoused adults were long term leaseholders who had been evicted, many for the first time. An eviction order increases the probability of homelessness by more than 300%.

We understand the pathway into homelessness. What California still lacks is a coordinated system designed to interrupt it before families lose housing.

Thanks to my work, I see the issue clearly: California funded multiple rounds of homelessness prevention programs without requiring measurable outcome reporting tied to continued investment.

When it comes to project management, no responsible organization would continue approving phase after phase of funding without evidence that prior phases produced results. Yet California distributed billions through the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program while failing to build consistent statewide accountability measures.

The California Interagency Council on Homelessness was intended to serve as the oversight layer. In 2021, it was directed to collect statewide homelessness program data. It completed one report, then largely disappeared from public visibility, as a scathing state audit found three years ago.

That is not effective governance. It is the appearance of governance.

California has focused heavily on outputs, such as dollars distributed, shelter beds funded and services launched. But outputs are not outcomes. The real question is whether people remained housed six or 12 months later. Too often, the state has labeled activity as success.

Frontline workers did not create this problem. The failure happened upstream in the design of the system itself.

Senate Bill 1160, which would require county courts to report eviction outcomes by ZIP code, is an important step and should pass. But data alone will not fix a governance design problem.

California must require measurable outcome reporting as a condition of continued homelessness prevention funding. The interagency council must function as an active oversight body with real authority and accountability. Most importantly, the state must treat the person in crisis as the unit of measurement, not simply the dollar distributed.

At some point that mother stopped calling. I do not know whether she kept her housing, entered a shelter or became homeless. The system didn’t require anyone to track the answer.

That is the real cost of operating without accountability.

Guest Commentary written by

Nathan Donley

Nathan Donley is environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Amid growing awareness that so-called forever chemicals, or PFAS, can linger in landscapes and waterways for centuries, federal and state regulators have repeatedly insisted they’re working aggressively to protect us all from the cancer-linked poisons.

They are not.

Even as regulators and lawmakers tout their baby steps to limit forever chemicals in U.S. drinking water, they’re allowing a dramatic increase in the use of pesticides containing the chemicals across millions of acres of industrial agriculture. That often ends up in waterways and drinking water supplies, including in California.

PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of synthetic chemicals used since the 1950s to make consumer products resistant to water, grease and heat. Studies have linked PFAS to cancer, reproductive harm, endocrine disruption and other health effects. 

An alarming 14% of all conventional pesticide active ingredients are now PFAS, according to a peer-reviewed study I co-authored with scientists from the Environmental Working Group and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. And it’s getting worse: The dangerous substances make up 30% of pesticide active ingredients approved just in the last 10 years. 

Nowhere is the exploding use of PFAS pesticides more unsettling than in California, which produces more than three-quarters of U.S.-consumed fruits and nuts and nearly half its vegetables. In March, the U.S. Geological Survey reported widespread water contamination with PFAS pesticides in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, where most California fruit and vegetables are grown.

PFAS chemicals were found in nearly 40% of samples of nonorganic fruits and vegetables tested by state regulators in 2023, according to a new report by the Environmental Working Group. That analysis found 17 different PFAS pesticides on more than half of 78 types of nonorganic fruits and vegetables, including nectarines, peaches, plums, strawberries, blueberries, celery and green beans.

The proliferation of forever chemicals in Californians’ food and the continued approval of PFAS pesticides by state regulators leaves no doubt California lawmakers must pass Assembly Bill 1603. 

The measure would require that products disclose if they contain PFAS, and it would prohibit any new PFAS pesticide approvals. It also would phase out the use of PFAS pesticides over the next 10 years.

The bill faces a do-or-die vote in the full California Assembly by May 29.

What heightens the need for action is the fact that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump and California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation are going in the wrong direction on PFAS pesticides.

Since Trump took office, the EPA has approved two PFAS pesticides and proposed approving three more.

And recently, California’s pesticide office again approved the PFAS insecticide sulfoxaflor, even though it has been repeatedly rejected by state and federal courts because of its high toxicity to pollinators, such as honeybees.

The pesticide industry claims that many new pesticides are not PFAS because they contain only one, instead of two, fully fluorinated carbons. But that claim, which has been embraced by the EPA, disregards the widely accepted scientific definition, that any chemical with a single fully-fluorinated carbon is a PFAS.  

The grim reality is that 23-35 million pounds of pesticide ingredients used annually in the United States are PFAS. California has registered 53 PFAS pesticides. And about 2.5 million pounds of those poisons are applied annually to California cropland.

We get it, life gets busy. You received your ballot weeks ago and it’s languishing on your pile of mail. But don’t be like the 92% of California voters who haven’t submitted their ballots yet — make plans to vote as soon as you can.

With exactly one week until Election Day and no clear frontrunner in the governor’s race, let’s recap some common election questions to prepare you.

Why are so many people running for governor?

It’s a wide-open field in part because the big names in the Democratic Party — former Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla — passed on running for governor. Democratic voters in early spring appeared to be coalescing behind former Rep. Eric Swalwell, but he withdrew from the race following allegations of sexual misconduct. 

Who are the candidates? 

• Xavier Becerra, Democrat, former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and former California attorney general.
• Chad Bianco, Republican, Riverside County Sheriff.
• Steve Hilton, Republican, former Fox News host and former adviser to conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron.
• Matt Mahan, Democrat, mayor of San Jose.
• Katie Porter, Democrat, former U.S. representative representing Orange County.
• Tom Steyer, Democrat, billionaire entrepreneur and former presidential candidate.
• Tony Thurmond, Democrat, state superintendent of public instruction.
• Antonio Villaraigosa, Democrat, former mayor of Los Angeles and former Assembly speaker.

How do I find out more about them?

You can learn more about the top candidates in our voter guide and watch them explain their stances on housing, justice, healthcare and more.

What’s an open primary and why do we have it?

California’s open primary allows the two candidates who receive the most votes to move on to the general election in November, no matter what party they belong to. The state adopted this system after voters approved Proposition 14 in 2010, which allows voters to pick any candidate in a primary, regardless of their own party affiliation. 

Prop. 14 proponents argued that this system would compel candidates to court voters across the political spectrum, which would make California less partisan. But critics said it would limit choices for voters, potentially advancing two candidates from the same political party. That’s a real possibility this year because of the sheer number of candidates running for governor and since no one has secured a clear lead.

Who’s ahead in the polls?

The latest Democratic Party poll shows Republican Hilton and Democrat Becerra leading with 22% and 21% respectively, and Steyer in third at 15%.

Is it too late to vote by mail?

It’s not too late, but don’t cut it too close. Mailed ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by election offices within seven days. It’s best to mail your ballot at least five days before June 2 (Thursday) to make sure it’s counted, but if you wait until then, get a hand-stamped postmark from a postal worker inside your local post office.

How can I vote on Election Day?

Besides mailing in your ballot, you can submit your ballot at a drop-off location or vote in-person at the polls from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Find your nearest polling place here and your closest ballot drop-off location here.

When will the ballots be counted?

County elections officials must begin reporting results to the secretary of state on Election Night no more than two hours after they begin tallying votes. Elections officials have 30 days to count ballots and finalize their results to the state, who then has 38 days to certify the results.

What about the other statewide offices?

You can find them all in our voter guide, but check out our explainers that go deeper:

• Superintendent of public instruction
• Lieutenant governor
• Controller
• Secretary of state
• Treasurer
• Insurance commissioner

What the heck is the Board of Equalization? 

We know Californians are asking that question. We see it in our pageviews reports. The Board of Equalization is an elected tax board that the state created in 1879. It has narrow authority to oversee property tax collection and has previously been a launching pad to other political offices.

Learn more about the candidates in our voter guide.