How ChatGPT Became a Virtual Lawyer for a Woman from Odesa

⚖️ In Ukraine, a woman won a court case with the help of artificial intelligence and saved about $1,000. A resident of Odesa, Oleksandra Korin, decided to manage without a lawyer and prepared the lawsuit on her own with the support of AI, and then submitted the documents through the “Electronic Court” system. TSN reported this today, November 29.

The story began when Oleksandra needed to restore the deadline for submitting an inheritance application. By itself, this is not the most complicated category of cases, so she decided not to turn to a lawyer, whose services now “bite” harder than the Odesa surf in January. The woman said she spent an entire week working nights on the text of the claim.

According to her, it was “enormous work” — several sleepless evenings in a row, when the child fell asleep and she sat down with her laptop and literally “knocked meaning out of” the laws and instructions. Oleksandra emphasized that she knows how to concentrate on large volumes of text and that discipline was what helped her handle the task.

It was artificial intelligence that suggested she try using the “Electronic Court” system and explained how to properly structure a lawsuit, which documents to attach, and which formulations to use.

As a result, Oleksandra calculated that this approach saved her about $1,000 — the money she would have had to pay a lawyer. She spent only on the ChatGPT subscription and the court fee. According to her, she and the virtual assistant “shared the work fifty-fifty.”

However, as noted in the TSN article, it was impossible to fully trust the AI — the system had to be constantly monitored so that it would not “invent” laws that do not exist in reality.

Ihor Bobuiok, the spokesperson judge of the Khadzhibey District Court of Odesa, confirmed that the first version of the lawsuit submitted by Oleksandra did not comply with legal requirements at all. “If a lawsuit is drafted unprofessionally, the court is highly likely to deny it,” he added.

Lawyer Oleksandr Mukonin noted that real lawyers do not make such mistakes. He emphasized that artificial intelligence “often makes things up,” and it can be used only in simple, low-significance cases. In more complex situations, errors can lead to fatal consequences for the claimant.

After the court returned the documents to Oleksandra for revision, she made corrections, resubmitted the claim — and the judge ruled in her favor. Journalists note that the court itself did not even suspect that the document had been prepared with the participation of AI. There are currently no legal restrictions on using such tools.

The Ukrainian judicial system acknowledges that due to the high cost of legal services, especially during the full-scale war, more and more citizens are trying to manage without lawyers. However, judges do not expect a flood of AI-prepared claims.

✨ At the same time, representatives of the judiciary emphasize that such stories are usually shared only by those who win their cases. And artificial intelligence is still unable to fully replace professional lawyers — and, according to judges, this is unlikely in the foreseeable future.