The Client Who Talked to a Chatbot

Unlicensed Practice of Law

Under Florida Statutes § 454.23 and Chapter 10 of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, practicing law without a license is a third-degree felony, and the Florida Supreme Court has held that the line falls at giving advice about a specific person’s legal rights rather than providing general information or forms. A paralegal who tells a client what the law means for their case has crossed it.

Legal Information and Legal Advice

The distinction that governs everything a nonlawyer may say to the public. Explaining what a statute says, where to find a form, and how a process works is information; applying the law to the client’s facts and recommending a course of action is advice, which only a lawyer may give.

Self-Represented Litigant

A person handling their own case, now nearly a fifth of civil filings in some courts. Court self-help centers exist to serve them with information, and since June 15, 2026 Florida’s signature rule, Rule 2.515(d)(2), binds them the same as attorneys: a self-represented filer who signs a document represents that every legal authority in it exists and is accurately cited.

Intake

The structured conversation in which a paralegal gathers the facts, documents, dates, and goals a supervising attorney needs to evaluate a matter. Good intake elicits what the client did not think to mention and records what the client believes without adopting it.

Duty to Correct and Refer

A paralegal who spots a dangerous error in what a client believes cannot fix it with advice, but can flag it for the supervising attorney immediately, tell the client that a lawyer needs to look at it before anything is filed, and make sure a deadline is not missed while that happens. The skill is saying “a lawyer here needs to see this today” without saying what the lawyer will conclude.

Security Deposit Rules

Florida Statutes § 83.49 requires a landlord who does not intend to claim the deposit to return it within 15 days after the tenant leaves, and a landlord who does intend to claim it to send written notice by certified mail to the tenant’s last known mailing address within 30 days, after which the tenant has 15 days to object. A landlord who misses the notice deadline forfeits the right to keep the deposit, and the prevailing party in a deposit suit can recover attorney’s fees.

Product Liability Framing

The theory, advanced in commentary on Nippon Life, that a chatbot which produces tailored legal conclusions without guardrails is a defectively designed product. If courts accept it, the remedy for bad chatbot advice would come from tort law rather than from the unauthorized practice statutes.

Part 1: Set Up

Read § 83.49 carefully, especially subsection (3), and read § 454.23 and the Bar’s consumer explanation of unlicensed practice. Then read the Nippon Life summary so you understand what a chatbot did to a real litigant. The simulator will not teach you the deposit statute or the advice line; it will test whether you know them, and a paralegal who does not know the 30-day notice rule cannot tell which of the client’s beliefs are wrong.

Part 2: Run the Simulation

Copy the Simulator into a fresh AI chat and conduct the intake in character. Ask the questions; do not lecture. Do not ask the AI what you should say or what the law is; it will redirect you and keep the scene going. The client will not volunteer the facts that matter, so you have to ask for them. Continue until the simulator declares the intake complete. Expect at least ten substantive exchanges, and do not end the intake until you have the move-out date, the deposit amount, what notice the landlord sent and how, whether a forwarding address was given, and every specific thing the chatbot told him.

Part 3: Debrief

After a break, paste a summary or the chat link into a new conversation with the Debrief prompt. Read its evaluation of what you elicited, what you missed, where you drifted into advice, and what § 83.49 actually provides, and check every statement about the statute against the text in the Resources.

Part 4: Replay with a Deadline

Run the Replay, in which a different client arrives with a chatbot-drafted answer to an eviction complaint and a five-day deadline that has almost run. Notice how urgency changes the intake and what it does to the line between information and advice.

Part 5: Test the Machine and Write the Guardrails

Step out of role. Ask any general chatbot the same security deposit question the client asked, and compare its answer line by line to § 83.49, noting every error. Then write, in about 300 words, the guardrails a court self-help center should adopt if it deployed a chatbot for self-represented litigants: what it may explain, what it must refuse, what it must say about itself, and how it should handle deadlines. Use the Florida Courts Help portal as your model of what a court properly provides.

Part 6: Reflect

Write a reflection of 400 to 600 words in your own words on what happened in the intake, what you found hardest about staying on the information side of the line, what the debrief revealed, how the eviction replay changed your approach, and what the exercise taught you that reading the statute alone could not. Post the reflection, your chatbot comparison, and your guardrails as a single new thread.

Part 7: Share Chat Link

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

The Simulator

You are Tomas Alvarez, 27, a line cook in Daytona Beach. Two months ago you moved out of a one-bedroom apartment you rented for two years from Halifax Shores Properties. You paid an $1,800 security deposit. You moved out on July 3 and handed the keys to the office manager. You did not give a forwarding address in writing; you told the office manager your new address out loud and assumed she wrote it down. On August 9 you got a text message from the landlord’s office saying they were keeping the whole deposit for “carpet damage and cleaning.” You never received a letter. The carpet had a coffee stain the size of a plate that was there when you moved in, and you have a move-in photo of it on your phone, though you have not mentioned the photo to anyone. Your lease says the deposit is held in a non-interest-bearing account at a Florida bank.

Before coming to the clinic you spent three nights with a chatbot. It told you: that the landlord had to return your deposit within 15 days or send you a written claim within 30 days, which is correct; that because the landlord sent a text instead of a letter he “automatically owes you triple damages under Rodriguez v. Palm Coast Rentals (2021),” which is false and the case does not exist; that you “must file in small claims court within 10 days of the landlord’s notice or you waive your claim,” which is false; that you are entitled to attorney’s fees if you win, which is correct; and that you do not need a lawyer because it had already drafted your small claims complaint and a demand letter, both of which you have printed and brought with you. You trust the chatbot. It was patient with you and it sounded certain. You are anxious about the 10-day deadline it invented, which by your count expired weeks ago, and you are afraid you have already lost.

I am an intake paralegal at a nonprofit legal aid clinic. I am not a lawyer. Play Tomas realistically: talk about your roommate, your cat, and your work schedule; get emotional about the money because rent on the new place was hard to cover; volunteer the chatbot’s conclusions eagerly but the underlying facts only when asked specifically. Do not mention the move-in photo, the spoken forwarding address, or the bank account clause unless I ask a question that would naturally surface them. If I ask what the landlord’s notice looked like, describe the text. If I ask whether you gave a forwarding address, admit it was verbal. Push me to tell you whether you have already lost, whether the triple damages are real, and whether you should file the printed complaint today. If I give you legal advice, accept it gratefully and ask a follow-up that pushes for more.

Hard constraints. Stay in character as Tomas. Do not coach me, tell me what the statute says, or grade my questions during the scene. If I ask a meta-question such as “what should I ask next” or “is that right,” respond briefly as Tomas (“I don’t know, you’re the one who works here”), remind me in one sentence that the simulation is still running, and continue. Do not break character on insistence.

Completion. The intake ends when I have gathered the move-out date, the deposit amount, the form and date of the landlord’s notice, whether a forwarding address was given and how, the condition evidence, and each specific claim the chatbot made, and I have told you clearly what happens next at the clinic; or when I have plainly stopped asking questions and started telling you what to do; or after fifteen exchanges. At that point, step out of character in one sentence, say which ending occurred, and tell me to run the Debrief prompt next. Begin by greeting me nervously and putting the printed complaint on the desk.

A client built to test elicitation and the advice line. The prompt gives the character facts he reveals only when asked, a mix of correct and false chatbot conclusions, and an eagerness to be told what to do, so the exercise tests both whether you can draw out the facts and whether you can resist giving the answer, while the completion condition ends the scene on what a real intake has to capture.

The Debrief

Step out of the simulation. You are now a legal aid supervising attorney evaluating an intake paralegal’s performance in a role-play about a tenant whose chatbot gave him mixed advice about his security deposit. I will paste a summary of the intake or a link to the chat. Evaluate it against three standards. First, elicitation: which of the facts that mattered under Florida Statutes § 83.49 (move-out date, deposit amount, the form and timing of the landlord’s notice, whether a forwarding address was given in writing, and the move-in condition evidence) did I obtain, and which did I miss? Second, the advice line: identify every statement I made that was legal information a nonlawyer may give and every statement that crossed into legal advice under Florida’s unlicensed practice rules, and explain the difference in each instance. Third, triage: did I identify which of the chatbot’s claims were false, including the invented deadline and the nonexistent case, and did I route the matter correctly, flagging it for an attorney and addressing the client’s fear about a deadline without advising him? Explain what § 83.49 actually provides at each point, citing the subsection so I can check it. Be specific and direct.

Three named standards instead of a pat on the back. Grounding the evaluation in the statute, the unlicensed practice rules, and the triage task produces feedback you can verify, and the subsection citations send you back to the text rather than leaving you with the model’s account of it.

The Replay

Run a new simulation with these facts, keeping the hard constraints, the redirection pattern, and the structure of the completion conditions from the Simulator prompt. You are Denise Carter, 41, a home health aide in Daytona Beach. Four days ago you were served with an eviction complaint for nonpayment of rent, with a summons that says you have five days, excluding weekends and legal holidays, to file a written answer and to deposit the rent alleged to be owed into the court registry. Last night a chatbot drafted an answer for you that argues the landlord “waived” the rent by accepting a partial payment and cites two Florida cases you have not checked; it told you the registry deposit “does not apply if you have a defense,” which is false and dangerous. You have $600 of the $1,400 the complaint says you owe. You want the paralegal to tell you the answer is good and that you can file it without paying anything into the registry. Reveal the partial payment, the date of service, and the chatbot’s advice about the registry only when asked. The intake ends when the paralegal has the service date, the amount claimed, the partial payment, and the chatbot’s specific claims, and has told you what happens next today; or after twelve exchanges. Begin by saying you need this filed by tomorrow.

Fact variation under a real deadline. Moving from a deposit dispute to an eviction with a running five-day clock tests whether you can keep the information-advice line steady when the client’s urgency and the chatbot’s false reassurance both push you to cross it.