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The Client Who Talked to a Chatbot

PLA 2872Activity 10

HAI Seminar with David Engstrom: AI and Access to Justice, Stanford HAI

Why it Matters

Florida lets anyone explain what the law says, and it lets only a lawyer tell a particular person what the law means for him. A chatbot will do the second for anyone who asks, free and at any hour, and it sounds just as sure when it is wrong. The law has not settled whether that is practicing law, and many of the people it answers could not afford a lawyer anyway. When one of them carries its printout into a legal aid office, the person at the intake desk has to find what is wrong in it without doing what the chatbot did. In this simulation you sit at that desk, across from a client who trusts the chatbot more than he trusts you.

Current Context

On September 10, 2026, Florida’s Sixth District Court of Appeal found that a self-represented appellant in an Osceola County eviction case had cited seven cases that do not exist (opens in a new tab) at least twenty times. In Ulysse v. Vineland Investment Partners Phase II, LLC, it ordered him to show cause why he should not be sanctioned, and his answer, filed September 14, awaits a ruling. The sanction the court named would require a member of The Florida Bar to review and sign his future filings in the case. In Chicago, a motion to dismiss an insurer’s claim that ChatGPT practiced law for a self-represented litigant (opens in a new tab) has been fully briefed since July, and OpenAI says ChatGPT is a tool, not a person (opens in a new tab). One court may make a lawyer’s signature the price of this filer’s next brief, and the other must decide whether a program can practice law at all.

Key Concepts

Unlicensed Practice of Law

Practicing law in Florida without a license, or holding yourself out as qualified to, is a third-degree felony under section 454.23, Florida Statutes. The Florida Supreme Court’s test asks whether the advice or service affects a person’s important legal rights and calls for more legal skill and knowledge than the average citizen has. The Court draws the line to protect the public, and The Florida Bar investigates complaints under Chapter 10 of its rules.

Information explains what the law says and how a process works, as a book, a blank form, or a court’s self-help page does. Advice applies the law to one person’s facts or names the remedy to pursue, and a nonlawyer who gives it, or drafts a document for a particular person, practices law without a license. In The Florida Bar v. Brumbaugh the Court told a typing service it could sell forms and type what customers wrote, but could not answer their questions about which form to use or how.

Self-Represented Litigant

A person who handles a case in court without a lawyer. Under Rule 2.515 of the Florida Rules of General Practice and Judicial Administration, an unrepresented party signs what he files, and every signer represents that the legal authorities cited exist and are accurately cited. Florida’s appellate courts hold these filers to a lawyer’s standard for accurate citations and can sanction a false one, whoever or whatever drafted the brief.

Intake

The first structured conversation with a person who wants help, in which the paralegal gathers the facts, dates, documents, and goals the supervising attorney needs to evaluate the matter. A good intake draws out what the person did not think to mention. It also records what the person believes without adopting it.

Referral to the Supervising Attorney

A paralegal works under a lawyer who answers for the paralegal’s work, and the code for Florida Registered Paralegals says a paralegal should not give legal opinions or advice. So when a client believes something false that could cost him the case, the paralegal flags it for the lawyer at once and tells the client a lawyer must see it before anything is filed. What the lawyer will conclude is left for the lawyer to say.

Security Deposit Claims

Under section 83.49(3), Florida Statutes, a landlord who keeps none of a deposit returns it within 15 days after the tenancy ends, and one who claims part of it sends written notice within 30 days. The notice goes by certified mail to the tenant’s last known mailing address, or by e-mail if both signed an e-mail addendum, and a landlord who misses it forfeits any claim against the deposit itself. The tenant has 15 days to object, and the winner of a deposit suit recovers court costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee.

Tenant’s Notice Before Leaving

Unless the lease says otherwise, section 83.49(5) requires a month-to-month tenant, or one leaving before the lease ends, to give at least 7 days’ written notice first. It goes by certified mail or personal delivery and must include an address where the tenant can be reached. A tenant who skips it relieves the landlord of the 30-day notice requirement but keeps any right to the deposit, so how a tenant left can decide whether a landlord’s late notice matters.

Product Liability for Chatbot Advice

The theory that a chatbot giving tailored legal conclusions is a product, defectively designed if it gives them without safeguards, so that a person it harms sues its maker in tort. It is the alternative to asking whether the chatbot practiced law, a question that runs into statutes written for persons.

Resources

What to Do

An intake interview has two jobs that pull against each other: draw out every fact the lawyer will need, and say nothing the lawyer would have to take back. An AI runs this simulation. It plays a line cook who arrives at a Daytona Beach legal aid clinic with a chatbot’s verdict on his security deposit, and you play the intake paralegal. By the end you can sort his printout into what the statute supports and what it does not, and hand the matter to a lawyer without telling him what it means for his case.

Part 1: Set Up

Start with the background reading. Then watch the video under the title from 22:32 to 36:57, where a Stanford law professor explains why chatbots do worst on local law such as evictions and what courts do for people without lawyers. Then read, from Resources, subsections (3) and (5) of section 83.49, section 454.23, pages 1189 to 1194 of Brumbaugh, and Rules 10-2.2 and 20-7.1(d) and (e). The simulator will not teach you any of this; it only shows whether you know it. Without the deposit statute you cannot hear which of the client’s beliefs are false, and without Brumbaugh you cannot tell when your own answer has become advice.

Part 2: Run the Simulation

Copy the Simulator into a fresh AI chat and conduct the intake as the paralegal. Ask questions rather than explain the law, and stay in character. If you ask the AI what to say next or whether you are right, it will answer as Tomas and keep the scene going. Tomas offers the chatbot’s conclusions freely and the facts behind them only when asked, so the facts the statute turns on are yours to find. Expect at least ten substantive exchanges, and keep going until the simulator ends the intake under its own conditions.

Part 3: Score Your Intake

Before you open the Debrief, score the intake yourself from the transcript, not from memory, on three standards worth up to 2 points each. For elicitation, list the facts that subsections (3) and (5) of section 83.49 make decisive in Tomas’s dispute, and mark each one drawn out or missed. Score 2 if you drew out all of them, 1 if you missed one or two, and 0 if you missed more.

For the advice line, copy every sentence in which you told Tomas what the law is or what he should do, and label each one information or advice. Score 2 if none was advice, 1 if one was, and 0 if more were. For triage, list each claim the chatbot made and say whether you recognized it as sound or unsound. Then say whether you closed by routing the matter to the supervising attorney, with a next step for the deadline he fears. Score 2 if you did both, 1 if you missed a claim or the routing, and 0 if you missed both.

Part 4: Debrief

After a break of at least an hour, open a new chat, run the Debrief, and paste the link to your simulation chat, or a summary of it, with your three scores. Read where its scores differ from yours and why. Check every statement it makes about section 83.49 or the Bar’s rules against the text in Resources before you accept it, because the Debrief is an AI too.

Part 5: Replay with a Deadline (Optional)

Run the Replay, in which Denise Carter arrives with a chatbot’s answer to an eviction complaint and a five-day clock that has almost run. The law it tests is section 83.60(2), with section 83.56(5) on partial rent. Notice what the deadline does to your questions, and whether your hold on the line between information and advice survives her urgency.

Part 6: Test a Chatbot

Step out of role. In a fresh chat with any general-purpose chatbot, ask Tomas’s question the way he first put it to you, with only the facts he offered before you asked anything. Then build a table with one row for each statement of Florida law in its answer. Its four columns are the statement, quoted; the subsection of section 83.49 that governs it; what that subsection says; and your verdict: right, wrong, or right but missing something that matters. Under the table, write one sentence on whether the chatbot asked about any fact before it answered, and name the facts from your intake that it never asked for.

Part 7: Reflect and Post

Write a reflection of 400 to 600 words in your own words. Say which ending the simulation reached, where you stayed on the information side of the line, and where you slipped or came close. Compare your three scores with the Debrief’s and say which difference taught you the most. Then say what your table shows when you set the chatbot’s answer beside your intake, and what the Replay changed if you ran it. Post the reflection, both sets of scores, and the table as a single new discussion thread.

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

Suggested AI Prompts

Use these prompts as a starting point, then adjust them to fit your goal. Strong prompting develops through trial, revision, and testing. It’s a foundational skill that grows into more advanced AI work such as context engineering and agent-based workflows.

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. Your one-year lease ran out after the first year, and since then you have rented month to month without signing anything new. You paid an $1,800 security deposit. You moved out on July 3 and handed the keys to the office manager. About a week before that, you told her in person that you were leaving; you never put it in writing. 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. The complaint cites Rodriguez for the triple damages. 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, the month-to-month arrangement, the spoken notice that you were leaving, 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. If I ask how you told the landlord you were leaving, say you told the office manager in person. 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 the tenancy was month to month and how you told the landlord you were leaving, 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.

Giving the character facts he reveals only when asked makes the scene a test of your questions, and his eagerness to be told what to do tests your restraint. The refusal and redirection rules keep the model from coaching you, and the completion conditions end 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 section 83.49, Florida Statutes (move-out date, deposit amount, the form and timing of the landlord’s notice, whether the tenancy was month to month and whether he gave written notice before leaving, 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, including Rule 10-2.2 of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar and The Florida Bar v. Brumbaugh, 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, making sure a lawyer sees the printed complaint before he signs and files it, and addressing the client’s fear about a deadline without advising him? Explain what section 83.49 actually provides at each point, citing the subsection so I can check it. I will also paste the score I gave myself on each standard, from 0 to 2; after your evaluation, give your own score on each and explain any difference. Be specific and direct.

A supervisor’s review, set against three named standards and your own scores, gives you feedback you can dispute point by point. Check what it says section 83.49 provides against the statute in Resources, since a model grading your accuracy can misstate the law too.

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.

Changing the facts to an eviction with a running clock tests whether your restraint transfers when the stakes rise. Urgency, the client’s and your own, is the pressure that most often pushes a helper across the line into advice.

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