{"text":[[{"start":7.6,"text":"When Lucy returned from maternity leave to find her employer would no longer let her work from home, she swiftly turned to ChatGPT. “It was a godsend,” she says. “I needed help to build a case — solicitors aren’t cheap.”"}],[{"start":21,"text":"The project manager also paid for some legal advice to help her negotiate a payout, just in time to avoid going to a tribunal. But without AI, she says she would not have managed to gather evidence, raise a grievance and pressure her employer — a civil engineering firm — to come to the table. "}],[{"start":38.75,"text":"Lucy, who spoke under a pseudonym to avoid repercussions in a new job, is far from alone. UK lawyers say the use of AI to research the law, draft documents, evaluate employers’ arguments and prepare responses has become ubiquitous in the employment tribunal system. Many of them are in despair at the effects. "}],[{"start":57.65,"text":"“In the last six to eight months I can’t think of a single case that hasn’t — I would bet my house — had AI-generated content,” says Ellis Jessica Walby, a legal director at the firm HCR Law."}],[{"start":70.1,"text":"She has seen one claimant file a grievance running to 1,000 pages — with a “user guide” to help navigate it. Another, so reliant on AI that she omitted to delete prompts from written submissions, broke down in tears at a final hearing when she had to present her own case. "}],[{"start":87.35,"text":"Alex Mizzi, legal director at the law firm Howard Kennedy, says AI-assisted claims over the past year had gone “from being a novelty . . . to an endemic feature”. In a field where claimants already tend to represent themselves against well-resourced HR and legal teams “it can really level the playing field in a way employers are having to grapple with”. "}],[{"start":109.3,"text":"But the tide of AI-assisted claims is also straining an overloaded tribunal system, adding to pressures created by mental ill health, wider neurodiversity diagnoses, greater awareness of employment rights and a weak jobs market. "}],[{"start":124.25,"text":"There has been a 39 per cent rise in single claims filed at the Employment Tribunal, which hears workplace disputes in England and Wales, between 2024-25 and 2025-26. A growing share of claims is complex, concerning issues such as discrimination or whistleblowing, and requires more time to resolve."}],[{"start":144.8,"text":"At the same time the number of judges has declined, resulting in a 55 per cent rise in the backlog of open cases in the last year to 64,000, according to Ministry of Justice figures. Delays are now such that lawyers in and around London say they routinely see final hearings scheduled for 2028."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":163.75,"text":"“This looks pretty much like an impending breakdown of the enforcement system,” says Ben Willmott, head of public policy at the CIPD, which represents employers. They fear ongoing implementation of the Employment Rights Act — a sweeping upgrade of workers’ rights — will generate a further wave of litigation."}],[{"start":181,"text":"Misguided use of AI is clearly costly for employers forced to wade through ever-expanding volumes of documentation. Some of those advising claimants say workers also suffer as AI can exaggerate or misrepresent claims, encouraging them to pursue emotionally draining litigation with unrealistic hopes of payouts."}],[{"start":201.1,"text":"When people ask ChatGPT to consider the claims they may have and their potential value, it produces a document “that looks very slick and polished with a big figure at the bottom”, Walby says. “It’s human nature to say, ‘That looks good and I’m not going to move.’” "}],[{"start":214.75,"text":"“If you prompt AI with, ‘I’m being bullied at work,’ it doesn’t challenge you. It just gives you pricing and tells you how to raise a grievance,” says Alistair Wood, chief executive of Edapt, an organisation that helps education staff resolve problems at work. He believes AI “is probably causing more problems than it is solving”, increasing complaints against teachers from parents and students, as well as workplace disputes."}],[{"start":241.7,"text":"Amanda Crutchley, head of pro bono at the University of Law, who helps run an advice service for people representing themselves in legal proceedings, has seen a “sea change” in the confidence people have in the validity of their claims, from harassment to whistleblowing or unfair dismissal. “They put everything down!” she says. Preliminary hearings, meant to establish disputes and plan hearings, are now often “just unpicking what AI has produced”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":269.3,"text":"Yet others see AI as a potential game-changer for workers in the UK, where enforcement agencies are poorly resourced and labour abuses often go unchallenged. “It is free, easily accessible and can help people understand the legal process, organise evidence and prepare their case. For many, that can improve access to justice,” says Joeli Brearley, founder of Growth Spurt, a programme supporting working parents. "}],[{"start":296.15000000000003,"text":"“I see it so strongly as empowering people,” adds Ruth Neil, a solicitor at the Work Rights Centre, a charity widening workers’ access to justice. Many of the people she represents are migrants who struggle to communicate in English, she says, and using AI to create timelines of events or help with translation can be transformative. “There has been an impact just in people being able to talk to us.”"}],[{"start":322.15000000000003,"text":"Mizzi also sees claimants using AI to structure and phrase arguments more effectively, sometimes making it easier rather than harder for employers to respond."}],[{"start":333.3,"text":"“If you have a disability or neurodiversity, or are not a verbally fluent person or are stressed and struggling to communicate . . . it can be a really powerful tool,” she says, adding claimants also put AI to more ingenious uses. One woman who was made redundant during maternity leave uploaded a job advertised by her employer to ChatGPT, for example, and ascertained her role had simply been relabelled. "}],[{"start":358.7,"text":"A new development that has alarmed judges is a rise in applications for so-called interim relief — where a tribunal can order an employer, as an emergency measure, to continue paying wages to a former employee until their claim reaches a final hearing. "}],[{"start":374.8,"text":"Lawyers rarely advise their own clients to apply for this relief, and new guidance from employment tribunal presidents says the rise in applications is a sign claimants are using AI. It notes tribunals across Britain used to receive about 20 such applications a year, and most offices now receive as many every month. Such bids rarely succeed but they put “an insane amount of pressure” on employers and the tribunal system, Walby says, because they must be heard swiftly, postponing other hearings. "}],[{"start":404.6,"text":"As AI pushes the system closer to crisis, calls for reform are growing. Neil worries there will be renewed pressure to reintroduce fees for bringing claims, which were required between 2013 and 2017 but scrapped after the Supreme Court ruled it was a barrier to justice. "}],[{"start":423.95000000000005,"text":"In May, the Employment Lawyers Association published proposals to promote informal dispute resolution and give the government’s new Fair Work Agency a bigger role in dealing with basic breaches of employment rights. Where cases still go to tribunal, it recommended reducing “lengthy verbiage” and offering a fast track for claimants willing to put forward only their strongest legal arguments."}],[{"start":446.30000000000007,"text":"Reflecting on her AI-assisted claim, however, Lucy maintains the technology was a lifeline during a “scary” period in which she quit her job with two small children and no earnings. "}],[{"start":457.80000000000007,"text":"“I didn’t want to put my foot in it,” she says. She prompted ChatGPT not to “sugarcoat” advice and to make her own writing “less aggressive”. The payout she eventually won — of six months’ salary — was exactly what AI had advised her to expect. “I’ve seen a lot of negative stuff [about AI],” she says. “But it worked for me.”"}],[{"start":486.2000000000001,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1782985411_7355.mp3"}