New research on how Americans use AI legal advice instead of hiring a lawyer, and what it costs them when the shortcut fails.
A homeowner opens a foreclosure notice at 11 p.m. A daughter learns her father left no will. Until recently, each of them had the same two options: pay an attorney’s hourly rate, or set the paperwork down and hope it held. Now they have a third, and it answers in seconds for free. What the free answer is worth showed up in an Iowa courtroom in April, when the Court of Appeals refused to consider a single argument a self-represented woman raised in her fight over title to a parcel of real estate, after finding that two of the cases she cited do not exist and that she had likely misused an artificial intelligence tool.
Burris Law surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults, stratified and segmented by age and gender, with additional analysis by household income, to learn when people reach for AI instead of an attorney and what happens after they do. The ones with the most at stake are rarely in a courtroom: parents writing a will, business owners dividing shares with a partner they trust today. None of them will find out whether the paperwork holds until someone has a reason to attack it. Checking the free answer is the obvious safeguard, and it is also the first thing to go when avoiding an expert was the whole point.
Key Takeaways
- Nearly half (46%) would turn to an AI assistant or a search engine first with a legal question today, compared with 32% who would go straight to an attorney.
- Among those who needed legal help in the past year, cost pushed 84% into a cheaper substitute, a delay, or no help at all; nearly half (49%) rank saving money as the single biggest reason to go without an attorney.
- More than a third of Americans (36%) have had a do-it-yourself legal document or piece of legal advice cause a real problem, rising to 57% of Gen Z and falling to 17% of boomers.
- Among people who have used AI for legal information, 34% later found out it was wrong, outdated, or misleading; the rate climbs to 44% among millennials.
- Three in four (76%) agree AI-generated legal information should always be verified before acting on it, but only 24% of people who use AI for legal help always do.
- Three in four (74%) feel very or extremely confident relying on a licensed attorney, compared with 19% who feel that way about an AI chatbot.
The New First Stop for a Legal Question
Ask someone where they would go with a legal question and the answer tends to sound responsible. Intentions form in calm moments, though, not at 9 p.m. with a document open and a deadline the next morning. Whoever answers first hands over the vocabulary for the problem and quietly draws the boundary around what seems possible, so someone who learns the words “transfer on death deed” ends up on a different road than someone who learns to just put the house in a child’s name now. Over the past 12 months, intention and behavior have not been pointing the same direction.
Americans still name an attorney more often than any other single starting point, at 32%. Combine the two digital front doors, though, and the lawyer falls behind: a search engine pulls 26% and an AI assistant 20%, putting 46% of the public in front of software before any professional enters the picture. Sources built to carry authority barely register. Law firm websites are the first stop for 5%, and government sites for 2%.
That ranking inverts the moment people describe what they actually did. Over the past 12 months, 35% used an AI chatbot for a legal question or task, while 21% consulted an attorney. Search engines remain the workhorse at 51%, and 28% turned to friends or family, putting kitchen-table advice seven points ahead of licensed advice. Men drove much of the AI figure, using chatbots at 43% against 28% of women, though both groups consulted attorneys at nearly identical rates.
Age splits the behavior almost exactly at 46%. AI use holds near half among Gen Z (45%) and millennials (46%), then falls to 27% of Gen X and 19% of boomers, who remain the likeliest to open with an attorney at 38%. Gen Z stacks social platforms on top of everything else, treating them as a legal source at 37% against 3% of boomers. Whoever answers first does more than answer, framing what the problem gets called and which responses look available before the person knows enough to judge the framing. A chatbot does that job with no license to lose and no duty to the person asking.
What Americans Are Willing to Handle Alone
Most people have handled a legal matter alone without ever thinking of it that way. Contesting a parking ticket or signing a lease does not feel like law, and nobody calls an attorney for either. People carry the same mindset further than that, though, into documents built to speak for them once they can no longer explain what they meant. Anyone who skips the lawyer has a ready answer for why. Ready answers are worth checking.
Going it alone is the norm rather than the exception, with 78% having handled at least one legal matter without an attorney. The common entries are the low-stakes ones people barely register as legal: traffic citations at 30% and rental or lease agreements at 28%, followed by consumer disputes at 23% and employment issues at 19%. From there the list climbs into work that outlives the moment. Contracts drafted or reviewed alone reach 14%, estate planning documents such as a will or power of attorney 12%, and real estate or property matters 10%.
Ask why, and the stated reason and the real one part company. Saving money ranks first for 49% and lands in the top three for 71%, dwarfing every other motivation. Confidence that AI or online resources could do the job correctly ranks last, chosen first by just 4%. People are not reaching for a chatbot because they trust it. They are reaching for it because the alternative has a price tag, and the chatbot is what happens to be there.
The reasons underneath split the generations into two different problems. Boomers skip counsel because they judge the matter simple, ranking that first at 32% against 6% of Gen Z. Younger adults report the opposite: 43% of Gen Z put difficulty reaching an attorney in their top three, nearly double the 24% among both Gen X and boomers. One group is exercising judgment about when a lawyer is needed, and the other is describing a door that will not open. Both end at the same place, drafting documents that will be read years later by someone looking for the weak clause.
Cost Is Doing the Deciding
Legal help is priced like a professional service and arrives like an emergency. Nobody budgets for the letter from the landlord or the sibling who contests the will, so the question of whether to hire someone gets answered by whatever is in the account that month. What follows is rarely a clean yes or no. People trade down to a free tool, put the matter off a few weeks, take a narrower slice of help than they need, or let it go entirely, and each of those choices registers as a decision about money rather than a decision about law.
Among the 641 Americans who needed legal help in the past year, cost pushed 84% into a cheaper substitute, a delay, or no help at all. Substitution sits at the top of the ladder, with 35% handling the matter themselves and 29% turning to free or lower-cost online resources. Another 27% used AI instead of hiring an attorney. Retreat sits below substitution as more than four in ten (42%) either delayed the matter or dropped it entirely, and just 9% say money did not shape their approach at all.
Income sorts the pressure. Among adults earning under $50,000, 58% report cost changing how they sought legal help, against 41% of those earning $150,000 or more, and 54% of the lower-income group ranks saving money as the single biggest reason to skip an attorney, compared with 43% at the high end. Those income figures are unweighted actuals measured across all adults, so they sit apart from the stratified age and gender numbers.
Generation looks like an even sharper divide until the base is held constant. Cost reshaped legal help for 66% of millennials and 35% of boomers when measured across all adults, but 76% of millennials faced a legal need last year against 46% of boomers, and among people who actually needed help the spread narrows to 85% of Gen Z and 77% of boomers. Age changes how often someone collides with a legal problem, not how much price governs the response. Money saved at the front end is deferred rather than saved, because a deed filed wrong or a will that fails on a technicality bills later, with interest.
When the Shortcut Backfires
A bad legal document does not announce itself. It sits in a drawer or a cloud folder behaving exactly like a good one, and the person who made it goes on believing the matter is handled. The flaw surfaces when someone with an opposing interest goes looking for it, which might be a bank at closing, a probate judge, or a brother who expected the house. By then the cheap fix has usually expired and the person is paying a professional to repair what a professional would have charged less to do correctly.
More than a third of Americans (36%) report that do-it-yourself legal work caused a real problem, and the rate climbs to 41% among the 774 who have handled a legal matter alone. What happened to them is concrete. Among Gen Z, the generation least likely to start a legal question with an attorney, it is 57%. Hiring an attorney afterward affected 12% and paying to fix mistakes 11%, while 14% watched the matter drag out and another 14% described significant stress or anxiety. Counting only those who took a direct financial hit brings the total to 24%.
The AI-specific picture is worse than the topline suggests. Among the 649 who have used AI for legal information, 34% later found it was wrong, outdated, or misleading, and a further 22% cannot say whether they were misled at all. Uncertainty is not reassurance. Someone who cannot tell whether the advice was sound has no way to know whether the document sitting in the drawer is sound either.
Adoption and harm run in the same direction rather than opposite ones. Gen Z reports harm at 57% and millennials at 42%, against 24% of Gen X and 17% of boomers, a line that tracks AI use almost exactly. Gen Z is five times likelier than boomers to have hired an attorney to fix DIY legal work (20% against 4%) and to have had it delay resolutions (23% against 4%). None of that makes 36% a ceiling, because legal errors surface on someone else’s schedule, when a lender pulls the title or an executor reads the will, and the most exposed people are the ones who have not found out yet.
Everyone Knows to Double-Check. Almost Nobody Does.
Verify what the machine tells you. Nobody argues with the instruction, which is what makes it such a comfortable thing to say and such an easy thing to skip. The trouble is that verification is not habit or an attitude, it is a task, and doing it on a legal question means opening the statute, reading the case, and judging whether the answer actually fits the situation in front of you. A person equipped to do that had less reason to ask a chatbot in the first place.
Agreement on verification is close to universal and unusually firm. Three in four Americans (76%) agree AI-generated legal information should always be checked before anyone acts on it, and 50% hold that view strongly, the highest strong agreement any statement in the study drew. Awareness is not the problem. Among the 678 people who have actually used AI for legal information, only 24% always verify what it gives them, and 23% rarely or never do.
Disclosure applies to a second test, and the results run the same direction. Among the 679 open to using AI for legal paperwork, 30% would tell a court or the other party they used it, 37% would not, and 33% are unsure. No majority forms in any direction, which leaves the question of whether a judge or an opposing party is entitled to know essentially unsettled. Underneath it sits a more basic gap, with 14% acknowledging they cannot tell when a legal issue requires a licensed attorney at all.
Age splits conviction from conduct. Boomers are the most insistent that AI legal information be checked, at 89% against 63% of Gen Z, and the least willing to admit using it, with 14% saying they would tell a court or the other party compared with 47% of Gen Z. Whether that reflects discretion or reluctance, the standard everyone endorses hits the same wall in practice. Checking whether a chatbot’s answer about a homestead exemption or a trust funding requirement is correct means reading the statute and judging whether it fits, which is the work a person pays an attorney to do.
Trust Holds Where the Stakes Are Highest
People do not extend trust evenly. They will take a stranger’s word on a restaurant and demand credentials for a surgeon, and the sorting happens automatically, without anyone consciously running the calculation. Legal help gets sorted the same way, which is why the same person who asks a chatbot what “per stirpes” means will not hand it the will itself. Underneath that instinct sits something the sorting cannot reach: when the document fails, somebody has to be answerable, and nobody has settled who that is.
Confidence sorts cleanly, and it does not favor the machines. Three in four Americans (74%) feel very or extremely confident relying on a licensed attorney, a level no other source approaches: government websites reach 36%, legal templates sit at 28%, traditional search results 25%, and AI chatbots 19%. Run the scale the other way and 58% report little or no confidence in an AI chatbot for legal information. TikTok creators finish last in the study, with 77% saying the same.
Comfort with AI narrows as consequences widen. Relying on AI alone draws 21% for explaining legal terminology, 17% for drafting a basic document such as a will, 14% for reviewing a contract, 8% for preparing court documents, and 7% for courtroom representation. The mirror image runs to near-unanimity, rising from 83% who want an attorney involved in drafting a basic legal document to 93% for courtroom representation. Many want that attorney to keep clear of the technology altogether, with 56% preferring counsel who uses no AI for drafting and 64% for contract review.
When the two sources disagree, the contest is not close: 64% side with the attorney and 8% with AI, while 18% would seek another opinion. Discomfort holds at the extreme end as well, where 63% reject the idea of an AI system representing them in court and 47% reject it strongly. Yet the question of who pays when an AI-generated document fails has no settled answer. Blame splits five ways and tops out at just 21% for the person who used the document, with the next-closest answer at 18%, which leaves the risk sitting by default with whoever pressed generate.
The Real Cost of the Cheapest Option
Nobody drafting their own will at midnight is being reckless. They are responding rationally to a system that priced them out of the alternative, at the exact moment the need arrived and refused to wait. Solving it yourself with whatever tool answers is triage, and triage is a reasonable response to an emergency a person cannot afford. The trouble starts after the emergency passes.
A legal document is not written to be understood on the night it is made. Its real audience arrives years later with an incentive to find the weakest clause, whether that is a beneficiary who feels shorted or a title company that will not insure. Confidence at the moment of drafting has almost nothing to do with whether the document holds. The person who feels most certain is often the one who has not yet met the reader who matters.
The useful line runs between decisions a person can undo and decisions they cannot, rather than between attorneys and chatbots. Researching a term costs an hour if the answer turns out wrong, while executing a will costs something that gets paid by someone else, usually after the person who made the choice is gone. Burris Law has spent two decades on that second category, doing estate planning, wills, and trusts work where a single clause decides what family inherits and what it argues about. The tools will keep improving, and knowing which side of the line you are standing on will keep being the part no tool can do for you.
Methodology
Burris Law surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults in September 2026 about how they handle legal questions, when they turn to AI and other online resources instead of an attorney, and what happened when they did. The sample was stratified and segmented by age and gender, and results are post-stratified where available. Percentages may not total 100% due to rounding.
About Burris Law
Burris Law is a family-owned California law practice headquartered in Orange County with offices in Ventura, specializing in probate, trust administration, estate planning, real estate law, and business law. For over two decades the firm has guided families, property owners, and business owners through the documents and disputes that decide what happens to what they have built. That work centers on exactly the matters this research found Americans most often attempt alone, where a small drafting error can take years to surface and far longer to undo.
Fair Use Statement
The information in this article may be shared and reused for non-commercial purposes only. If you reference these findings, please credit Burris Law and include a link back to this original research.