Can you DIY your foreclosure with AI?
None of us can avoid AI. It’s not only a part of every Google search now, it’s right up top of every search now, the “AI Overview.” As an attorney, I can’t turn on a computer without being assaulted by AI ads “specifically tailored” for my practice.
AI, I am told by these ads, is “revolutionizing many industries, including law.”
AI’s pitch to lawyers is that we now have everything we could ever need on one site just a few keystrokes away. I asked Gemini (Google’s newest AI function) what it could do for me, and it responded: “AI can automate many time-consuming tasks that you currently do, such as legal research, document review, and due diligence; analyze vast amounts of case law and legal precedent much faster than you can legal research . . .”
This also means you don’t have to be a lawyer to use AI for anything law-related.
The question then is: should you? Should non-lawyers use AI to help research information about legal issues, such as foreclosure? Should you take it a step further and use it to help you handle your foreclosure case yourself?
Let’s start with seeing what AI knows about foreclosure in Connecticut.
Adventures in Training AI
In my last blog post, I wrote about how a foreclosure lawsuit gets started. To prove a hunch, I went to Gemini and asked it, “How does a foreclosure action in Connecticut begin?”
The answer was way off. It missed what “court papers” are and how they are served on a foreclosure defendant. The answer was general, generic, and not accurate to how things work in Connecticut. In other words, it got everything wrong. So, I corrected it.
I started with typing into Gemini what “court papers” are. I ended up explaining everything. When I was done, Gemini had the right answers and was then able to give me back the correct information.
Next, I asked it about how serving papers works. Gemini = wrong answer again. It took six more questions/comments from me to finally get an answer that came close to matching the correct information that I put in my blog post.
That’s the thing about AI – it gets all its information from the internet. In less time than it takes for a hummingbird’s wing to flap, it searches and analyzes everything online, from the Connecticut State Statutes, case law, law journals . . . but also Reddit threads, Facebook posts, and Quora answers. So only some of the answer and information comes from reliable sources.
It’s important to understand that none of the above is a “glitch,” it is part of the design of AI services. This is how AI learns. Of course, it only works if the person typing on the other end knows that AI is getting it wrong. Then it adapts.
Foreclosure Law and AI
Every area of the law has its uniquely challenging aspects. Using AI for answers and advice, then, absolutely requires a knowledgeable, experienced practitioner to analyze that advice, particularly as AI still has a well-publicized problem: when it doesn’t know the answer, it will fake it. It invents an answer. Then it runs with the facts it made up which leads to a string of logic but based on false information or fabricated explanations.
If you don’t have a solid grounding on the subject you are researching on AI, there is a strong chance that you will end up deep in a false information rabbit hole.
Researching Your Connecticut Foreclosure Case
When you are served with a foreclosure action it’s only natural to want to gather as much information as quickly as possible. The Internet is a good place to start, but I highly recommend you skip AI.
Instead, there are several guides to the foreclosure process on the State of Connecticut’s Judicial Department website – among others. They can be dry, they can be overwhelming, and they may not tell you what you want to hear. But these guides will give you a solid picture of the process, time frames, potential outcomes, and more. You’ll get an idea of what’s happening.
AI might also give you that (but see above- it may not be accurate), but AI won’t talk to you about your specific situation- why you fell behind on your mortgage, how long you were out of work, what you’ve done to try to catch up; and it won’t listen to your story about how you have tried to reach someone at your mortgage company, left a bunch of messages, but no one has called you back. It won’t determine whether you should immediately apply for the court’s mediation program and apply or reapply for a mortgage modification, or whether you should wait a bit longer to do that…. I wouldn’t ask AI to give me a strategy for how to handle my foreclosure if my life depended on it.
Don’t let Artificial Intelligence let you think “you got this.” It wants you to think you do, it is designed to make you think you got this. But we’re talking about your house, your life, your family. Don’t let it give you artificial confidence.
A lawyer can give you real information and real confidence, a real strategy for dealing with that mortgage modification application, for dealing with those papers you were just served. Let me help you with that.
