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ChatGPT practised law without a licence to help an embittered litigant-in-person hound an injured lawyer, a US lawsuit has alleged.

Graciela Dela Torre was employed by Nippon in the US and made a claim on its in-house insurance policy when she was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and tennis elbow. She sued the company when her benefits were withdrawn, and in January 2024 the parties settled with the stipulation that Dela Torre would not bring another claim.

According to Nippon’s case against OpenAI, Dela Torre came to believe that her lawyer, Kevin Pobst, made errors in the settlement. When she fed his response to her accusations into ChatGPT, it told her that Pobst’s denials “invalidated Dela Torre’s feelings, dismissed her perspective, and deflected responsibility for her dissatisfaction”, and so she fired him.

Nippon's complaint states that ChatGPT then became Dela Torre’s de facto lawyer in a campaign to reopen her dispute with Nippon, responding to her prompts by generating legal arguments.

Although the court denied Dela Torre’s motion, ruling that “her second thoughts are not a valid reason to reopen this lawsuit”, Nippon said she subsequently filed a further 44 motions and 14 requests for judicial notice.

The applications “serve no legitimate legal or procedural purpose” and all were “drafted with the assistance of ChatGPT”, claimed Nippon.

ChatGPT also helped Dela Torre target Nippon's legal counsel, Justin Wax Jacobs, the company alleged.

After the court granted Nippon an extension of time because Wax Jacobs “was involved in an accident and had suffered injuries”, Dela Torre filed a motion asking the Court to compel him to “provide verified proof” of his medical incapacity. 

She compared his injuries to her own “purported ailments” of “Permanent, irreversible Nerve and Tendon Damage, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Pain and Migraines” and sought Wax Jacobs’ medical records as a “vindictive response to a perceived disparity in judicial treatment”, alleged Nippon.

Dela Torre “used the motion as a vehicle to harass an injured attorney" and "escalated her campaign of personal harassment" through claims which included "accusing Wax Jacobs of forgery”.

ChatGPT was her willing accomplice, said Nippon. “As a lay person with no legal experience who purportedly suffers from physical ailments to her hands and elbows, Dela Torre would not have been able to prosecute her misconduct and file at the same volume and frequency but for the legal assistance provided by OpenAI through its ChatGPT application”, alleged Nippon’s complaint.

It also accused ChatGPT of practising law without a licence, noting that “Although it was able to pass the Uniform Bar Examination with a combined score of 297, it has not been admitted to practice law in the State of Illinois or in any other jurisdiction within the United States”.

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OpenAI amended the terms of service for ChatGPT in October 2025 to prohibit it from giving tailored legal advice - possibly encouraged by Nippon’s demand for punitive damages of $10m.