The ‘Free’ Lawyer That Could Cost You Everything: The Dangers of Using AI for Legal Advice

Nowhere is the risk of AI advice greater than with wills and Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs). These documents are meant to protect you and the people you love at the hardest times of your lives. Getting them wrong doesn’t just cause problems, it can make them worthless.

In England and Wales, a valid will must be signed in front of two independent witnesses. Those witnesses must also sign. The rules about who can act as a witness are strict and any error can make the whole document invalid.

An AI template won’t know that your witness is also a beneficiary (that would disqualify them). It won’t flag vague wording around specific gifts. It won’t ask about inheritance tax. It won’t check whether a previous marriage affects your wishes.

The result? You have a document that looks like a will, one that feels like a will, but when the time comes, it isn’t one. The rules of intestacy then govern your estate. That may be far from what you intended. Your family then carries the fallout,  usually at the worst possible time.

A Lasting Power of Attorney gives someone you trust the legal authority to manage your affairs if you lose mental capacity. There are two types – one for property and finances, one for health and welfare. Each has its own rules, forms and registration process.

You must register an LPA with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) before anyone can use it. The process involves specific forms, a certificate provider and notification rules. Miss a step, use the wrong form, or word something incorrectly, and the OPG will reject it. Worse still, they might accept it,  only for someone to challenge it later.

An AI tool cannot walk you through this properly. It can’t ask the right questions about your situation and it can’t spot the nuances a qualified solicitor catches straight away. It gives a generic answer to a generic question. Your situation is anything but generic.

If you’re a council or housing association tenant living with damp, mould, broken heating, or structural damage, you have rights. Your landlord has a legal duty to keep your home safe and liveable. This is set out in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018. If they’ve failed to act after you reported the problem, you may be entitled to repairs and compensation.

But this is where using AI can turn a valid claim into a lost one. Ask an AI tool to draft a letter to your landlord, and it will produce something that sounds reasonable.

A qualified housing disrepair solicitor looks at the full picture. When did you first report the issue? How did your landlord respond? How has the disrepair affected your health and daily life? What’s the strongest route forward for you? No AI tool does that.

If you or a loved one has been harmed by negligent medical care – a missed diagnosis, a surgical error, a delayed cancer diagnosis -you might be tempted to use AI to help you navigate the process. Medical negligence claims are complex and they can feel overwhelming to tackle alone.

But this is perhaps where the danger of AI advice is greatest.

Medical negligence cases in England and Wales must usually reach court within three years of when you knew negligence may have caused your injury. Miss that deadline and your claim is almost certainly gone,  no matter how strong the evidence. An AI tool won’t assess when your time limit started running. It also won’t understand the rules around cases involving children or people with reduced mental capacity.

There’s also the matter of proving negligence. Showing that something went wrong is not enough. You have to show that a competent professional in the same position would not have made the same error. That requires expert medical evidence, an understanding of clinical standards and a skilled legal argument. No chatbot provides any of that.

People who contact NHS trusts directly, armed with AI-generated guidance, often make unintended admissions. Some accept early settlements they shouldn’t. Others miss the legal window entirely. Once that happens, very little can put it right.

There’s a well-known problem in AI called ‘hallucination’. This is when the model produces information that sounds plausible but is factually wrong or completely invented.

This happens with AI legal ‘advice’ more than most people realise.

In a well-known US case, a lawyer submitted a court filing that cited several legal precedents. All of them had been fabricated by ChatGPT. The cases didn’t exist. The lawyer faced serious professional consequences. But that was a lawyer who should have known better. What happens when an ordinary person builds their case on similarly invented ‘facts’?

In the UK, this is a real concern. AI tools regularly cite laws that have since been changed or repealed. They misstate procedural rules. They present out-of-date information as current law. The Renters’ Rights Bill, for example, makes significant changes to the landlord-tenant relationship in England. As we’ve already seen at our firm, many AI tools simply haven’t caught up.

And here’s the worst part: you often won’t know when the AI has misled you. The answer sounds authoritative. It looks correct. You act on it in good faith. It may only be much later that you discover what went wrong, by which point it can be too late.

Now compare that to the alternative. At Liberay Legal, we work on a no win, no fee basis for housing disrepair and medical negligence claims. There are no upfront costs. You only pay if we win. Our wills and estate planning team offer clear, transparent pricing that puts proper legal protection within reach of ordinary people.

Suddenly, ‘free’ doesn’t look so free.

We know that contacting a solicitor can feel daunting. You might worry about the cost. You might worry about being judged, or about not knowing enough to explain your situation clearly. We hear this all the time from the people we help.

But good legal support isn’t about impressing anyone with jargon. It’s about someone actually listening to you. Our team takes the time to understand what’s happened. We tell you honestly what your options are. We’re in your corner and we know the law, the process, and how to get you the right outcome.

That’s exactly what Liberay Legal is built around. We’re not a typical law firm. We exist because large institutions like landlords, NHS trusts, local councils have power, resources and legal teams. Everyday people deserve the same quality of support, without the intimidating price tag.

No chatbot will fight your corner. No AI will call your housing association on your behalf. No algorithm will notice that something you mentioned in passing is actually crucial to your case. That takes experience, expertise, and human judgement. You can’t code those things.

If any of the following applies to you, speak to a real solicitor before you take any action:

• You’re living with housing disrepair your landlord has failed to fix
• You believe you or a family member has been the victim of medical negligence
• You want to make a will that will hold up and truly reflect your wishes
• You want to put an LPA in place for yourself or a loved one

AI can be useful for general information and research. But when it comes to protecting your legal rights, your home, your health and the people you love, you deserve more than a best guess from a machine.

You deserve straight answers, in plain English, from people who know what they’re talking about. And crucially, from people who are regulated to give you that advice safely.

Dealing with housing disrepair? Worried about a medical negligence claim? Want to get your will and LPA sorted properly? Our team is here to help. We’ll give you an honest, no-obligation assessment of your situation.