When Courts Adopt AI in the Dark: Privacy, Legitimacy, and the Democratic Stakes of Los Angeles’s Learned Hand Experiment
by J.R. Howell
Introduction
On March 18, 2026 the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC)—the nation’s largest trial court—quietly announced a limited pilot program with Learned Hand, a proprietary generative‑AI platform built specifically for judges. Court administrators described the tool as a “judicial sous chef” that