Over the course of his career, Joseph McMullen has worked with some of the most powerful agencies in the country: the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But in early 2024, the San Diego-based civil rights lawyer faced a problem of scale. He faced three federal lawsuits in three months – two related to prison deaths, one related to American children detained at the border – and several terabytes of documents. To help deal with all this, they turned to artificial intelligence.
McMullen’s path to the courtroom has been unconventional. A former analyst at the consulting firm Bain & Company, he received a law degree at the University of Virginia and trained in a program at the Trial Lawyers College in Wyoming (now called the Gerry Spence Method) that specialized in the emotional craft of storytelling. The emphasis he places on both analytical rigor and narrative instinct has led him unexpectedly toward artificial intelligence.
scientific American spoke to McMullen about how AI can free lawyers to focus on how they make us human.
On supporting science journalism
If you enjoyed this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism Subscribing By purchasing a subscription, you are helping ensure a future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
(An edited transcript of the interview follows.)
You prosecute civil rights cases against local and federal law enforcement. What does it look like on the ground?
They often involve violence – shootings or beatings. A customer was diabetic and had a stroke in a restaurant. Police arrived and concluded that it may have been drug related. Despite paramedics telling him his blood sugar was low, they tased him and arrested him.
Other cases involve deaths in prison – whether due to failure to follow rules to keep prisoners safe, whether through prisoner-on-prisoner violence, physical abuse by staff or failure to provide necessary medical care when there were obvious signs someone was in distress.
When did you turn to AI for help?
Early 2024 – I first looked at ChatGPT to see if it could find a case for me, and it gave the impression of a true case, but it wasn’t real. ChatGPT clarified and said that the issue with the full quote does not exist. This probably ends any interest I have in using AI in late 2023.
But with these looming tests, I thought, there are things I’m doing that aren’t the best use of my time. So I started exploring AI platforms like Clearbrief and Briefpoint.
What I’ve found is that there are a few things you need to do to have a successful test. First, collect everything related to your case—documents, location data, photos. Second, figure out what your case is about. A lot of that analysis can be done by AI. You can feed it data and decompose it.
But advocacy is also about decision making – that part can’t be delivered to AI yet. So third, tell the story of your case effectively. That’s the human element. Getting help with collection and analysis frees up time to focus on uncovering stories that AI can’t spot. It can analyze 100,000 text messages and give me a sense of what’s relevant, so I don’t have to do that.
Can you give an example where AI changed the outcome of a case?
We represented a girl named Julia and her brother Oscar, both US citizens. (In 2019, when Julia was nine years old and Oscar was 14), Julia was accused of smuggling an undocumented cousin (who was accused of attempting to smuggle Oscar) across the border. Oscar was held for 14 hours, and Julia was held for 34 hours, most of which (she spent that time) in an underground prison. Eventually Telemundo got the news. When the journalists arrived, the people at the border realized what was happening and let them go.
That was a five-year battle that involved a lot of documentation. I used ClearBrief to put together a short hyperlink to the evidence that the AI ​​helped me sort out. The judge handed down an important ruling to our clients, discussing how what happened was inconsistent with our values.
Have you used AI for strategy rather than sorting through evidence?
Yes. Another example: a successful prison death case in May 2024. That case was recently upheld on appeal. To help my co-counsel prepare for oral argument, I uploaded the appellate brief and record into the software CoCounsel and asked her to put together an opinion detailing why we lost on each issue – the best analysis of why we lost. This created public opinion. I circulated it so we could be prepared for the best arguments against us. Just because you are the other side’s attorney doesn’t mean you’ll win – judges have their own research staff and knowledge. My co-counsel did a wonderful job and greatly appreciated that opposing argument. All that work was done in less than a minute.
What are your thoughts on how lawyers should use this technology?
First, verify everything. If the AI ​​cites a case, read it. And never upload confidential information without a guarantee that it will not be used to learn the AI.
Also, think about what advocacy is all about. Aristotle tells us the requirements of effective advocacy logo, ethos And courage-Logic, credibility and emotion. AI can help us in every aspect of lawyering related to argument. The reliability part – being thorough, reviewing everything – AI can help with that too. But emotion – I don’t think AI can add to that. Emotion is exploring genuine human connection with issues that concern us all. Each of these cases is about love, betrayal, loss and happiness.
Use AI to help with any logical task. Prepare logical analysis and collection. You will take the time to understand the emotional story that only a human being can understand. That’s what makes AI great: not helping turn lawyers into robots but helping lawyers focus more on the humanity of what we’re doing.
A version of this article appeared in the March 2026 issue scientific American As “Joseph McMullen”.
