Sir Robert Buckland calls for costs provisions to be used against AI 'slop' submissions flooding courts, warning that cheap production conceals high justice-system costs

Sir Robert Buckland, the former Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, delivered a keynote at the Costs Law Reports Annual Conference at Lincoln's Inn on 24 September 2026, calling for courts to make greater use of existing costs conduct provisions to address what he described as a 'tsunami of AI slop' hitting the civil justice system. AI slop is a colloquial term for machine-generated legal submissions that are inaccurate, verbose, and of little practical assistance to courts. Buckland argued that the central misconception driving the problem is the conflation of production cost with justice-system cost: while an AI tool may generate a 50-page document in seconds at near-zero cost, someone must still read it, verify the authorities, answer it, and allow a judge to identify what the case is actually about. He contended that the CPR 44 conduct provisions, under which courts may consider whether it was reasonable to raise or pursue an issue and the manner in which proceedings have been conducted, are underused tools for penalising submissions that waste judicial time. Buckland also addressed the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision in PACCAR, describing how it placed the enforceability of significant numbers of litigation funding agreements in doubt by concluding that certain agreements fell within the statutory definition of a damages-based agreement, with particular impact on collective proceedings that depend on third-party capital. He noted a personal interest as a member of the advisory board of BSV Claims Limited, the class representative in an ongoing Competition Appeal Tribunal claim involving alleged anti-competitive conduct by cryptocurrency companies.