Long letter, confident tone, page after page of jargon? Lee Stutt explains why we don't mind if AI wrote the letter you've received (or is sent to us)

ljh610

Oct 14

5 min read

It runs to eleven pages. It has headings, numbered paragraphs, a dozen Acts of Parliament and a few Latin phrases. It says you're in breach, you're liable for everything, you've got seven days to pay and proceedings will follow.

It might be from a solicitor. It might just as easily be from a contractor, a neighbour, a customer or a former business partner who's never instructed a lawyer in their life.

More and more of these letters are written with AI. The prose is fluent and confident, and it's built to alarm. You read it at the kitchen table, your stomach drops, and you start doing sums about what it'll cost to deal with.

Here's our advice: STOP. Don't read it a third time. Send it to us and we'll take the pain.

Length isn't strength

Strip the jargon out of a long letter and most claims come down to four questions:

What does the sender say you did, or didn't do?
What rule or agreement makes that your responsibility?
What loss has it caused?
What do they want?

The rest is repetition, assertion and law that either doesn't apply or has been misstated. AI tools are brilliant at producing text that sounds authoritative. They're hopeless at telling the writer whether the claim underneath is any good. We regularly see letters that cite the wrong statute, apply a rule to a situation it was never meant for, or rely on cases that don't say what the letter says they do. AI is great at answering exactly the question that has been asked; it doesn't tell you what the question ought to have been.

Why we're not fazed

A letter that's obviously machine-made can be read by a machine. So that's what we do first.

We use AI to do the heavy lifting on a letter like this. It pulls out what's actually being alleged, strips away the padding, checks each point against the documents you give us and flags where the law has been mangled. That used to take a lawyer hours. Now the first pass takes a fraction of the time, and we don't charge you for lawyer hours we haven't spent.

The judgment stays human. A solicitor reads what comes back, decides which points carry legal weight, decides what the reply should say and decides whether it goes out. You get the speed of the technology and the accountability of a regulated lawyer. The sender of the eleven-page letter has only the first of those.

Why the letter was sent doesn't change the answer

Some of these letters come from people with a real grievance who've done their best with the tools they've got. Some are designed to make you spend money and lose time until you give in. We don't need to decide which. The approach is the same either way: work out what's actually being alleged, and deal with that.

What you don't have to do

You don't have to answer every paragraph. Before a claim is issued, the court expects a sensible, proportionate exchange of enough information for each side to understand the other's position, and a genuine look at whether the dispute can be resolved without a trial. A judge asks whether you behaved reasonably. A judge doesn't ask whether you rebutted every sentence of a letter that was never going to be read in full.

You don't have to accept the letter's version of events, either. A confident narrative is still only one person's account.

What you shouldn't do is ignore it. A measured reply on the points that matter protects your position if the matter ever reaches a court. And if what's arrived is a claim form or other court papers, rather than a letter, strict deadlines are already running. Bring those to us the day they arrive.

What we do with it

We read it, reduce it to the issues that matter and test each one against the documents and the law. We work out what's wrong, what's missing, what the sender would have to prove, and whether time limits or the wrong choice of defendant undermine the claim. If part of it's fair, we tell you. If none of it is, we say so in plain terms.

Then we reply to the points that matter, firmly, and without adopting the letter's version of events. No shaming, no lecture about how you ended up with it. Most people who bring us one of these are rattled. That's what the letter was designed to do.

What it costs

You'll hear that a letter like this means thousands in legal fees and that you're stuffed whatever you do. That isn't how we approach it. Responding to a letter is a different job from fighting a case, and it should cost a good deal less. Where the letter's obviously machine-made and the first pass is quick, that's reflected in what we charge.

We tell you what we expect the work to cost before we start, and we agree the scope with you. And if the right answer is a short reply, or no reply at all, we'll say that too.

If you're the one who use AI

We see this from the other direction too. If you've drafted a claim or a complaint with an AI tool, bring it to us before you send it. We can tell you which points are sound, correct the law and the authorities, and advise whether the claim's worth pursuing. Courts have already dealt with cases where AI tools produced citations to cases that don't exist. A review before sending is cheaper than finding that out later.

Questions people ask

Does a long letter mean a strong claim? No. Length tells you how much was written. It tells you nothing about whether the claim would succeed.

Do I have to reply to every point? No. You need a reasonable, proportionate response that deals with what matters.

Can I just ignore it? Not safely. Ignoring a letter can count against you later, and a missed deadline on court papers can lead to judgment against you.

Isn't it overkill to instruct a solicitor over a letter from a neighbour or a contractor? Often it's the opposite. A short, accurate reply at an early stage frequently ends the matter.

If it was written by AI, do you charge less? Where we can use AI to do the first pass quickly, we spend less lawyer time, and that's reflected in the cost. A solicitor still decides what the response says.

How Stutt Associates can help

At Stutt Associates, we deal with disputes between neighbours, businesses, customers, contractors and family members. If you've received a letter that's long, aggressive and hard to follow, send it to us. We'll tell you what it says, what matters in it, what it'll cost to respond and what we recommend. You can put the letter down.