During his career, Joseph McMullen has dealt 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 attorney faced a problem of scale. He had three federal trials in three months – two involving prison deaths, one involving American children detained at the border – and terabytes of documents. He turned to artificial intelligence to help him get through this ordeal.
McMullen’s journey to the courtroom was unconventional. A former analyst at the consulting firm Bain & Company, he earned a law degree at the University of Virginia and trained at the Trial Lawyers College (now called Gerry Spence Method) in Wyoming in a program specializing in the emotional art of storytelling. His emphasis on both analytical rigor and narrative instinct led him, unexpectedly, to artificial intelligence.
Scientific American spoke to McMullen about how AI can allow lawyers to focus on what makes us human.
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[[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
You litigate civil rights cases against local and federal law enforcement. What does this look like on the ground?
They often involve violence – shootings or tasings. A customer was diabetic and had a seizure in a restaurant. The police arrived and concluded it could be drug related. They subpoenaed him and arrested him, even though paramedics said his blood sugar had dropped.
Other cases involve deaths in prison – failure to follow rules intended to keep inmates safe, whether through inmate-on-inmate violence, physical abuse by staff, or failure to provide necessary medical care when there are obvious signs of distress.
When did you ask AI for help?
Early 2024: I had already looked at ChatGPT to see if he could find me a case, and he was hallucinating the perfect case, but it wasn’t real. ChatGPT was clear and said the case with the full quote did not exist. This ended any interest I had in using AI, probably by the end of 2023.
But with these looming trials, I thought, there are tasks I’m doing that aren’t the best use of my time. So I started exploring AI platforms like Clearbrief and Briefpoint.
What I discovered is that to run a successful trial, you need to do certain things. First of all, gather all the elements likely to concern your file: documents, location data, photographs. Second, determine what your case is. Much of this analysis can be done by AI. You can feed it data and make it break it down.
But being a lawyer is also about judgment – that part can’t be left to AI yet. Third, tell the story of your case convincingly. It’s the human element. By getting help with collection and analysis, it frees up time to focus on uncovering the story that AI can’t find. It can analyze 100,000 text messages and let me understand what’s relevant so I don’t have to.
Can you give an example in which AI changed the outcome of a case?
We represented a girl named Julia and her brother Oscar, both American citizens. [In 2019, when Julia was nine years old and Oscar was 14]Julia was accused of being an impostor, an undocumented cousin [whom Oscar was accused of attempting to smuggle] on the other side of the border. Oscar was detained for 14 hours and Julia [was held] for 34 hours, a large part [that time being spent] in an underground prison. Finally, Telemundo learned the news [of this]. When the journalists arrived, the people at the border realized what was happening and let them go.
It was a five-year battle involving numerous documents. I used Clearbrief to write a dissertation with a hyperlink to evidence that AI helped me sort through. The judge gave our clients a substantial verdict, with a discussion of how what happened was inconsistent with our values.
Have you used AI for strategic purposes rather than just to sort through evidence?
Yes. Another example: a successful trial for death in prison in May 2024. This case was recently upheld on appeal. To help my co-counsel prepare for oral argument, I uploaded the appellate briefs and recordings into the CoCounsel software and asked him to write an opinion in which we lose on each issue – the best analysis of why we lose. This generated opinion. I passed it around so we could prepare ourselves for the best arguments against us. Just because you exclude the other side’s lawyer doesn’t mean you’ll win: Judges have their own research teams and their own wisdom. My Co-Counsel did a phenomenal job and really appreciated having this opposing argument. All this work was done in less than a minute.
What is your philosophy on how lawyers should use this technology?
First, check everything. If AI cites a case, read it. And never upload confidential information without guaranteeing that it will not be used for AI training.
Beyond that, think about what advocacy is. Aristotle told us we need effective advocacy logos, philosophy And pathetic—logic, credibility and emotion. Every Aspect of Law Involves Logic, AI Can Help Us [with]. When it comes to credibility – being thorough, looking at everything – AI can help with that too. But emotion – I don’t think AI can add that. Emotion is about finding a real human connection with issues that concern us all. Each of these cases was about love, betrayal, loss and joy.
Use AI to help you with any logical task. Perform logical analysis and collection. You will free up time to understand the emotional story that only a human can understand. This is what makes AI great: not helping lawyers turn into robots, but helping them focus more on the humanity of what we do.
A version of this article appeared in the March 2026 issue of Scientific American as “Joseph McMullen.”
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