Serving as a prosecutor is never easy. But in recent years, this essential work has become even more challenging—sometimes even overwhelming.
What we are seeing
According to a 2026 Forrester Consulting report, each prosecutor in the U.S. must handle anywhere from 80 to 150 cases annually, a number that has been increasing over the past few years. That’s at a time when most prosecutors’ offices are having to do more with less, thanks largely to strained public budgets. In fact, 77% of prosecutors responding to a survey reported that their offices are struggling with staffing shortages even as their caseloads increase.1
Now prosecutors are facing yet another challenge. They’re finding themselves in courtrooms facing public defenders who have been using AI-powered legal tools. And those tools are giving them a powerful advantage over prosecutors in court cases.
It’s a remarkable twist. Historically, public defenders have been more under-resourced than prosecutors. Overall, that’s still true today. But public defender offices have actually incorporated AI into their workflows much more quickly than have prosecutorials’ offices.
Indeed, a growing number of state public defender offices, federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court, and all federal public defenders are already using AI-powered legal tools such as Thomson Reuters CoCounsel. That has resulted in a parity gap that has put prosecutors at all jurisdictional levels at a distinct disadvantage.
When people in all professions talk about the advantages of AI, they typically emphasize the efficiencies the technology can deliver. For prosecutors, that’s a crucial attribute. But even more important is how AI’s capabilities can help these time-crunched professionals to be more courtroom-ready.
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Read more ↗Why the AI parity gap opened between prosecutors and public defenders
Why has this parity gap opened up? It’s certainly not because public defenders had larger budgets than prosecutors do. In fact, it’s precisely because they have had smaller budgets while also facing higher volume pressure. That one-two punch hit them earlier and harder, forcing defenders to adopt AI tools while prosecutors, constrained by tighter budgets and growing caseloads, have had less room to follow suit. Now that advantage has become increasingly visible – and painfully so – in the courtroom.
For instance, public defenders’ office staff can use AI to run a full analysis of a 600-page file in a matter of minutes. A “manual” review can take hours. This is about more than saving time. Such a capability can fundamentally shift the balance in a trial by giving a public defender an advantage that may be extraordinarily difficult for a prosecutor to neutralize.
It might require the prosecutor to negotiate rather than risk an analytic disadvantage in court.
How AI helps prosecutors prepare for the courtroom
How to fight back? There are a number of ways that AI can help prosecutors level the battlefield when facing off against public defenders (and other counsel) in the courtroom:
- A prosecutor’s office using traditional methods requires anywhere from four to eight hours to assemble a witness list, an elements table, and an incident chronology. An AI tool designed specifically for legal practices can do all three in less than a half-hour. That process can involve uploading police reports and criminal complaints as well as citations to the source documents.
- Reviewing a two- to three-hour deposition is necessary work—as well as arduous, time-consuming, and often tedious. In just a couple of minutes, AI can summarize a long deposition. A well-designed tool can also provide hyperlinks and spotlight inconsistencies in the testimony.
- With caseloads growing and the proliferation of digital evidence accelerating, prosecutors are finding that Brady compliance has become more challenging than ever—and more crucial. The scale and complexity of discovery can overwhelm office staff. Prosecutors’ office staff can use AI to assemble and organize all that evidence with speed and greater accuracy.
One crucial point to note: AI cannot replace human legal expertise. Many prosecutors are suspicious of AI because they’ve seen how it can be abused. They’ve read about instances where attorneys have submitted AI-generated briefs and other legal documents—only to discover (too late) that the document has cited nonexistent cases and made other disastrous errors.
This doesn’t mean that prosecutors should dismiss AI out of hand, of course. (Public defenders haven’t.) What it does mean is that prosecutorial staff should review what a tool generates. It also requires prosecutors’ offices to ensure that the tools they’re considering are state of the art, and that they access thoroughly reliable data and legal information.
What prosecutors need to ask themselves now is: Do we know whether our local public defender office is using an AI legal tool—one that puts us at risk in court?
In a follow-up post, we’ll look at practical strategies prosecutors can use to close the AI parity gap. In the meantime, learn how CoCounsel Legal can help prosecutors’ offices work more efficiently, prepare with confidence, and keep pace in the courtroom. Explore CoCounsel Legal for prosecutors.
1. Thomson Reuters Internal Study CoCounsel Legal, 2025.
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