Anika Jaitley, Daniel W. Linna Jr., Hon. Xavier Rodriguez, V.S. Subrahmanian & Siyu Tao, Artificial Intelligence in Federal Courts: A Random-Sample Survey of Judges, 27 SEDONA CONF. J. _____ (forthcoming 2026). “The purpose of this study is to understand how, and to what extent, federal judges and other personnel who work in their chambers use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their judicial work. We selected a stratified random sample of 502 federal bankruptcy, magistrate, district court, and court of appeals judges from a population of 1,738 current federal judges. Of the 502 judges that we surveyed via email, 112 responded (22.3% response rate). Although a majority of responding judges at least occasionally use AI tools in their judicial work, relatively few report using AI on a daily or weekly basis. Approximately 38% of judges reported that they did not use AI at all in their work. This pattern suggests that AI is present in federal judicial chambers but not yet a routine, embedded part of most judges’ decision-making processes. Respondents report more frequent use of legal-specific AI tools integrated into established research platforms (such as Westlaw’s AI- Assisted Research and similar tools) than of stand-alone, general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini. This pattern indicates that vendor familiarity and perceived reliability may strongly shape which AI tools judges are willing to deploy in chambers. Judges’ attitudes toward AI are almost evenly split between optimism and concern. Many respondents simultaneously recognize AI’s potential efficiency gains and express unease about hallucinations, “zombie cases,” and skill atrophy. When AI training is offered by court administration, most judges attend, but a sizeable majority have not been offered such training or are unsure whether training has been available, suggesting unmet demand for high-quality, judiciary-specific education on AI.”