Congressional lawyers are drowning in a wave of AI-generated legislative drafts, many riddled with errors and poorly constructed language. Eight current and former officials of the House Legislative Counsel Office said in interviews that a growing number of congressional offices and outside groups are relying on generative AI to draft bills, steadily intensifying pressure on the office. These officials noted that AI can produce massive volumes of text in an instant, forcing the office's attorneys to spend significant extra time reviewing and rewriting drafts. Many drafts contain various flaws whose negative impact extends far beyond Washington: they slow the legislative process and can trigger litigation due to incorrect statutory citations or faulty legal definitions.

Artificial intelligence has already disrupted software, defense, Hollywood, and many other industries. Now it has arrived on Capitol Hill, and this rapidly evolving technology may shape laws affecting millions of Americans in unpredictable ways. Daniel Schuman, executive director of the non-profit American Governance Institute, which advocates for government technology modernization, said: "AI performs well in many areas, but it cannot produce legislative text that can be formally enacted into law."

A source providing AI technology advice to congressional staff revealed that legislative aides and outside lobbying groups are "directly using Claude and ChatGPT to write bill provisions." The source said AI produces numerous errors, and the Legislative Counsel Office "spends more time fixing AI-written bills than lawyers would spend drafting from scratch."

Representative Joe Morelle, ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, issued a statement: "AI cannot replace the dedicated professional staff of the Legislative Counsel Office, who support the House in its most essential legislative work." Another Democratic member of the committee, Representative Norma Torres, said: "Over-reliance on AI-generated bill text may introduce errors, create unintended legal consequences, or produce provisions that fail to accurately reflect lawmakers' policy intentions."

The Legislative Counsel Office possesses the professional expertise essential for drafting high-quality legislation; it also emphasizes that the ultimate responsibility for submitting bills rests with members of Congress and their staff, and "that responsibility cannot be outsourced to chatbots." However, four congressional staff members involved in bill drafting said AI has become increasingly common in the House, with aides and advocacy organizations using AI daily to review and draft legislation. One House aide admitted: "The situation is genuinely concerning, yet almost no one is facing this problem head-on."

Why AI Struggles with Bill Drafting

People familiar with AI tools and the office's operations say legislative drafting is filled with critical details that easily trip up AI models. Wade Ballou, who served as head of the Legislative Counsel Office from 2016 to 2024, gave an example: whether a sum of money should be structured as a "tax credit, tax deduction, tax exemption, or direct appropriation" — such subtle distinctions often elude AI. A staff member who liaises with the office explained that if a bill defines "state" as only the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and tribal lands would be inadvertently excluded from federal programs — a common flaw in AI drafts.

Ari Hershowitz, a lawyer and technology expert who helped integrate tech tools into the office's workflow, noted that AI drafts also incorrectly cite outdated statutes, "essentially planting thousands of hidden hazards in the legal system." Schuman of the American Governance Institute said commercial AI tools on the market do not meet the level of detail control and nuanced legal understanding required for legislative drafting.

The Legislative Counsel Office's Critical Role

Screening out the various risks described above is precisely the responsibility of the Legislative Counsel Office. Its dozens of public servants constitute Congress's most important quality-control checkpoint. Marci Harris, executive director of POPVOX Foundation, a non-profit focused on government modernization, said: "It is the institutional strength of the Legislative Counsel Office that makes Congress's core constitutional power — the legislative power — a reality. Talking about Congress's legislative capacity is essentially talking about this office."

Warren Burke, head of the Legislative Counsel Office, testified at a March hearing that even if AI produces zero errors, its widespread adoption would further add to an already heavy workload. Burke declined to comment for this article. Over the past decade, the office has seen steady increases in legislative requests and the number of bills submitted to Congress. During the last Congress, Burke's team of 61 lawyers and 19 support staff processed more than 30,000 bill drafts, with only about one-third actually introduced for consideration. Burke testified last year before the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee that in the first 60 days of the current Congress, the office received 5,623 legislative drafting requests — a 72% increase compared to two years earlier. AI is expected to continue driving up request volumes, potentially slowing the office's response times to members' review requests.

Burke's March hearing testimony noted: "Externally produced text, whether from humans or computers, often takes longer to review and revise to ensure provisions achieve the policy goals the sponsor intends." A source who liaises with the office said this delay may push some members to submit AI-generated drafts directly, bypassing the Legislative Counsel Office's polishing process. So far, no bill voted on by either chamber has been entirely AI-written. But Ballou and Schuman both said AI bill text is riddled with terminology misuse; Ballou, Schuman, and Hershowitz added that incorrectly citing sections of the U.S. Code is a frequent error.

If office lawyers fail to catch these mistakes and flaws slip into formal statutory text, administrative agencies and courts will struggle to interpret vague or erroneous provisions, and Congress will later expend more effort fixing the lingering problems. Ballou noted that federal agencies are already adopting AI. But applying this high-error-risk technology to the codified statutes that form the foundation of American law represents "the highest-risk point of failure."

A Misaligned Reality

Complicating matters further: most people using AI to write bills do not disclose it. One congressional aide said: "Staff who use AI generally don't talk about it openly — there's still a stigma attached. A bill entirely generated by AI undermines the entire legislative process." Florida Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna faced criticism in June after a summary of her amendment was generated by Claude; she said the amendment text itself was not AI-written. In a social media post, she wrote: "This isn't unusual — most aides are using AI." She subsequently instructed her staff to double-check their work and be more rigorous.

The source who liaises with the Legislative Counsel Office also noted that AI-drafted submissions are becoming increasingly lengthy — a hallmark of AI-generated text. As AI becomes more widespread, more congressional aides cannot clearly articulate what they want their bills to achieve. No longer writing drafts themselves, they fail to develop deep understanding of the issues, instead letting AI decide high-stakes details like legal definitions and wording. These trends make the office's line-by-line review of drafts ever more critical. But efficiency pressures are real. Schuman said AI generates text so rapidly that without matching resource support, the office is doomed to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume.

Charlotte Lee, strategic growth director at Granicus, a company that provides software services to public sector entities including the Legislative Counsel Office, said: "Members and interest groups can use AI to write whatever they want, but legislative counsel themselves cannot use commercial AI products available on the market. This creates a completely misaligned paradox."

How the Office Embraces Technology

In his March hearing testimony, Burke said the office has formed a dedicated working group to study how AI can improve efficiency, such as assisting with legal research. The office has already embedded multiple technology tools into its internal systems. One such tool, the Comparative Print Suite, allows congressional staff to visually see how a bill would amend the U.S. Code. Many bills specify amendments to existing law — deleting old language and inserting new provisions. The suite uses natural language processing, a type of AI, to precisely display how statutory text would change. Hershowitz called it "the House's first AI tool."

Hershowitz developed the software with office staff and other collaborators. He believes the tool far outperforms commercial products: when the program cannot determine how to modify a statute, it directly flags an error rather than hallucinating — a sharp contrast to general-purpose generative AI, which fabricates information to complete output when uncertain. The tool was built entirely around congressional business scenarios. As one of the core designers, Lee refined the product based on real needs through user interviews and weekly office meetings, aiming to reduce errors and drive widespread adoption across the legislative branch.

Schuman noted that adoption in the Senate is limited, with only a small number of staff having access. Appropriations Committee member Morelle said he will fully support ensuring the House Legislative Counsel Office receives adequate resources to maintain high-quality work and ensure all legislation is carefully refined. Ballou believes that in the office where he once served, AI's clear role should be as an aid to drafters, not a replacement. AI can help members process information, but it cannot replace "the professional craft of legislative drafting." Hershowitz said that even without errors, AI accelerating bill production still drives up the office's workload. "The workload was already at level 10 — now it's amplified a hundredfold."