As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly decide if your dispute belongs in the small claims court.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the relevant GOV.UK court guidance and, for England and Wales, the guidance on the small claims track and any applicable pre-action protocol.
   2. Gather the contract, invoices, messages, photographs, payment records, complaint correspondence, settlement offers and any court documents, then put them in date order.
   3. Write down the jurisdiction, parties, amount claimed, remedy sought, defendant's location, key dates and any counterclaim or set-off without adding assumptions.
   4. Paste those facts and the document list into the prompt, and attach or paste the relevant GOV.UK extracts if the chatbot cannot browse current sources.
   5. Compare every rule and source link in the response with the GOV.UK guidance, checking the claim type, remedy, value, court jurisdiction, pre-action steps and deadlines separately.
   6. Send the facts, the source links and the AI's assessment to a solicitor before issuing a claim if the dispute is high-value, legally complex, urgent, disputed on evidence, or involves an excluded remedy.

   Prompt

   I need a preliminary UK assessment of whether this dispute is suitable for the small claims track, not a final legal decision.
   
   Jurisdiction: [England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland]
   Claimant: [individual or business]
   Defendant: [individual or business, and where they are based]
   Amount claimed: [amount and currency]
   What happened, in date order: [facts]
   What remedy I want: [payment, repair, replacement, refund, damages, or other]
   Contract or legal basis: [if known]
   Documents and evidence available: [list]
   Any counterclaim, set-off, personal injury, property damage, professional negligence, injunction, or other issue: [details]
   Any limitation, deadline, pre-action correspondence, settlement offer, or court action already started: [details]
   
   Use only current, authoritative UK sources. Prefer GOV.UK or the relevant court rules, and give a link for every rule you rely on. Distinguish the small claims track from whether I have a valid claim, whether I can recover the amount, and whether the court has jurisdiction. State which facts are missing, identify any claim type or remedy that may fall outside the small claims process, and explain what I should verify myself. Do not invent a threshold, deadline, fee, or rule. If the answer depends on a legal judgement or the facts are disputed, say so clearly. End with one of: likely suitable for preliminary small claims consideration, likely unsuitable, or cannot be determined from the information supplied. Tell me when I should speak to a solicitor.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.