In law school, they taught us that words matter. Not just any words, the right words.
The discipline of legal writing is built on that idea. Think about the last time you wrote to a company and actually got a useful response.
It was probably not the longest letter you ever sent. It was the one where you stated clearly what had gone wrong, what you wanted done about it, and by when. The reader knew immediately what was being asked of them. That is not a lucky outcome. It is what happens when the thinking has been done before the writing starts.
That principle applies well beyond the law. Good communication, in almost any context, depends on knowing what you are actually trying to say and then saying it as directly as possible. The more words you use, the harder it becomes for the reader to find your point. And if your reader cannot find your point, they cannot respond to it.
Something our disputes resolution provider has started flagging publicly is worth understanding, especially if you have ever thought about making a complaint.
The Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme (IFSO) is the independent body that our clients can access if they have a concern we have not been able to resolve. IFSO has started commenting publicly on a pattern it is seeing. Complaints submitted to financial services providers and to IFSO are getting longer. They are also, in many cases, getting less focused. IFSO has flagged that AI-generated submissions are appearing with increasing frequency, and that they often run to many pages without identifying a clear grievance or a clear outcome the complainant is seeking.
The numbers tell their own story. IFSO handled around 600 dispute investigations last year, more than double the number from 2022. Consumers are also more persistent than they used to be, with cases being pursued even where IFSO has assessed there is little or no substance to the claim.
None of that is to say people should not make complaints. They absolutely should, when something has genuinely gone wrong. A well-constructed complaint does two things. It gives the organisation that has made an error the opportunity to put it right. And it provides useful information that should improve how that organisation operates. That is the mechanism working as it is supposed to.
For our part, we work hard to identify problems before they reach the stage of a formal complaint. That does not always prevent every issue, and when a client has a genuine concern, we want to hear it. But the complaints process is a last resort, not a first one.
The problem with AI-generated complaints is not that AI was involved. I have used AI myself to help draft a complaint, and it was useful, but I came to that process knowing exactly what my complaint was, what outcome I wanted, and what the next step would be if that outcome was not delivered. I asked for help with the drafting once the thinking was already done, and the result was three short paragraphs that got a substantive reply before the next business day was an hour old.
What IFSO is describing is something different. It is the output of someone asking an AI to write a complaint without first having worked out what the complaint actually is. The result tends to be pages of general grievance, unstructured and with no clear remedy sought. That is not a complaint in any useful sense, and it does not serve the person who submitted it.
If a provider receives ten pages of text without a clear issue at its centre, they face a genuine difficulty in responding. They may not know what you want. They may not know what they are being asked to fix. And however much goodwill exists on both sides, the absence of a clear claim makes resolution much harder.
Across the broader public sector and private sector, the same pattern is appearing. Councils, health providers, and employers are all dealing with an increase in submissions that are long, generically worded, and difficult to action. AI has lowered the barrier to producing text. It has not, unfortunately, raised the quality of thinking that sits behind it.
The law school lesson applies here. Before you write anything, ask yourself three questions. What specifically went wrong? What do you want done about it? And what will you do next if that does not happen? If you can answer those three questions in plain language, you have the substance of a complaint. Everything else is just words.
AI can help you express that clearly. But it cannot do the thinking for you. And in the context of a complaint, that thinking is the whole point.
