Booming Docket, AI Briefs Add to Delaware Magistrate’s Workload

The Delaware Chancery Court is wrestling with an exploding corporate docket, the rise of self-represented litigants reliant on AI, and calls for more operational transparency in the face of criticism of its judges and decisions.

Senior Magistrate in Chancery Selena E. Molina’s seven years of service oversaw a rapid evolution.

“People are calling my assistant because they want to talk with me, because they have strong opinions about the case that’s before me,” she said in an exclusive interview. “That’s a new component that I didn’t anticipate.”

Molina joined the court in 2019. At the time, there were only two such judicial officers, in addition to the court’s chancellor and six vice chancellors.

Now seven magistrates sit on the Chancery bench. They field a docket of records access lawsuits, advancement actions, guardianship petitions, probate cases, disputes over health-care decisions, and other civil proceedings.

Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the court’s chief judge, described Molina as “essential” in expanding the magistrates’ role and managing the burgeoning caseload.

Molina spoke to Bloomberg Law ahead of stepping down from the court next week.

Busy Court

Over 1,500 new complaints were filed in Chancery Court last year, a record for what’s known as the premier venue for corporate litigation. Adding more magistrates helped evenly distribute the workload, as the court also explores automated case assignments, following criticism that some corporate litigants repeatedly face judges who are biased against them.

The caseload rises in complexity each year, as well as in numbers, Molina said. Fee-shifting requests where one side accuses the other of acting in bad faith have almost become routine, for example.

“That’s supposed to be the last resort in very serious cases, and I feel like I’m seeing it in almost every case now,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s incivility or hostility or what’s going on, but it does feel like litigation is perhaps more difficult than it has to be.”

Then there’s the hand-holding required for the increasing number of pro se litigants submitting briefs and motions drafted by generative artificial intelligence programs. Molina and her colleagues occasionally issue orders requiring certification for every use of AI throughout a case.

“We’re seeing even more sophisticated self-represented litigants who—it feels like they’re choosing not to have an attorney, rather than they just can’t afford an attorney,” she said.

Internal Documents

The breadth of experiences on their traditional equity docket gives the magistrates a “realistic” perspective on disputes involving powerful founders and corporate leaders, she said. “When people are telling me the sky is falling if I rule a certain way, I think I can take a step back and look at the law objectively and make a decision without giving into some of that rhetoric.”

Molina’s biggest corporate case has been a records access lawsuit seeking documents concerning Paramount Global’s sale to Skydance Media LLC. Her decision rejecting the demand was overturned by Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster, and Paramount has appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court.

The lawsuit predates last year’s corporate law overhaul by Delaware legislators, who imposed new limits on shareholders seeking internal files to investigate potential corporate wrongdoings. The new statute hasn’t reduced the number of books-and-records demands, however, Molina said.

“What I’m seeing right now is testing of that new statutory scheme,” she said. “There’s been a bit of an uptick.”

Guidelines for Guardians

McCormick named Molina as “senior magistrate” in January 2025. Among Molina’s initiatives: publishing guardianship decisions typically sealed to protect vulnerable individuals and their personal information.

Molina pushed to anonymize decisions that illustrate important legal interpretations or offer insight on a process people might only associate with the type of court-appointed financial control that Britney Spears fought to escape.

“We should be telling the public how we’re ruling in these cases, in a way that discloses the court’s thinking and processes,” she said. “When you don’t disclose enough, there can be suspicions.”

Guardianship decisions dating back to 2021 are now available on the court’s website. That transparency is expected of the court as it navigates societal and technological advances, said Widener University law professor Geeta Kohli.

Public guardianship decisions also can make it easier to understand some of the court’s corporate decisions, she said, because guardianship cases also involve fiduciary duties such as the duty of care and the duty of loyalty.

“Some people might not understand how a court could be qualified to hear a case involving protection for a person with a disability, and at the same time have in their docket a case involving a billion-dollar earnout package,” Kohli said, “but at the end of the day, both cases involve questions of obligations and expectations.”

Moving Forward

Before joining the court, Molina practiced at Saul Ewing LLP and Richards, Layton & Finger PA. In Chancery Court, her job title changed from “master” to “magistrate” in 2023, when the court decided to drop the word.

The goal of the expansion of the magistrate’s role and other innovations to streamline court protocols is to ensure each judge can give each case the care and attention it requires while also easing their stress levels, Molina said.

“If I check in in a couple of years, I’ll want to know how my colleagues are feeling work-life balance,” she said. “It’s just been work, work, work, and it’s good work that we like doing, but I’d like to see them have a little more balance.”

Molina’s next legal role will be as a “professional neutral”—a mediator, arbitrator, and subject-matter expert. She said she looks forward to having more flexibility in decision-making than being a magistrate currently allows.

As powerful as judges can be, there’s limited relief they can offer from the bench, Molina said. It’s frustrating “that it has to be so black and white sometimes” when there can be “room for creativity—if the parties would just sit down and negotiate with each other.”