{"id":119012,"date":"2025-05-14T15:02:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T23:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/05\/14\/law-firms-use-artificial-intelligence-to-earn-very-real-31k-sanction\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T15:02:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T23:02:37","slug":"law-firms-use-artificial-intelligence-to-earn-very-real-31k-sanction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/05\/14\/law-firms-use-artificial-intelligence-to-earn-very-real-31k-sanction\/","title":{"rendered":"Law Firms Use Artificial Intelligence To Earn Very Real $31K Sanction!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIf ChatGPT told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too?!?\u201d screams my internal scolding voice. Because despite an ever increasing number of cautionary tales about lawyers ill-advisedly letting G(PT)sus<\/em> take the wheel, another pair of law firms have bumbled their way into sanctions.<\/p>\n

This time, it\u2019s Ellis George and K&L Gates starring in the reboot of ChatGPT Presents: Fantasy Legal Filings<\/em>, and in a nod to Hollywood\u2019s lack of creativity, once again the plot hinges on lawyers submitting fake cases to a federal court. It\u2019s not a sequel anyone asked for, but this is how we ended up with J.J. Abrams making Star Wars movies.<\/p>\n

The filing in Lacey v. State Farm<\/em> only involved 27 citations, but the Special Master in the case, former C.D. California Magistrate Judge Michael R. Wilner, determined that NINE of them were wrong in some way. No one went to law school because they were good at math, but that\u2019s one-third of the total citations.<\/p>\n

From Legaltech News<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In the ruling issued May 6, Wilner said that after consulting online database and legal research service Westlaw, he discovered that \u201cnine of the 27 legal citations\u201d were \u201cincorrect in some way,\u201d \u201c[at] least two of the authorities cited do not exist at all\u201d and \u201cseveral quotations attributed to the cited judicial opinions were phony and did not accurately represent those materials.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hey, if the Department of Justice can make up fake quotes<\/a>, why can\u2019t the private sector get in on the fun! <\/p>\n

Seriously, though there\u2019s no good reason for this to be happening at this point. The Avianca<\/em> case was almost two years ago and while a lot of the coverage at the time tried to blame generative AI for hallucinating cases, a second-wave of coverage stressed that this isn\u2019t a technology problem, but a lawyer laziness problem<\/a>. Trump fixer Michael Cohen\u2019s lawyer submitted a brief citing fake cases<\/a> a year and a half ago. But in every instance, the error \u2014 as the IT people say \u2014 is between the keyboard and the chair. All they needed was a lawyer doing the job they should be doing anyway<\/em> and citechecking the cases. \u201cEven with recent advances, no reasonably competent attorney should out-source research and writing to this technology \u2014 particularly without any attempt to verify the accuracy of that material,\u201d wrote the Special Master.<\/p>\n

Maybe K&L Gates could\u2019ve spent more time editing and less time shadow purging all references to diversity off their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDirectly put, Plaintiff\u2019s use of AI affirmatively misled me,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI read their brief, was persuaded (or at least intrigued) by the authorities that they cited, and looked up the decisions to learn more about them\u2014only to find that they didn\u2019t exist. That\u2019s scary. It almost led to the scarier outcome (from my perspective) of including those bogus materials in a judicial order. Strong deterrence is needed to make sure that attorneys don\u2019t succumb to this easy shortcut.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hopefully it did not \u201calmost\u201d lead to a scarier outcome. I\u2019d like to think the Special Master planned to check the cases before issuing an order regardless.<\/p>\n

Wilner sanctioned the firms for the defense\u2019s share of his 30-day fee and an additional $5,000 to reflect a share of the defense\u2019s costs preparing their response brief \u2014 Wilner did not think sticking them with the full amount was necessary for deterrence. <\/p>\n

But\u2026 isn\u2019t it, though? We\u2019ve been writing about lawyers doing this for two years now! When the judge hit the Avianca<\/em> lawyers for $5K the technology was new and the mistake was novel. No one can make that claim today. And the Avianca<\/em> lawyers were a small shop working on their own \u2014 this is two firms, including one in the Am Law 50. How many hands did this filing pass through? None of them checked the cites? How does that happen?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about AI hallucinating. Hallucinating is what it does. Blaming the AI for this is like blaming a vending machine for not giving you steakhouse dinner. But what makes AI a powerful tool is that it can deliver that clutch fix of Mountain Dew and Twinkies that you need to fuel a long night of actually editing briefs<\/em>. <\/p>\n

This sanction might be enough to deter these firms from doing it again, though the public humiliation probably did that already. Sanctions aren\u2019t needed for specific deterrence, they\u2019re needed to put the fear back into practitioners that they can\u2019t farm out their professional responsibilities to AI.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Law Firms Use Artificial Intelligence To Earn Very Real $31K Sanction!<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIf ChatGPT told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too?!?\u201d screams my internal scolding voice. Because despite an ever increasing number of cautionary tales about lawyers ill-advisedly letting G(PT)sus<\/em> take the wheel, another pair of law firms have bumbled their way into sanctions.<\/p>\n

This time, it\u2019s Ellis George and K&L Gates starring in the reboot of ChatGPT Presents: Fantasy Legal Filings<\/em>, and in a nod to Hollywood\u2019s lack of creativity, once again the plot hinges on lawyers submitting fake cases to a federal court. It\u2019s not a sequel anyone asked for, but this is how we ended up with J.J. Abrams making Star Wars movies.<\/p>\n

The filing in Lacey v. State Farm<\/em> only involved 27 citations, but the Special Master in the case, former C.D. California Magistrate Judge Michael R. Wilner, determined that NINE of them were wrong in some way. No one went to law school because they were good at math, but that\u2019s one-third of the total citations.<\/p>\n

From Legaltech News<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In the ruling issued May 6, Wilner said that after consulting online database and legal research service Westlaw, he discovered that \u201cnine of the 27 legal citations\u201d were \u201cincorrect in some way,\u201d \u201c[at] least two of the authorities cited do not exist at all\u201d and \u201cseveral quotations attributed to the cited judicial opinions were phony and did not accurately represent those materials.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hey, if the Department of Justice can make up fake quotes<\/a>, why can\u2019t the private sector get in on the fun! <\/p>\n

Seriously, though there\u2019s no good reason for this to be happening at this point. The Avianca<\/em> case was almost two years ago and while a lot of the coverage at the time tried to blame generative AI for hallucinating cases, a second-wave of coverage stressed that this isn\u2019t a technology problem, but a lawyer laziness problem<\/a>. Trump fixer Michael Cohen\u2019s lawyer submitted a brief citing fake cases<\/a> a year and a half ago. But in every instance, the error \u2014 as the IT people say \u2014 is between the keyboard and the chair. All they needed was a lawyer doing the job they should be doing anyway<\/em> and citechecking the cases. \u201cEven with recent advances, no reasonably competent attorney should out-source research and writing to this technology \u2014 particularly without any attempt to verify the accuracy of that material,\u201d wrote the Special Master.<\/p>\n

Maybe K&L Gates could\u2019ve spent more time editing and less time shadow purging all references to diversity off their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDirectly put, Plaintiff\u2019s use of AI affirmatively misled me,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI read their brief, was persuaded (or at least intrigued) by the authorities that they cited, and looked up the decisions to learn more about them\u2014only to find that they didn\u2019t exist. That\u2019s scary. It almost led to the scarier outcome (from my perspective) of including those bogus materials in a judicial order. Strong deterrence is needed to make sure that attorneys don\u2019t succumb to this easy shortcut.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hopefully it did not \u201calmost\u201d lead to a scarier outcome. I\u2019d like to think the Special Master planned to check the cases before issuing an order regardless.<\/p>\n

Wilner sanctioned the firms for the defense\u2019s share of his 30-day fee and an additional $5,000 to reflect a share of the defense\u2019s costs preparing their response brief \u2014 Wilner did not think sticking them with the full amount was necessary for deterrence. <\/p>\n

But\u2026 isn\u2019t it, though? We\u2019ve been writing about lawyers doing this for two years now! When the judge hit the Avianca<\/em> lawyers for $5K the technology was new and the mistake was novel. No one can make that claim today. And the Avianca<\/em> lawyers were a small shop working on their own \u2014 this is two firms, including one in the Am Law 50. How many hands did this filing pass through? None of them checked the cites? How does that happen?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about AI hallucinating. Hallucinating is what it does. Blaming the AI for this is like blaming a vending machine for not giving you steakhouse dinner. But what makes AI a powerful tool is that it can deliver that clutch fix of Mountain Dew and Twinkies that you need to fuel a long night of actually editing briefs<\/em>. <\/p>\n

This sanction might be enough to deter these firms from doing it again, though the public humiliation probably did that already. Sanctions aren\u2019t needed for specific deterrence, they\u2019re needed to put the fear back into practitioners that they can\u2019t farm out their professional responsibilities to AI.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf ChatGPT told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too?!?\u201d screams my internal scolding voice. Because despite an ever increasing number of cautionary tales about lawyers ill-advisedly letting G(PT)sus take the wheel, another pair of law firms have bumbled their way into sanctions. This time, it\u2019s Ellis George and K&L Gates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":119013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Headshot-300x200-ubYE8w.jpeg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}