{"id":135743,"date":"2025-10-24T00:35:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/24\/judges-admit-the-obvious-concede-ai-used-for-hallucinated-opinions\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T00:35:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:35:27","slug":"judges-admit-the-obvious-concede-ai-used-for-hallucinated-opinions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/24\/judges-admit-the-obvious-concede-ai-used-for-hallucinated-opinions\/","title":{"rendered":"Judges Admit The Obvious, Concede AI Used For Hallucinated Opinions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the investigative zeal of Senator Chuck Grassley<\/a>, we now know\u2026 exactly what we knew all along: Judge Julien Neals of New Jersey and Judge Henry Wingate of Mississippi put out opinions with fake cites because of artificial intelligence hallucinations. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not fair to write off the whole project as a grandstanding waste of time. The judges had previously branded their wrong and subsequently withdrawn opinions as clerical errors. That lack of transparency undermined the judges\u2019 credibility, but both seem to have used the \u201cclerical\u201d excuse in a good faith effort to avoid throwing interns under the bus. According to Judge Neals, a law school intern performed legal research with ChatGPT<\/a>, while Judge Wingate writes that a law clerk used Perplexity<\/a>. In both cases, the judges say the opinion was still in draft form pending further review when it ended up going out the proverbial door.<\/p>\n

The judges explain that they have procedures to avoid this in the future, including Judge Wingate unnecessarily wastefully having cases physically printed out to rule out error. This feels a lot like promising to still use the Shepardizing books after the advent of online research, but Grassley was alive when Bonnie and Clyde were still around so overkill is probably a prudent way of keeping him satisfied. <\/p>\n

As for the Senator\u2019s remaining questions, the answers were exactly what we expected. Did this involve confidential information going into the AI? No, there weren\u2019t any confidential issues involved in either of these situations! Describe how the cite-checking process missed this? Because it wasn\u2019t followed! Why did the judges pull the opinions? Because it\u2019s stupid to leave fake cites on the docket! <\/p>\n

\u201cI did not want parties, including pro se litigants, to believe this draft order should be cited in future cases,\u201d Judge Wingate writes, underselling the problem. If we\u2019re having a serious discussion about the risks of AI, it supercharges the need for data hygiene. That docket needs to be purged of anything a future AI could scrape and turn into another mistake \u2014 one that could defeat newer guardrails by virtue of actually appearing in print in an opinion.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the judges\u2019 responses didn\u2019t give us the one thing we might have actually found useful: an explanation of what AI products judges might be using intentionally. These errors came from staff going rogue and using consumer products, but are there products the judges are using by design and can we all learn from that experience? Both admitted that the cite-checking program involves AI technology, but that\u2019s all we got. Maybe that\u2019s all they\u2019re using, but if not, it would be interesting to have learned if they\u2019re using CoCounsel to find those cases they\u2019re printing out or BriefCatch to aid with drafting. <\/p>\n

I guess we\u2019ll have to wait for the next judge AI fiasco to find out.<\/p>\n

Judges Admit to Using AI After Made-Up Rulings Called Out<\/a> [Bloomberg Law News]<\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: Senator Wants To Know How All These Fake Cites Ended Up In These Judicial Opinions<\/a><\/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 Judges Admit The Obvious, Concede AI Used For Hallucinated Opinions<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the investigative zeal of Senator Chuck Grassley<\/a>, we now know\u2026 exactly what we knew all along: Judge Julien Neals of New Jersey and Judge Henry Wingate of Mississippi put out opinions with fake cites because of artificial intelligence hallucinations. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not fair to write off the whole project as a grandstanding waste of time. The judges had previously branded their wrong and subsequently withdrawn opinions as clerical errors. That lack of transparency undermined the judges\u2019 credibility, but both seem to have used the \u201cclerical\u201d excuse in a good faith effort to avoid throwing interns under the bus. According to Judge Neals, a law school intern performed legal research with ChatGPT<\/a>, while Judge Wingate writes that a law clerk used Perplexity<\/a>. In both cases, the judges say the opinion was still in draft form pending further review when it ended up going out the proverbial door.<\/p>\n

The judges explain that they have procedures to avoid this in the future, including Judge Wingate unnecessarily wastefully having cases physically printed out to rule out error. This feels a lot like promising to still use the Shepardizing books after the advent of online research, but Grassley was alive when Bonnie and Clyde were still around so overkill is probably a prudent way of keeping him satisfied. <\/p>\n

As for the Senator\u2019s remaining questions, the answers were exactly what we expected. Did this involve confidential information going into the AI? No, there weren\u2019t any confidential issues involved in either of these situations! Describe how the cite-checking process missed this? Because it wasn\u2019t followed! Why did the judges pull the opinions? Because it\u2019s stupid to leave fake cites on the docket! <\/p>\n

\u201cI did not want parties, including pro se litigants, to believe this draft order should be cited in future cases,\u201d Judge Wingate writes, underselling the problem. If we\u2019re having a serious discussion about the risks of AI, it supercharges the need for data hygiene. That docket needs to be purged of anything a future AI could scrape and turn into another mistake \u2014 one that could defeat newer guardrails by virtue of actually appearing in print in an opinion.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the judges\u2019 responses didn\u2019t give us the one thing we might have actually found useful: an explanation of what AI products judges might be using intentionally. These errors came from staff going rogue and using consumer products, but are there products the judges are using by design and can we all learn from that experience? Both admitted that the cite-checking program involves AI technology, but that\u2019s all we got. Maybe that\u2019s all they\u2019re using, but if not, it would be interesting to have learned if they\u2019re using CoCounsel to find those cases they\u2019re printing out or BriefCatch to aid with drafting. <\/p>\n

I guess we\u2019ll have to wait for the next judge AI fiasco to find out.<\/p>\n

Judges Admit to Using AI After Made-Up Rulings Called Out<\/a> [Bloomberg Law News]<\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: Senator Wants To Know How All These Fake Cites Ended Up In These Judicial Opinions<\/a><\/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 Judges Admit The Obvious, Concede AI Used For Hallucinated Opinions<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the investigative zeal of Senator Chuck Grassley, we now know\u2026 exactly what we knew all along: Judge Julien Neals of New Jersey and Judge Henry Wingate of Mississippi put out opinions with fake cites because of artificial intelligence hallucinations. It\u2019s not fair to write off the whole project as a grandstanding waste of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":135739,"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-135743","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\/10\/Headshot-300x200-MnUED9.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135743","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=135743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}