{"id":154152,"date":"2026-06-09T15:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T23:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/06\/09\/dead-lawyering-theory-too-much-of-litigation-is-fake\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T15:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T23:32:15","slug":"dead-lawyering-theory-too-much-of-litigation-is-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/06\/09\/dead-lawyering-theory-too-much-of-litigation-is-fake\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead Lawyering Theory: Too Much Of Litigation Is Fake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social media started as a tool that would make it easier to connect you with your friends. By that I mean rate the women of your dorm by relative attractiveness<\/a>, but let\u2019s not get too granular here. The internet, known to everyone as a series of tubes<\/a>, intended to serve the same purpose. By that I mean it was a handy little byproduct of the Cold War<\/a>, but we don\u2019t think about it that way. We largely think about the world wide web era of the internet as a tool that facilitates connection and discussion \u2014 it lets us access forums that replaced the need to actually know<\/em> someone smart enough to help you with your problems because now, you can just be wrong in public knowing that eventually Cunningham\u2019s Law would kick in<\/a>. But good things don\u2019t last forever. <\/p>\n

Gauging the success of a website or post stopped being measured in how well it was received by people in favor of the much more amorphous \u201cengagement.\u201d And as it turns out, you don\u2019t even really<\/em> need people to engage<\/a>. You can pay for bots and AI can post whatever you want while social media and the internet still appear to be populated by people even though all of the important things are happening algorithmically behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

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The biohackers subreddit banned all posts about peptides and HRT because peptide companies were spamming + manipulating the sub in order to manipulate Google AI and ChatGPT answers. Very insidious industry that is drastically changing the internet https:\/\/t.co\/pbZGF2P1vZ<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Jason Koebler (@jason_koebler) June 3, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Dead Internet Theory may have been a fun schizoid-seeming theory in January of 2021, but it is a lot harder to take as a joke now that the majority of the internet is confirmed to be AI driven<\/a>. A strange thing about death is that it spreads. As LLMs and bots kill off what\u2019s left of the peer-to-peer interactions the web was known for, bots are playing larger roles off-line as well:<\/p>\n

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Comedy of AI errors: Lawyers on both sides of a case misuse AI, cite fake hallucinated cases.<\/p>\n

At the show-cause hearing, “each of the attorneys expressed embarrassment and apologized to the Court.” <\/p>\n

“Neither of them verified the legal authority output by AI before filing their\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/8iogjshrep<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Rob Freund (@RobertFreundLaw) June 9, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Just as the majority of online traffic being bots draws into question how social the internet is, will the legal system still be adversarial if it is really just human mediators (lawyers, judges) watching as algorithms interact with each other? Opaque sociologist and troll Jean Baudrillard spent a good chunk of his oeuvre discussing the displacement of human social interactions and meaning for algorithmic responses (he tended to use the words \u201ccode\u201d and \u201csimulation,\u201d but I think you could palimpsest in algorithm where needed and come to the same conclusions), and one of the consequences is that the way we have to think about alienation changes. An excerpt from The World Without Women<\/a> comes to mind:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

In German, there are two apparently synonymous terms with a very significant distinction between them. \u201cVerfremdung\u201d means becoming other, becoming estranged from oneself \u2014 alienation in the literal sense. \u201cEntfremdung\u201d, by contrast, means to be dispossessed of the other, to lose all otherness. Now, it is much more serious to be dispossessed of the other than of oneself. Being deprived of the other is worse than alienation: a lethal change, by liquidation of the dialectical opposition itself. An irrevocable destabilization, that of the subject without object, of the same without other \u2014 definitive stasis and metastasis of the Same.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

LLMs arguing against each other, if \u201cother\u201d still makes sense to say \u2014 both lawyers may have used the same system, after all \u2014 is the sort of other-dispossession that prevents adversarial conflicts from happening. What\u2019s even the point of lawyers then? Courts act as a mediator between us little people and the awesome power of the state. But if all of the justice making gets outsourced to Claude or whatever LLM skin is en vogue, the teeth of that check and balance get worn down \u2014 especially if the state has input on the LLM\u2019s outputs. Everyone but Elon seemed to find it ridiculous when he said that one day Grok will \u201crender extremely compelling legal verdicts<\/a>.\u201d Grok\u2019s reign as Mecha Hitler <\/a>will hopefully be all it takes to rule out its role as a future jurist.<\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t at the turning point where the majority of legal worth is being done by AI programs rather than humans (I hope). We also aren\u2019t at the point where heavy outsourcing of the work of lawyering is an accepted norm; the lawyers in this case were fined and hit with sanctions as they should have been. We also saw UC Berkeley crack down on student AI use to preempt the pedagogical dangers of alienated learning<\/a>. As much as it pains me to acknowledge that Florida is doing something right, their Supreme Court just released explicit guidelines stating that lawyers can\u2019t rely on LLMs to do the work for them<\/a> and not expect to be punished. But the fight against replacement isn\u2019t uniform. In a double blind study, law professors rated LLMs better at answering student questions than their peers. A firm in Ohio recently launched AI \u201cclones\u201d of several partners<\/a> to help train associates. As client pressure builds for firms to adopt AI in to their workflows<\/a>, reputable Biglaw firms like Sullivan & Cromwell<\/a> and Gordon Rees<\/a> are getting caught replacing human labor with bot responses.<\/p>\n

This story was a story because the judge was able to detect AI citation errors, but what happens when these programs get really good at the legal equivalent of imaging hands? When LLMs get to the point that they can run through the legal arguments and properly cite actually existing authorities, what role will humans have in any of this besides paying damages and going to prison? We need to have an answer before its our reality. <\/p>\n

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord\u2122 in the Facebook group\u00a0Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . \u00a0He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn\u2019t hurt either. You can reach him by email at christopherrashadwilliams@gmail.com<\/a> and by Tweet\/Bluesky at\u00a0@WritesForRent<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Dead Lawyering Theory: Too Much Of Litigation Is Fake<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Social media started as a tool that would make it easier to connect you with your friends. By that I mean rate the women of your dorm by relative attractiveness<\/a>, but let\u2019s not get too granular here. The internet, known to everyone as a series of tubes<\/a>, intended to serve the same purpose. By that I mean it was a handy little byproduct of the Cold War<\/a>, but we don\u2019t think about it that way. We largely think about the world wide web era of the internet as a tool that facilitates connection and discussion \u2014 it lets us access forums that replaced the need to actually know<\/em> someone smart enough to help you with your problems because now, you can just be wrong in public knowing that eventually Cunningham\u2019s Law would kick in<\/a>. But good things don\u2019t last forever. <\/p>\n

Gauging the success of a website or post stopped being measured in how well it was received by people in favor of the much more amorphous \u201cengagement.\u201d And as it turns out, you don\u2019t even really<\/em> need people to engage<\/a>. You can pay for bots and AI can post whatever you want while social media and the internet still appear to be populated by people even though all of the important things are happening algorithmically behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

Dead Internet Theory may have been a fun schizoid-seeming theory in January of 2021, but it is a lot harder to take as a joke now that the majority of the internet is confirmed to be AI driven<\/a>. A strange thing about death is that it spreads. As LLMs and bots kill off what\u2019s left of the peer-to-peer interactions the web was known for, bots are playing larger roles off-line as well:<\/p>\n

Just as the majority of online traffic being bots draws into question how social the internet is, will the legal system still be adversarial if it is really just human mediators (lawyers, judges) watching as algorithms interact with each other? Opaque sociologist and troll Jean Baudrillard spent a good chunk of his oeuvre discussing the displacement of human social interactions and meaning for algorithmic responses (he tended to use the words \u201ccode\u201d and \u201csimulation,\u201d but I think you could palimpsest in algorithm where needed and come to the same conclusions), and one of the consequences is that the way we have to think about alienation changes. An excerpt from The World Without Women<\/a> comes to mind:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

In German, there are two apparently synonymous terms with a very significant distinction between them. \u201cVerfremdung\u201d means becoming other, becoming estranged from oneself \u2014 alienation in the literal sense. \u201cEntfremdung\u201d, by contrast, means to be dispossessed of the other, to lose all otherness. Now, it is much more serious to be dispossessed of the other than of oneself. Being deprived of the other is worse than alienation: a lethal change, by liquidation of the dialectical opposition itself. An irrevocable destabilization, that of the subject without object, of the same without other \u2014 definitive stasis and metastasis of the Same.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

LLMs arguing against each other, if \u201cother\u201d still makes sense to say \u2014 both lawyers may have used the same system, after all \u2014 is the sort of other-dispossession that prevents adversarial conflicts from happening. What\u2019s even the point of lawyers then? Courts act as a mediator between us little people and the awesome power of the state. But if all of the justice making gets outsourced to Claude or whatever LLM skin is en vogue, the teeth of that check and balance get worn down \u2014 especially if the state has input on the LLM\u2019s outputs. Everyone but Elon seemed to find it ridiculous when he said that one day Grok will \u201crender extremely compelling legal verdicts<\/a>.\u201d Grok\u2019s reign as Mecha Hitler <\/a>will hopefully be all it takes to rule out its role as a future jurist.<\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t at the turning point where the majority of legal worth is being done by AI programs rather than humans (I hope). We also aren\u2019t at the point where heavy outsourcing of the work of lawyering is an accepted norm; the lawyers in this case were fined and hit with sanctions as they should have been. We also saw UC Berkeley crack down on student AI use to preempt the pedagogical dangers of alienated learning<\/a>. As much as it pains me to acknowledge that Florida is doing something right, their Supreme Court just released explicit guidelines stating that lawyers can\u2019t rely on LLMs to do the work for them<\/a> and not expect to be punished. But the fight against replacement isn\u2019t uniform. In a double blind study, law professors rated LLMs better at answering student questions than their peers. A firm in Ohio recently launched AI \u201cclones\u201d of several partners<\/a> to help train associates. As client pressure builds for firms to adopt AI in to their workflows<\/a>, reputable Biglaw firms like Sullivan & Cromwell<\/a> and Gordon Rees<\/a> are getting caught replacing human labor with bot responses.<\/p>\n

This story was a story because the judge was able to detect AI citation errors, but what happens when these programs get really good at the legal equivalent of imaging hands? When LLMs get to the point that they can run through the legal arguments and properly cite actually existing authorities, what role will humans have in any of this besides paying damages and going to prison? We need to have an answer before its our reality. <\/p>\n

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

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord\u2122 in the Facebook group\u00a0Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . \u00a0He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn\u2019t hurt either. You can reach him by email at [email\u00a0protected]<\/a> and by Tweet\/Bluesky at\u00a0@WritesForRent<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social media started as a tool that would make it easier to connect you with your friends. By that I mean rate the women of your dorm by relative attractiveness, but let\u2019s not get too granular here. The internet, known to everyone as a series of tubes, intended to serve the same purpose. By that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":154153,"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-154152","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\/2026\/06\/Chris-Williams-2025-WFLX6r.jpg?fit=512%2C288&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154152","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=154152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}