Lawyers Sanctioned After Using ChatGPT

Here’s some risk management advice: if you’re going to use AI to write a court document, please proofread the final version carefully for fake citations and fabricated quotes before handing it to the judge.

Otherwise, you might find yourself not only embarrassed but sanctioned.

It happened in June 2023, where a New York federal judge sanctioned a pair of attorneys $5,000, joint and severally, for Rule 11 violations. The lawyers used ChatGPT to research and write a brief that showed “stylistic and reasoning flaws that do not generally appear in decisions issued by the United States Court of Appeals” and contained sections the court deemed “gibberish” in addition to made-up case citations. 

“[T]here is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance,” the judge wrote in the sanctions order. But here, the attorneys “abandoned their responsibilities.”

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Is Using AI Unprofessional?

The following commentary on the above decision is from litigator Sarah Emmerich for The National Law Review:

“As AI technology continues to become more pervasive, [the] opinion and the conduct of these two sanctioned lawyers should caution those within the profession to take heed when relying on any sort of technology, let alone AI technology. While this scandal may have been among the first, it likely will not be the last.  In fact, one federal district judge in Texas, Judge Brantley Starr, recently issued an order warning lawyers against using any artificial intelligence—including ChatGPT, Harvey.AI, or Google Bard—in drafting legal briefs. In part, Judge Starr explained ‘while attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth).’” For this reason, amongst others, Judge Starr concluded that all attorneys and pro se litigants before him must file a certificate attesting either that no portion of their briefing used ‘generative artificial intelligence’ or that any language drafted by this technology was checked for accuracy by a human.”

SOURCE: NY Judge Sanctions Attorneys for Gibberish AI Brief (natlawreview.com)

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