Morgan & Morgan, a US personal injury law firm, reportedly sent an urgent email this month to the over 1,000 lawyers it retains. The communique contained a crucial warning about AI’s capabilities to come up with very convincing fake case laws.
The law firm warned that any lawyer who uses this made-up information in a court filing to support their argument could get dismissed.
The message was clear and straight to the point.
The powers that be at Morgan & Morgan could not afford to mince words because a federal judge in Wyoming had just threatened to sanction two lawyers at the firm for including fictitious case citations in a lawsuit against Walmart.
According to the admission of one of the lawyers who used AI hallucinations in a court filing, he used an AI program that “hallucinated” the cases and apologized for what he called an inadvertent mistake.
Judge yet to decide disciplinary action against Morgan & Morgan lawyers
For a long time, skeptics have anticipated the worst scenarios from AI proliferation. Now, AI is affecting the legal system, with its made-up cases leading courts around the country to question or even punish erring lawyers.
There have been at least seven cases over the past two years, and it has officially become a new high-tech headache for litigants and judges who now have to first determine the credibility of lawyers’ arguments.
The Walmart case is one of the more popular cases of a lawyer using AI “hallucinations” in court as it involves a well-known law firm and a big corporate defendant. However, its use has been observed in various other less popular lawsuits since chatbots like ChatGPT jumpstarted the AI era.
The judge is yet to rule on whether to discipline the lawyers in the Walmart case, which involved an allegedly defective hoverboard toy.
Lawyers urged to be cautious of made-up facts by generative AI
It is true that thanks to generative AI, lawyers now spend less time researching and drafting legal briefs. Many law firms have even contracted AI vendors or built their own AI tools to maximize productivity.
According to a survey by Thomson Reuters last year, at least 63% of lawyers surveyed by Reuters’ parent company said they have used AI in their work, while 12% said they use it regularly.
The hitch is that generative AI is famous for confidently making up facts, so lawyers who try to use it for work must do so with caution, legal advisors have said.
When an AI sometimes produces false information, it is called “hallucinations.” The models generate responses based on statistical patterns learned from large datasets rather than by verifying facts in those datasets.
According to the Attorney, lawyers are required to vet and stand by their court filings or risk facing disciplinary action. Last year, the American Bar Association informed its 400,000 members that those obligations extend to “even an unintentional misstatement” produced through AI.
Andrew Perlman, Dean of Suffolk University’s law school and an AI proponent, said: “When lawyers are caught using ChatGPT or any generative AI tool to create citations without checking them, that’s incompetence, just pure and simple.”
Harry Surden, a law professor at the University of Colorado’s law school who studies AI and the law, has urged lawyers to take the time to learn “the strengths and weaknesses of the tools” they’re gradually becoming dependent on.
Surden said the previous cases highlight a “lack of AI literacy” in the industry, where many lawyers are not completely aware of the limits and potential errors AI tools can make, leading them to present those mistakes in their legal filings.
Of course, Surden does not blame the technology. “Lawyers have always made mistakes in their filings before AI. This is not new,” he said.
While Morgan & Morgan did not prohibit its lawyers from using AI, it appears it wants its lawyers to be aware of the potential risks of using generative AI. That knowledge is expected to lower the odds of making mistakes but does not completely eliminate the risk. A thorough verification system for AI-generated content related to legal work will be crucial to maintaining the industry’s professional standards, keeping the public’s trust, and avoiding legal repercussions.
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