Courts cracking down on error-strewn AI-assisted legal briefs
Courts cracking down on error-strewn AI-assisted legal briefs
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/courts-cracking-down-error-strewn-022945093.html
Publish Date: 2026-06-14 22:29:00
Source Domain: www.yahoo.com
When a US judge found fabricated quotes in a lawyer’s brief earlier this year, the attorney admitted he had used Claude, an artificial intelligence chatbot, to write the document.
That got him a fine and a mandatory course on how to use AI properly.
But this case was just one in a rising tide of AI “hallucinations” muddying the legal waters. Now some courts are trying to stem the tide by cracking down on the lawyers concerned.
It was judge Jerry Edwards Jr., of Louisiana district court, who sanctioned the lawyer in that recent US case last month. He found the AI-generated hallucinations while reviewing a motion to block evidence from being admitted in a personal injury case.
He caught seven quotes attributed to previous court rulings that either did not appear in the original decisions or had been misrepresented.
The hapless lawyer said a law clerk had caught other fabricated quotes in a first draft. Instead of learning from his mistake however, the attorney simply asked Claude to correct the errors — then submitted the brief without reviewing it.
The attorney had believed the AI’s output was accurate, said the court’s May 18 memorandum order announcing the sanctions.
“Ignorance of the risks of AI usage is no longer an excuse,” the judge wrote, fining the lawyer $1,000 and sending him on a three-hour course on AI-assisted legal practice.
But he at least granted part of the motion.
– Hundreds of cases –
AI-generated blunders do not necessarily destroy a lawyer’s case, French lawyer Damien Charlotin told AFP.
“The lawyer’s credibility is in tatters — but there are cases where lawyers still win, despite the hallucinations, because they were right on the merits,” he explained.
But there are other issues.
Judge Linda Kevins of New York State’s Supreme Court warned in a January ruling that such blunders wasted the time and money of both the opposing party and the court.
In addition, she said, they were “potentially harming the reputation of judges and courts whose names are…
