As more and more phony case citations and other artificial intelligence errors show up in legal filings, some judges are experimenting with alternatives to traditional court sanctions to deter lawyers from relying on chatbots and other AI tools without checking their work.
After two defense lawyers at Cozen O'Connor admitted to filing a document with AI-generated material in Nevada state court, District Judge David Hardy in Washoe County offered them a choice. They could pay $2,500 apiece in monetary sanctions and face removal from the case and referral to the state bar. Or, the judge ruled last week, they could resolve the issue by writing to their former law school deans and bar officials explaining what happened and volunteering to speak on topics like AI and professional conduct.
Hardy isn't the first judge to try new approaches. In at least two cases, courts have required lawyers to alert judges whom they falsely cited as authors of non-existent cases. In August, an Arizona federal judge said warning her counterparts about the AI hallucination would "minimize potential harms of those fictitious cases to those jurists." The judge also removed the lawyer from the case.
Judges have issued warnings and sanctions, including hefty fines, fee awards to opposing counsel and disciplinary referrals, in dozens of cases against lawyers whose filings contained made-up citations, misquoted material and other so-called "hallucinations" produced using AI. Read more here.
