Lawyer gets busted using ChatGPT and then required to take: “legal education courses on the ethical use of AI”
A lawyer was forced to attend classes after being caught using AI for assistance in court.
In a landmark ruling that signals the increasing friction between artificial intelligence and everyday life, a Maryland court sharply reprimanded a family lawyer after he submitted divorce-and-custody filings drafted with the assistance of ChatGPT.
The attorney’s use of AI-generated citations, many of which were fictitious, triggered the judge’s censure and an order for remedial law courses.
The case, heard by the court of appeals in Maryland, involved a lawyer representing a mother in a custody dispute. The filings included numerous legal citations that, after undergoing scrutiny, turned out either to be non-existent or to contradict the arguments presented.
“He relied on a non-lawyer, who clearly did not read the cases”
According to the court’s opinion, the lawyer he “was not involved directly in the research of the offending citations”; instead he relied on a law clerk who used ChatGPT to generate and edit the brief.
Judge Kathryn Grill Graeff wrote that “it is unquestionably improper for an attorney to submit a brief with fake cases generated by AI.”
“[C]ounsel admitted that he did not read the cases cited. Instead, he relied on his law clerk, a non-lawyer, who also clearly did not read the cases, which were fictitious,” the judge added. “In our view, this does not satisfy the requirement of competent representation. A competent attorney reads the legal authority cited in court pleadings to make sure that they stand for the proposition for which they are cited.”
In response, the court directed the attorney were required to complete “legal education courses on the ethical use of AI,” and ordered the implementation of verification protocols within his firm, while referring the matter to the Attorney Grievance Commission for further discipline.
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