California Judge Michael R. Wilner is clear that there are things that have no forgiveness and less when it comes to an inappropriate use of artificial intelligence in the field of law, since it has imposed a sanction of thousands of dollars to two law firms that have skipped the limits of logic.
The famous law firm accused of using this technology in a little subtle and nothing elegant are Ellis George LLP and K & L Gates LLP, being the first one who used the generative AI to create documents that included cases with false statements and the second who allowed it.
Some of them even did not even exist, something that law professors Eric Goldman and Blake Reid have criticized hard: «No reasonably competent lawyer should outsource research and writing» to AI, have indicated in their Bluesky profiles.
And it is that it has its failures and sometimes things are invented. This phenomenon is called hallucinations, which are incorrect or deceitful results generated by AI models, either in text format (such as this case) or in images. While sometimes they are incongruous, most of the time they are so real that they can go through true.
That, of course, cannot be allowed in some cases and, therefore, Judge Wilder has made the decision of Compensate the law firm involved with a fine of $ 31,100 to carry out bad practices When defending a civil action against the State Farm insurer.
More specifically, in the ruling, issued last week, the magistrate explains that a person represented by lawyers of both law firm filed a claim before the judicial expert to collect for insurance. To write the report in which the reasons were explained, one of the lawyers, belonging to Ellis George and surname Copeland, used several artificial intelligence tools to generate a document about what happened.
This professional sent the summary of the report to the other law firm, who incorporated new material into the letter, but, in no case, reviewed the investigation before presenting the final document before the judicial expert for its assessment.
Part of the error was corrected
According to the statements of the lawyers of the firm who did not cheat, that is, K & L Gates, they did not know that Copeland would have used AI to prepare the summary, but they did not have the detail of asking him for it.
Because this could have happened to anyone and realizing that there were no two of the authorities cited in the text, the magistrate requested that K & L Gates solve the problem. He did it, Eliminating these two sources, but did not change the information generated by the included in the body of the text. This means that 9 of the 27 legal appointments in the 10 -page brief were incorrect.
This other error was precisely his conviction, because the regulations require that a lawyer present allegations, written notions and other documents before a court, certifying that a relevant and reasonable investigation has been executed. Likewise, the law establishes that a court can impose a limited sanction to deter repetition of the behavior or behaviors of the persons involved.
That is why Judge Michael R. Wilner has determined that «no lawyer or member of the staff of None of the law firm apparently reviewed this investigation before presenting the brief «, Although the cheater lawyer had used tools such as Gemini or the Legal Westlaw Precision solution to add their part.
Although he has regretted and admitted frankly that he sent his material generated by the other lawyers without revealing his origin, the damage is already done and, therefore, the Californian judge has chosen to sanction both law firm with a fine that will probably take time to forget.
With this judgment, in addition, The magistrate hopes to sit precedent so that it does not happen again. «If the unleashed use of AI and the presentation of false information causes a client to lose a motion or a case, the lawyers will undoubtedly be dissuaded to take that useless way» soon, he concluded
Know How we work in NoticiasVE.
Tags: Artificial intelligence