Angry judge roasts Biglaw lawyers for their "collective debacle" filing a brief where "~9 of the 27 legal citations in the 10-page brief were incorrect in some way" due to Generative AI digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcont... Lawyers will pay $31k for their sloppiness 🤖😵 - ThreadSky

ericgoldman.bsky.social • 22 days ago

Angry judge roasts Biglaw lawyers for their "collective debacle" filing a brief where "~9 of the 27 legal citations in the 10-page brief were incorrect in some way" due to Generative AI

https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3920&context=historical

Lawyers will pay $31k for their sloppiness 🤖😵

Comments

timack.bsky.social•22 days ago

A bit off-topic here, but the judge has very clear and easily-read writing style.

phillyphile215.bsky.social•22 days ago

📌

aftd.dev•22 days ago

It's bizarre, in this day and age, that lawyers have automated drafting a brief but not checking the citations.

I've been out of practice for a while, but Lexis and WestLaw make automated, non-LLM citation checkers right? Do they not work?

cfit.bsky.social•22 days ago

I was selling Westlaw's automatic citation checker over a decade ago, and the big law firms all had it. No excuse for this.

tanayas.bsky.social•22 days ago

Lexis have their own AI tool now

ericjmorey.com•19 days ago

Charging for what could be argued is a fraudulent service marketed exclusively to lawyers and law firms seems risky.

viewfromarchstreet.com•22 days ago

I vote for $15K per incorrect AI citation after first offense

petitecarcajou.bsky.social•22 days ago

And this is why you always follow up with non-AI products to check your research before uploading documents to the court. (Along with spelling / grammar / formatting check and ensuring that you’re following any special court or chambers’ rules.)

peanut24.bsky.social•22 days ago

Great decision here but I wish the Special Master hadn't been so reticent about "naming and shaming" the lawyers involved. It seems they had several opportunities to correct the problems, and didn't. Really sloppy lawyering, all around.

bob021341.bsky.social•22 days ago

They're not named in the Order, but their identities are revealed in their affidavits appended to the Order wherein they tried to explain away their conduct.

sunshipballon.bsky.social•20 days ago

Explain away their conduct? Did you read the declarations? Is this the primary perpetrator "explaining away" the conduct: "This problem began with me—full stop."

sunshipballon.bsky.social•20 days ago

He follows that by detailing how he he made the errors and confirms that nobody checked the accuracy of the cites. He acknowledges he knew his ethical obligations and failed to comply.

sunshipballon.bsky.social•20 days ago

The big firm partner says: "I apologize that these versions of the brief contained the inaccuracies initially identified by the Special Master, apologize further that I did not personally catch and correct those inaccuracies." He also acknowledges he failed to cite check the work.

sunshipballon.bsky.social•20 days ago

And the big law associate: "I should have caught these errors beforehand and apologize for not more actively checking all sources contained within Plaintiff’s Brief"

saraht74.bsky.social•21 days ago

Should've named everyone but the associate, who CLEARLY wasn't getting sufficient guidance.

peanut24.bsky.social•21 days ago

Hmmmm. True. Which is why the partner appropriately fell in his sword. But even a first year associate should know you need to cite check the entire brief. And someone should tell him the proper style is not “I and Mr. Copeland,” but “Mr. Copeland and I.”

saraht74.bsky.social•21 days ago

Junior associates learn standards of practice from their seniors. They are also generally not at liberty to dispose of their own billable hours and indeed may be actively discouraged by those seniors from flagging that a particular project needs more.

peanut24.bsky.social•21 days ago

I learned legal research and writing in law school. We were taught it’s a major sin to fail to properly cite check a brief. In 5 yrs as a BigLaw associate I never needed or had a partner teach me that. And sorry but the suggestion that a partner told him not to spend time cite checking is absurd.

saraht74.bsky.social•21 days ago

I did not learn cite-checking at my top 5-7 law school, I learned it (well) at my first law firm. And if you've never heard of juniors being pressured to minimize hours billed, you're in denial.

christinepnw.bsky.social•22 days ago

It's curious that the judge is actually the one who figured this out, and not opposing counsel in reviewing the opposing brief. As an attorney, it's satisfying to be able to call out the opposition in a responsive brief when they misstate arguments, much less flat out inventing citations.

tauriq.bsky.social•22 days ago

True but TBF they filed their briefs simultaneously (I'm unfamiliar with US litigation but this also looked like a slightly different procedure than the usual? I stand to be corrected.).

ubermitch.bsky.social•22 days ago

lol, and the special master they tried to pull this in front of is former Magistrate Judge Wilner; as an occasional practitioner before CD Cal, he's *precisely* someone you don't want to piss off

jenni4iowa.bsky.social•21 days ago

Doooomed

stevenbodzin.bsky.social•19 days ago

That download is not working but here is a news article about the case

https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/judge-imposes-sanctions-for-collective-debacle-involving-ai-hallucinations-and-2-law-firms-including-k

adistantdream.bsky.social•22 days ago

I dunno, $31K might as well be ¢31 to a biglaw firm. $31M might make them look twice.

dewtell.bsky.social•22 days ago

There were in-case sanctions as well (paragraph 20): "I have struck, and decline to consider, any of the supplemental briefs ... If the undisclosed use of AI ... causes a client to lose a motion or case, lawyers will undoubtedly be deterred from going down that pointless route."

dewtell.bsky.social•22 days ago

I can't imagine the firm's insurance carrier is too happy about that language. The idea that the next time this shit happens it could result in a slam-dunk multi-million $ malpractice claim instead of just losing a privilege argument this time is probably enough to get the firm's attention. 2/n

shadow27.bsky.social•19 days ago

I really feel the lesson from Trump's last term, and Jan 6, was we need to punish these people NOW so there isn't a next time.
These lawyers screwed up repeatedly and intentionally, why give them a slap on the wrist?

elbi.bsky.social•22 days ago

Genuine question: Imagine I'm up against a megacorp in court, their lawyers are caught citing bogus sources, get fined, but in the end I still lose the case and must pay their legal costs... does that include these fines?

justhere4coffee.bsky.social•22 days ago

No. Fines are not costs. Costs are only things that are related to bringing the case. Here's a UK court breakdown of it, there's probably a similar US one somewhere: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/costs

elbi.bsky.social•22 days ago

Gotcha, cheers!

lu.is•22 days ago

The law *firms* will pay for the lawyer’s sloppiness. The judge concludes no individual lawyers should be sanctioned, because as ever we protect our own interests over those of our clients.

nywonk.bsky.social•22 days ago

They should pay with their law license.

That would be a sufficient deterrent. After the first ambulance chaser gets disbarred, the rest will think twice before using AI.

lawliberg.bsky.social•22 days ago

Checking to see which Biglaw firm before reskeeting

vanfirth.bsky.social•22 days ago

They got off relatively lightly, no individual sanctions and a smallish penalty. Presumably because they confessed their sins and it wasn’t malfeasance, just utter blithering stupidity. “Go and sin no more.”

stismail.bsky.social•19 days ago

The bigger punishment is that he threw out their briefs on this issue, meaning they now have a pissed off client who can probably sue for malpractice, and has all the evidence needed right here.

kdorg.bsky.social•19 days ago

📌 #AIfails

umlauthuth.bsky.social•22 days ago

They need to be debarred.

kasper11.bsky.social•22 days ago

I really wish the special master demanded that the plaintiff's attorneys produce their billing records related to the motion. Really, really curious how much time they billed for "research" and preparing the outline.

bob021341.bsky.social•22 days ago

Exactly. We know the bill would have been huge had this not been caught. The affidavit of the associate at K&L describes his role in writing the brief and admits that he did not check the cites provided by the first firm; he apparently only did his own supplemental research.

kelpkelpkelp.bsky.social•22 days ago

The should be disbarred! This is fraudulent!

riana.bsky.social•22 days ago

Some irony in the Biglaw lawyers being from, specifically, K&L Gates - as in Bill Gates Sr., father of the founder of the company that's poured tens of billions of dollars into AI (incl. $14 billion just for OpenAI). https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/technology/microsoft-earnings-ai-spending.html

stevenbodzin.bsky.social•19 days ago

I had no idea that the Gates in K&L was from the same family as Gates as in plagiarizer of MS-DOS.

rantlaw.bsky.social•22 days ago

The frustrating thing for me is that the source of the errors is unclear. Was it Gemini or the commercial LLM? I suspect at least some came in through the commercial tool but crave evidence.

dabenner.bsky.social•22 days ago

@clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social

clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social•22 days ago

Oh Boy

phlegm47.bsky.social•21 days ago

Takes just as long to fact check every line for made-up nonsense than it does to write it yourself, as people are discovering too late

einsofasectional.bsky.social•22 days ago

they should be disbarred.

groditi.bsky.social•22 days ago

nice start, but should have been 31k per person per incorrect citation. at that price, its cheap enough to be CODB

peark.es•22 days ago

Tbh the sanction tossing all the client’s discovery procedures is way more damaging, probably means they’ll lose the case.

writesomethink.bsky.social•22 days ago

Because at its core, AI is garbage.

brianstorms.bsky.social•22 days ago

Clearly it is time for AI-based judges. 🙄

roncampbell.bsky.social•22 days ago

This is a very strongly worded order. Here's a sample from one footnote: "I consider those errors to be at the mild end of the AI hallucination spectrum." The special master did not come to play.

dirtside.bsky.social•22 days ago

but biglaw firms are respectable professionals, biglaw firms have told me! could it be that being big and powerful doesn't equate to being actually good at your job?!

mad-pat.bsky.social•22 days ago

📌

wachob.com•22 days ago

Imagine if instead of using un-ready generative AI, they were investing in making AI a better *tool*.

I am in the "AI is coming, let's deal with it" camp, so my attitude is "make the tool better" instead of just rolling my eyes at people using it.

That being said, for not checking work

ihorgowda.bsky.social•22 days ago

@garymarcus.bsky.social

tauriq.bsky.social•22 days ago

Prof, how can the court write the former paragraph while also saying the latter: These lawyers did incredible damage here but zero sanction?

ericgoldman.bsky.social•22 days ago

The judge required the plaintiff lawyers to pay $5k to defense counsel & $26k for the special master's time. The judge also struck the plaintiff filings, which exposes the lawyers to a malpractice claim. In light of those consequences, the judge felt no further "sanctions" were needed

tauriq.bsky.social•21 days ago

Isn't deceiving a court grounds for disbarment: at least referral for investigation to relevant regulatory body?

sybilltrelawney.bsky.social•22 days ago

Why do lawyers keep doing this?

riverofdiversity.bsky.social•22 days ago

So they can charge for their time, while doing other things. 🤷

faeelin.bsky.social•22 days ago

What firm

artemisprime.bsky.social•22 days ago

AI is not ready for prime time until they can improve its accuracy and error rate.

coil.bsky.social•22 days ago

What people in general need to understand is that LLMs *cannot improve* with regard to hallucination. The more advanced models even do it more, and more "cleverly".

True "reasoning" and error-checking will have to come from a different, not-yet-invented tech.

https://techblog.comsoc.org/2025/05/10/nyt-ai-is-getting-smarter-but-hallucinations-are-getting-worse/

artemisprime.bsky.social•22 days ago

Then the applications for AI will forever be limited and the tech bros are WAY overselling it.

artemisprime.bsky.social•22 days ago

An entire industry of workers checking the work of AI for errors is going to pop up then…I’m actually confused now bc they say it will be smarter than humans. Super smart humans don’t make errors like that!! A human with an IQ of 160 who doesn’t make errors at a rate of 30%+ is still better than AI

coil.bsky.social•22 days ago

For what they do, LLMs are remarkable: they can input and output natural language! No more pre-recorded phone menus, precise activation phrases for voice assistants, etc.

The flaw is the whole "prompt" thing - they still need to be told WHAT to say. An LLM is the ability to speak, NOT to think.

coil.bsky.social•22 days ago

Current products rely on human-generated prompts, and on humans to verify the output is correct.

A true Artificial Intelligence might use an LLM as its input/output interface, but the logic/reasoning model is still hypothetical - and will never "evolve" from LLM tech.

artemisprime.bsky.social•22 days ago

I see the advance. It doesn’t seem all that remarkable to me…the logical next step in a chat bot is not to be bound to specific phrases. But I get that the technical stuff is cool. They’ve just way way way oversold it. It definitely won’t replace senior office work, which still requires thinking.

sagastar.bsky.social•22 days ago

hallucinations are its core function tho, so, lol

artemisprime.bsky.social•22 days ago

30% error rate is pretty concerning

folderalconspiracy.bsky.social•22 days ago

What are you talking about?

What the AI generated looks so close to actual legal arguments that the lawyers submitting it as such were fooled! Considering that the literal purpose and goal of AI is to make things that look exactly as expected, it feels 100% accurate!

folderalconspiracy.bsky.social•22 days ago

The lawyers asked it for realistic-looking legal documents, and got realistic-looking legal documents, it's perfectly on task and doing what it is supposed to.

Now, the lawyers need to be sued out of existence and disbarred for submitting those AS real legal documents, but that's a different matter

betsy-cazden.bsky.social•22 days ago

The initial filing may be sloppiness combined with poor supervision by senior attorneys. But if the firm doesn't clean it up after a warning, that's not just sloppy. That's contemptuous.

stismail.bsky.social•19 days ago

FWIW his ruling on this issue specifically says he was not allowed to find contempt here.

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