Thursday, June 1, 2023

Lawyering and the use of Artificial Intelligence -- UPDATED

June 1, 2023

The Professional Responsibility blogsphere was dominated this week by a discussion of a New York Times story called “Here’s What Happens When Your Lawyer Uses ChatGPT."  TechDirt has a good summary of the story here.

In a nutshell, a lawyer used ChatGPT to do research in order to draft a brief.  The lawyer did not double check the result and it was later determined the brief contained cases/citations that were totally made up by the AI.  

The court has now issued an order to show cause against the attorney.  You can read the full order here.

Joe Patrice has a good comment on the situation at Above the Law (here), which summarizes what should be obvious:  don't blame the AI for the lawyer's conduct.  The issue is bad lawyering, not bad AI.  This other comment in Real Lawyers Have Blogs agrees.

UPDATE June 4, 2023

Above the Law has published a comment titled "Lawyers Who Used ChatGPT To Fake Opinions Are In Real Trouble".  You can read it here.

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