Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for Donald Trump, admitted to citing fake, AI-generated court cases in a legal document that wound up in front of a federal judge, as reported earlier by The New York Times. A filing unsealed on Friday says Cohen used Google’s Bard to perform research after mistaking it for “a super-charged search engine” rather than an AI chatbot.
I… don’t even. I lack the words.
I work for a law firm, and yeah, this happens a lot. The stupidity and laziness of our clients’ in-house attorneys is making us a lot of money.
Why is there not an automated check for any cases referenced in a filing, or required links? It would be trivial to require a clear format or uniform cross-reference, and this looks like an easy niche for automation to improve the judicial system. I understand that you couldn’t interpret those cases or the relevance, but an existence check and links or it doesn’t count.
I assume that now it doesn’t happen unless the other side sys a paralegal for a few hours of research
