Got a new courtroom? Check if your opponent has gone into mindless AI hallucination, and attack them in front of the judge.
That’s exactly how prestigious Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell works Claims from customers including Donald TrumpWas recently insulted. On Saturday, Andrew Dietderichs, co-head of the firm’s restructuring group, apologized to federal Judge Martin Glenn after it emerged that its filings in a major case were filled with fake quotes that were created by AI.
“We deeply regret that this happened,” Dieterich wrote. scruffy letter.
The errors were caught by a rival firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, in a motion S&C filed in a federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan. In some passages, the filing misquoted the U.S. Bankruptcy Code directly, and cited decisions from other cases that were either missummarized or misidentified. Lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner found that none of the cases cited by S&C in the motion existed.
No doubt fearful of potentially being sanctioned, Dieterich praised S&C’s rigorous practices and safeguards around AI in the apology letter, including “training requirements governing the use of AI devices in the US in legal operations”, and regretted that its AI policies were “not followed” when preparing the proposal.
“I want to assure the court that the company’s policies governing its use of AI are clear and rigorous,” he stressed.
Dietderichs also claimed that the company took “immediate remedial measures”, including launching a review into how the AI hallucination slipped through the cracks. A revised version of the filing was later submitted to the court.
It was not specified which AI model or models were involved in the mistake. Sources close to the firm told financial TimesHowever, it does have an enterprise license for OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
MistakeE This is the latest high profile example of lawyers deceiving themselves by using hallucinogenic AI tools. AI can incorrectly cite or misquote case law and even invent non-existent cases, serious errors that are often ignored by the lawyers who use them. Other major firms, including Morgan & Morgan, have been embarrassed by AI-related blunders.
Judges are happy to warn lawyers who leave distorted quotes in AI, including imposing sanctions and threatening to send them to the state bar. Some people get creative with their punishments: When two lawyers at the Cozen O’Connor company were caught mishandling AI material, the judge said they could choose to either get a sanction, or write a letter to their law school dean explaining how they messed up.
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