Jauhn Etienne Villaruel

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COURT-GAVEL

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1781498525205gavel-court.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left"><em>ABS-CBN News/File</em></span></span></span></div><p>LONDON, United Kingdom — When a US judge found fabricated quotes in a lawyer&#x27;s brief earlier this year, the attorney admitted he had used Claude, an artificial intelligence chatbot, to write the document.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/technology/2025/6/19/justice-at-stake-as-generative-ai-enters-the-courtroom-1018">Justice at stake as generative AI enters the courtroom</a></div><p>That got him a fine and a mandatory course on how to use AI properly.</p><p>But this case was just one in a rising tide of AI &quot;hallucinations&quot; muddying the legal waters. Now some courts are trying to stem the tide by cracking down on the lawyers concerned.</p><p>It was judge Jerry Edwards Jr., of Louisiana district court, who sanctioned the lawyer in that recent US case last month. He found the AI-generated hallucinations while reviewing a motion to block evidence from being admitted in a personal injury case.</p><p>He caught seven quotes attributed to previous court rulings that either did not appear in the original decisions or had been misrepresented.</p><p>The hapless lawyer said a law clerk had caught other fabricated quotes in a first draft. Instead of learning from his mistake however, the attorney simply asked Claude to correct the errors -- then submitted the brief without reviewing it.</p><p>The attorney had believed the AI&#x27;s output was accurate, said the court&#x27;s May 18 memorandum order announcing the sanctions.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/2024/11/11/supreme-court-to-draft-governance-framework-for-responsible-integration-of-ai-in-judiciary-1420">Supreme Court to draft governance framework for ‘responsible integration’ of AI in judiciary</a></div><p>&quot;Ignorance of the risks of AI usage is no longer an excuse,&quot; the judge wrote, fining the lawyer $1,000 and sending him on a three-hour course on AI-assisted legal practice.</p><p>But he at least granted part of the motion.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>HUNDREDS OF CASES </strong></div><div><br/></div><p>AI-generated blunders do not necessarily destroy a lawyer&#x27;s case, French lawyer Damien Charlotin told AFP.</p><p>&quot;The lawyer&#x27;s credibility is in tatters—but there are cases where lawyers still win, despite the hallucinations, because they were right on the merits,&quot; he explained.</p><p>But there are other issues.</p><p>Judge Linda Kevins of New York State&#x27;s Supreme Court warned in a January ruling that such blunders wasted the time and money of both the opposing party and the court.</p><p>In addition, she said, they were &quot;potentially harming the reputation of judges and courts whose names are falsely invoked as authors of the bogus opinions&quot;.</p><p>Charlotin has been compiling a database of court documents containing AI hallucinations since April 2023.</p><p>So far, he has 1,600 examples from 35 countries: from fabricated quotes and cases, to plagiarized arguments or references and out-of-date advice.</p><p>Since it is a crowd-sourced database it cannot count as the definitive list, but by far the most cases -- 1,116 of them -- come from the United States.</p><p>Next comes Canada, with 173 cases, Australia with 74, then Britain with 59.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>&#x27;DO YOUR JOB!&#x27; </strong></div><div><br/></div><p>&quot;In the legal field, AI is used for research, finding precedents, and sometimes generating text,&quot; said Charlotin.</p><p>Lawyers and litigants representing themselves who submitted documents containing AI hallucinations were most often using mainstream chatbots, particularly OpenAI&#x27;s ChatGPT.</p><p>The data suggests that specialized legal AI tools, used by many law firms, are more reliable -- but they are still not immune from hallucinations.</p><p>&quot;AI thrives on recognizing patterns. And legal citations and arguments are always formatted in the same way, so it&#x27;s easy for an AI to follow a template and generate fake ones,&quot; said Charlotin.</p><p>&quot;Because no lawyer knows all past cases, when a chatbot outputs something that looks like a law citation, the only way to know it actually exists is to check it,&quot; he added.</p><p>But some lawyers are still not doing that, said judge Scott Schlegel, who serves on the American Bar Association&#x27;s Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence.</p><p>Too many attorneys still do not understand the technology&#x27;s limits, he told AFP. Time pressures are compounding the problem, Charlotin&#x27;s database shows.</p><p>But that&#x27;s no excuse, Schlegel told AFP in February.</p><p>&quot;At this point, I just can&#x27;t understand how we still have the issue. Just do your job and read the cases. Come on!&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>SANCTIONS </strong></div><div><br/></div><p>According to Charlotin&#x27;s data, hallucinations in court filings have increased eightfold in the past year compared with the previous 12 months.</p><p>He is testing his own AI-powered tool to help lawyers spot hallucinations before they are submitted to courts. But he cannot guarantee it will not itself make mistakes.</p><p>&quot;It&#x27;s still up to the lawyers to adapt their verification process to the issues at hand,&quot; he said.</p><p>Databases such as Court Listener have a growing list of rulings on AI-generated calamities in the US courts. And in several such cases, judges are handing out more than just reprimands.</p><p>Last week, federal judge Sharion Aycock sanctioned lawyers on both sides of a civil case in Mississippi after they submitted AI-assisted legal briefs that cited non-existent cases.</p><p>Four lawyers were fined $8,000 in total, and two of them were barred from appearing in the Mississippi Northern District Court for two years.</p><p>&quot;In an era of rampant unverified AI usage within the legal field, this case presents a prime example of the risk associated with serving as a rubberstamp when acting as local counsel&quot;, she wrote in the sanctions order.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><strong><br/></strong></div><div><strong>RELATED VIDEOS</strong></div><div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1MVGvoxKnGU?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZF31IdqtUI8?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div>

<p>Lawyers and litigants representing themselves who submitted documents containing AI hallucinations were most often using mainstream chatbots, particularly OpenAI's ChatGPT.</p>

Lawyers and litigants representing themselves who submitted documents containing AI hallucinations were most often using mainstream chatbots, particularly OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Courts cracking down on error-strewn AI-assisted legal briefs

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Courts cracking down on error-strewn AI-assisted legal briefs

Laetitia Commanay,

Agence France-Presse

Published June 15, 2026 12:45 PM PHT

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Agence France-Presse

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