[HN Gopher] Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citat...
___________________________________________________________________
Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from
ChatGPT
Author : gorbachev
Score : 184 points
Date : 2023-06-23 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| BlakeSimpson wrote:
| It blows my mind that a lawyer would go through all the schooling
| and DEBT just to use ChatGPT and risk losing their BAR card.
|
| Sure, I see plenty of uses for ChatGPT in their field, but to not
| even check the output before submitting it is what blows my mind.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > risk losing their BAR card.
|
| Did they risk it? Even after it being obvious the lawyer was
| lying and trying to cover up, and not acquiescing to their
| wrongdoing even after all of it, all they had to pay was $5k.
| smcl wrote:
| Do we know for sure that absolutely no further action is
| being taken? I really don't know processes, so I dunno if
| this is it or if this is just _one_ of the consequences, and
| that the bar association (is that the right org?) they 're
| part of would want to weigh in on it.
| filoleg wrote:
| > all they had to pay was $5k.
|
| They still risk being disbarred (not just hypothetically, it
| might actually happen) + taking a massive hit to the
| reputation (their own + the firm). The latter one alone is a
| strong punishment, given how widely-publicized this incident
| was in the media. It cost the firm a lot of potential
| clients, and the lawyer might struggle with finding a decent
| position after the fact (given how much more reputation-based
| the legal field seems to be compared to something like
| engineering).
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Name change in 3..2..1..
| mplewis9z wrote:
| It's all good, man.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| It shouldn't be so mindblowing. People are lazy and dumb, as
| much so as they're allowed to be. We're a year away from this
| tech being completely mainstream to the point where we'll find
| out what happens when an entire society at once stops trying to
| think/work because there's a machine to do it for them now.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| If they used ChatGPT to find real cases that's not lazy,
| that's smart. The dumb and lazy part was NOT CHECKING ON THE
| NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR SOMETHING YOU SENT TO A JUDGE. Sorry for
| the caps, but so, so stupid. IIRC they asked ChatGPT if it
| lied, and it said no..
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| And they doubled down on dumb and lazy when the judge first
| raised the flag that something was wrong with what they
| submitted.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Before it was handful of mad people with things like
| sovereign citizen and stupid instructions on Internet. But
| now it seems even trained folks will follow whatever
| something they have not verified says...
|
| Also I wonder how well the training data was cleaned from all
| potentially harmful stuff like for example the sovereign
| citizen ideas...
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| And I'm a French model..
| elforce002 wrote:
| This. We thought that it was bad enough when people used
| google to diagnose themselves. We're entering uncharted
| territory now.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >completely mainstream to the point where we'll find out what
| happens when an entire society at once stops trying to
| think/work
|
| You really need not wait that far if you have been observant
| enough, they are they were at one point clownish enough to
| believe in religion, now the vast majority of them believe in
| 'science' etc. Over reliance on Chat GPT is just the one of
| the newest manifestation of laziness and dumbness.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| And this is exactly why I don't think Communism will work.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Everyone is piling onto you here, but another aspect is that
| many lawyers already don't do their own research, they use
| paralegals to do it for them.
|
| With that information I think it's less mind-blowing, they were
| simply assuming ChatGPT could do the work of a paralegal
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| I've worked with legal software professionally a few times,
| and kept thinking software won't replace lawyers, it'll
| replace paralegals. Not all, but a great deal of grunt work
| could be replaced with AI and good forms. Now if we could get
| them not to lie?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Do we even know why AIs "hallucinate"? Is it possible to
| prevent it?
| qayxc wrote:
| > Do we even know why AIs "hallucinate"?
|
| It's because, just like human memory, they aren't
| databases or search engines. Generative transformer
| models are basically next-word-prediction machines on
| steroids. They take the input and try to "guess" the most
| likely reply based on their training data.
|
| These machines have no way to distinguish facts from
| fiction, only probabilities of combinations of words that
| would make the most plausible reply.
|
| > Is it possible to prevent it?
|
| There are methods to prevent this by incorporating
| specialised knowledge databases into the training
| material of these models. This, however, only works with
| models that have been finetuned on very specific tasks
| and topics [1].
|
| Other approaches use AI to transform human questions
| ("bag of words" inputs) to queries into structured
| knowledge bases, match the results (e.g. tree-like
| structures of context and facts) to the question and turn
| them back into human language [2]. The downside of these
| methods is that they're currently limited to simple QA
| formats and won't feel as "natural" as talking to chatbot
| and requires carefully prepared and curated knowledge
| databases.
|
| [1] http://jens-
| lehmann.org/files/2019/iswc_bert_simple_question...
|
| [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.13284
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I think it's because AIs aren't actually in touch with
| reality as we know it, they're generating text from a
| sort of graph of concepts that comes out of the training
| process.
| worrycue wrote:
| > Now if we could get them not to lie?
|
| This reminds me. Whatever happened to IBM's Watson? It's
| not a LLM right? But it seem similar enough function wise.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| There still needs to be a human manually proofreading them,
| even if it's as trivial as looking up whether the cited
| cases actually exist. Same goes for code outputs from
| currently available AI tools: some still needs to debug
| them to make sure it works, and fix any troubles that
| spring up during deployment and production.
|
| Of course after some number of iterations, AI may gain the
| ability to self-check and self-correct to the point of
| achieving 100% accuracy, but I think that milestone will
| quickly lead to AGI and job security will quickly become an
| obsolete topic for every industry anyways.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Maybe. But I keep thinking it's not going to replace the
| single paralegal that a single lawyer has, but it might
| reduce the 9 paralegals to 6, and then 4, and then..
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _many lawyers already don 't do their own research, they
| use paralegals to do it for them._
|
| If you mean that some lawyers use paralegals to do word
| searches for potentially-relevant case law (i.e., published
| judicial opinions as precedents), that might be true. But in
| my experience, _good_ lawyers either do the raw research
| themselves, or at a minimum they use junior lawyers to do the
| _initial_ searching for precedents; then if necessary, they
| do supplemental searching themselves, based on their greater
| experience.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| They didn't know it could lie?
|
| But also, pretty sure Doctors and Lawyers are among the least
| trusted/highest corruption professions. All that schooling is a
| barrier to entry to keep outsiders away, it doesnt guarantee
| competence. Basically once you get in, graduation rates are
| close to 100%.
| sarchertech wrote:
| You're very wrong about the perception of doctors. According
| to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted profession.
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/388649/military-brass-judges-
| am...
|
| My wife runs the resident eduction for her division and they
| are very aware of the dangers of sending an incompetent
| doctor out into the world to practice. They'll force them
| through extra training and make them repeat residency if they
| have to.
|
| Residents also drop out of their programs and move into other
| ones. It's rare for them to drop out completely because
| they'd still be on the hook for $200k+ in loans. But medicine
| is a big field and it's rare that someone who made it into
| and through med school to not be able to find something they
| are competent and capable at. Maybe you're not great with
| patients, but you can look through a microscope all day as a
| pathologist etc...
|
| Incompetent and corrupt doctors still make it through the
| process of course, but far far fewer than in our profession
| and just about any other profession I can think of.
|
| As for lawyers:
|
| Law schools have around a 77% graduation rate nation wide.
| And about 90% of law school graduates eventually pass the bar
| exam.
|
| So we're look at somewhere around 70% of people making it
| through after a pretty selective filter to begin with.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >You're very wrong about the perception of doctors.
| According to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted
| profession. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388649/military-
| brass-judges-am...
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-
| spenders?cy...
|
| They are the 4th largest briber in the US.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Fewer than 20% of physicians belong to the AMA, so that's
| just an absurd statement. By that logic all old people
| are the 15th largest bribers.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean as much as politicians go after old peoples votes,
| you might be right.
| mynameisash wrote:
| Far be it from me to defend our system of lobbying the
| government, but there's a big difference between bribery
| and federal lobbying. Your phrasing poisons the well.
| echelon wrote:
| > According to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted
| profession.
|
| n=1 anecdote here:
|
| When I was in research track biochem and bumped into premed
| students, nearly the entire population of premed didn't
| seem to care about the science behind what they were
| learning. They formed a very different social clique. The
| "top students" in that set were sharing previous years'
| organic chemistry exams and none of them would read papers
| or get involved in research. They were entirely
| disinterested in the science.
|
| In my interactions with general practitioners, I like to
| talk about medicines' method of actions, pharmacology, the
| actual biochemistry behind diseases. Most of them seem to
| have no clue or retention of this information. I'm not
| trying to challenge them, either -- I'm generally curious
| to learn.
|
| That's not to say all doctors are like that. A lot of the
| surgeons and specialists I know are walking tomes of
| information.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| I think a lot of your general practitioners are bound to
| follow protocol set forth by various medical
| organizations. So in that sense a lot of diving into
| research won't help them. They need to understand and
| diagnose without having to worry about every little
| research paper. A lot of research papers aren't truth -
| they are peer reviewed opinions.
|
| Once you get to medical research groups that formulate
| those protocols, that's where research becomes important.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >I think a lot of your general practitioners are bound to
| follow protocol set forth by various medical
| organizations. So in that sense a lot of diving into
| research won't help them. They need to understand and
| diagnose without having to worry about every little
| research paper. A lot of research papers aren't truth -
| they are peer reviewed opinions.
|
| Isnt this even more necessary for them to learn the
| fundementals? Especially if Physicians claim that they
| are both Art and Science, which is why we can't merely
| use science for diagnosis and treatment.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| That's why diving into research will not help general
| practitioners. Because research isn't fact. You need a
| body of research along with oversight of statistical
| methods and its data collection to claim fact and that
| too with specific constraints.
|
| So they do learn fundamentals but fundamentals do not
| come out of research papers.
| kurthr wrote:
| Studying for the test and taking easy classes, especially
| as premeds, has been a (likely accurate) stereotype of
| the medical profession since at least the 1970s & 80s.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I'm not sure how that's any different than 90% of
| computer science students, or the average college student
| in general.
|
| When I took non-required theoretical classes, I tended to
| be one of the only undergrads in the class
| Ekaros wrote:
| From country where medschool is done by entrance exams
| the whole "premed" always sounded extremely weird and
| wasteful. They already have longest training time and
| then more is added on top?
| jhbadger wrote:
| In theory, the point of having medical students have an
| undergrad degree is that they will be more "well
| rounded". Unlike in many countries where university
| education is very focused, in the US, an undergraduate
| even studying STEM is required to take a certain number
| of courses like literature or history, and likewise
| someone studying literature or history is required to
| take some science courses. Of course just requiring
| people to take courses doesn't mean they will actually
| retain the knowledge after the tests, but it's a nice
| idea anyway.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Med school in those countries tends to last a year or 2
| longer.
|
| Also most other countries have national education
| programs for secondary school. High school in the US is
| regulated at the state and local level, so it's very
| variable. As a consequence, the first 2 years of college
| tends towards general and education.
|
| Another note, there's also a med school entrance exam in
| the US.
| tonightstoast wrote:
| Sure but in the US it is 4 (undergrad) + 4 (med school)
| so in total it is 8 years rather than 5 or 6.
|
| Agreed regarding the US high school standards but
| students that take AP courses in high school can take the
| MCAT. They may not do the "best" but they will know some
| of the material. Schools in the US like UMKC have 6 year
| programs were high school students take the MCAT.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| In a lot of ways, the first two years of US undergrad are
| "remedial high school". This also explains how, e.g.
| American undergrads typically declare their majors until
| mid to late into their second years.
| appletrotter wrote:
| I don't really know, but it might be okay for them to not
| focus on that knowledge.
| echelon wrote:
| Seems like we could train a lot of people for a lot
| cheaper if that was the case, though.
| sarchertech wrote:
| That's essentially what Physicians Assistants and Nurse
| Practitioners are.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Something like 17% of premed students end up actually
| becoming physicians.
|
| That's a very different sample. Then you have to consider
| that the people that you are most likely to notice are
| the most vocal self identified "premed" students since
| most colleges don't actually have premed degrees.
|
| As far as interactions with doctors. GPs are the least
| likely to get into specifics because of the generalist
| nature of their work. Expecting them to remember
| something that they haven't used in 10+ years is asking a
| lot.
|
| Understanding calculus is incredibly useful to software
| engineers. But try asking a practicing software engineer
| 10 years out of school some textbook calculus questions.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| This seems analogous to a programmer who knows all the
| sort functions offered by their language of choice and
| when to use each, but has never learned how to write
| their own sort algorithm, and therefore can't hold a
| conversation about doing so. Plenty of employers and
| customers would be thrilled with such a programmer, if
| the job at hand is just to ensure that the data gets
| properly sorted.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Well, one thing is that "law" was often the "field-of-choice"
| for the well-schooled who didn't know where to go next?
|
| Now many, if not likely most, of the well-schooled are
| generally intelligent, but of course there are also quite a few
| rich idiots as well.
|
| (Today, of course, most of the latter go into tech.)
| curiousgal wrote:
| _Your honour I am not a cat_
| justincredible wrote:
| [dead]
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| What evidence do you have?
| Galacta7 wrote:
| I can see that... :P
| blindriver wrote:
| There are A LOT of VERY bad lawyers out there.
|
| I have a friend who used to be a federal judge for immigration,
| and he said that immigration lawyers are especially the worst,
| because families need their services desperately, and these
| lawyers will take their money and spend NO time on their cases.
| They show up to court and are figuring stuff out real time.
|
| He tore one lawyer a new asshole for doing exactly this for his
| client and ordered them to come back better prepared.
|
| So the idea that some of them will use ChatGPT to do their work
| doesn't surprise me at all.
| ianhawes wrote:
| I work in the immigration space. Part of the problem is that
| because immigration is technically federal but operates almost
| entirely in administrative venues (i.e. USCIS and EOIR),
| immigration lawyers only need to be barred in their home state
| and do not generally need admission to a relevant federal court
| bar or appear pro hac vice to represent clients in immigration
| court or even to make an appearance in filings.
| hgsgm wrote:
| How is that relevant? Incompetent / criminal lawyers are
| almost never disbarred in any field.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It's also not usually a lot of money in comparison to their
| alternatives. I once had a criminal defense lawyer tell me that
| they make up the difference with scale and essentially batch-
| process people.
| OliverJones wrote:
| And every time this happens from now on, the fine should be
| doubled. When the fine gets too high for the lazy lawyer to pay,
| they may instead relinquish their bar admission (lose their
| license to practice law) for five years.
|
| Lawyers admitted to the bar aren't innocents. They're "officers
| of the court", meaning the legal system relies on them to avoid
| BS in their citation of other cases and of statutes and laws.
| It's never been acceptable for a lawyer to sign off on something
| without reading it and making sure it's right.
|
| What if registered professional civil engineers started asking
| generative AI for sewer-system or bridge designs and then didn't
| inspect them before approving them and handing them off to the
| guys with dozers and cement trucks? Not only would people fall
| into rivers, but the rivers would be polluted.
|
| The real world consequences are similarly serious when lawyers
| make stuff up, or let their interns or word-processing software
| make stuff up.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I had someone run into basically the same issue with their
| dissertation.
|
| I went back into my texts since I had recommended them chatGPT. I
| screenshotted the part where I said:
|
| "You can't trust it for valid information"
|
| I even told him that everyone needs to be punished by incorrect
| information from ChatGPT once to really understand what its
| capable of. You need that traumatic event.
|
| Gosh, why can't people just listen and accept other people's
| thoughts. Why must we learn individually?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Gosh, why can't people just listen and accept other people's
| thoughts. Why must we learn individually?
|
| If you've evolved from a species that is profoundly stupid, as
| a rule, then perhaps an adaptation/mutation that makes you
| mistrusting of that species advice is one that tends to
| propagate.
|
| For every "don't use ChatGPT, it's unsafe", there's a "I talk
| to magical beings who tell me you're not allowed to eat good
| food and you should mutilate your genitals".
|
| Statistically, refusing to learn from other people is probably
| the best bet.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Gosh, why can't people just listen and accept other people's
| thoughts. Why must we learn individually?
|
| Because other people's thoughts are usually wrong so you cant
| trust them.
| romwell wrote:
| Sounds exactly like something chatGPT would say to convince
| you to trust it :D
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Why can't people understand human nature?
|
| Why can't people just do research the real way rather than
| circuitously go to the wrong answer machine and then double
| check everything it says?
| damnesian wrote:
| Everyone letting ChatGPT do their jobs, and the people training
| ChatGPT are too lazy to do the work themselves, they actually use
| ChatGPT to train ChatGPT... what could possibly go wrong in this
| scenario?
| qayxc wrote:
| Related: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.17493v2
|
| Basically, if this paper is right, 2021 was the last year
| usable training data could be pulled from the internet. It
| could be all downhill from hereon out, as the amount of AI
| generated content will soon overtake actual human generated and
| -curated data on the internet.
|
| So the party could be over soon -\\_(tsu)_/-
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| I wouldn't say OpenAI is "lazy," but this is still an excellent
| point about LLMs.
|
| The researchers training the ones we use now are in a massive
| hurry. They aren't meticulously curating datasets, checking
| usage rights, hiring a huge field of human curators, or
| thoroughly field testing them. They are madly working on a new
| improvement, publishing it in a paper, then moving onto the
| next thing.
|
| This has been a cultural issue in AI land for years. These
| experimental models were never meant for the general public,
| yet here we are.
| jlarocco wrote:
| I wonder if this case was a setup for a lawsuit against OpenAI?
|
| Given the marketing and the way Microsoft and Google were
| tripping over themselves to "catch up", the impression in the
| media and to the general public is that chat bots are a magic
| silver bullet for everything. Even a lot of tech people are
| unclear about exactly how these things work.
|
| The case seems pretty clear: "They said it was artificial
| intelligence, but it wasn't very intelligent to make up cases.
| Look at the damages it's caused me..."
| jawns wrote:
| Every version of ChatGPT that I have used, going back to the
| beginning of January 2023, has had a disclaimer appear when you
| first load up the page that specifically tells you, "May
| occasionally generate incorrect information."
|
| This is why the law firm's contention that they were acting in
| good faith is laughable.
|
| When the tool itself shows a prominent disclaimer that it "May
| occasionally generate incorrect information," then the law firm
| can't reasonably argue that "We made a good-faith mistake in
| failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up
| cases out of whole cloth."
|
| It was either gross negligence or intentional malfeasance.
|
| The most interesting thing to me is why the firm is continuing to
| try to excuse its actions, rather than taking full responsibility
| for them. I guess they assume that the classic Shaggy "It Wasn't
| Me" defense is less likely to lose them business, because they
| think so little of the clients they're trying to attract that
| they're wagering they'll buy it.
| thrw_aus wrote:
| So I guess ChatGPT didn't actually pass the bar exam.
|
| I wonder when tech firms will actually be held responsible for
| false advertisement.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Speaking confidently in a structured manner and sprinkling in
| 'facts' has always been quite convincing to humans.
| User23 wrote:
| There's probably a giant opportunity for pro se litigants here.
| Several possibilities suggest themselves.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I think many commenters here are unaware of exactly how forehead-
| slappingly WTF it is that these lawyers did. Even if ChatGPT were
| replaced with a well respected human legal expert saying exactly
| the same things, they still cited case law that they couldn't
| verify the existence of, let alone that the context of the ruling
| was actually helpful to their cause.
|
| Then when a judge told them "hey, we can't find any of these
| cases, what the hell is going on?" they doubled down. They're
| basically saying "trust me bro, these rulings totally happened
| and they totally say we're right".
| jeroenhd wrote:
| When criticized about the made up cases they even showed
| (undated) screenshots of them asking ChatGPT if the cases were
| real.
|
| This is like your local major getting tricked into buying the
| Eiffel tower using public funds and then defending himself by
| saying he asked the guy he bought the Eiffel tower from and the
| guy said he was totally legit.
| sgbeal wrote:
| That should be a career-ending move, not a fine.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I disagree with the notion that it should be "career ending",
| but I do think they got off pretty light.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| They doubled down on their original mistake rather than admit
| what they did, even when it was quite clear the judge and
| opposing council was on to them. They should be disbarred.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _They should be disbarred._
|
| I just can't agree. To my way of thinking there are very
| few (if any) things that should be "career ending" the
| first time they happen. And the main guy involved here, as
| I recall, has a long career with what has been a spotless
| record until now. I just can't see the justification for
| ending that career over one fuck-up.
|
| But, again... the punishment does seem lighter than I
| expected. I was thinking that any fine associated with this
| should be enough to hurt a bit. Something like $250,000 or
| something. This amounts to a slap on the wrist.
|
| Just to clarify my position here: I _do_ think this is a
| _major_ fuck-up. Like, really major. To the extent that I
| think the punishment should not be "career ending" it's
| just a reflection of my seeing "career ending" punishments
| as something of a "nuclear option" that should be avoided
| in all but the absolute most extreme cases. I guess I would
| say that if punishments spanned a scale from 1-10 with "10"
| being "disbarment" then this should probably be about an 8
| or 9 in my mind.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Where is this doubling down? It certainly isn't in this
| article.
| isp wrote:
| See https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.
| nysd.57... - Page 2, the judge uses the very words
| "doubled down": "But if the matter had ended with
| Respondents coming clean about their actions shortly
| after they received the defendant's March 15 brief
| questioning the existence of the cases, or after they
| reviewed the Court's Orders of April 11 and 12 requiring
| production of the cases, the record now would look quite
| different. Instead, the individual Respondents doubled
| down and did not begin to dribble out the truth until May
| 25, after the Court issued an Order to Show Cause why one
| of the individual Respondents ought not be sanctioned."
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I guess that really depends on what you consider doubling
| down.
|
| -On March 1, They filed a submission with fake citations
| from chatGPT.
|
| -On April 11th court told them the cases couldnt be found
| and to produce full transcripts of the cases by April 25.
|
| -On April 25, They came back and said they don't have
| them and couldnt find the cases, only the limited
| excerpts provided in "online databases".
|
| -On May 4, the court asked them why they ought not be
| sanctioned for citing non-existent cases to the Court.
|
| -On May 25, They said we found these cases on ChatGPT and
| thought they were real.
|
| I guess the more transparent response on April 25 would
| have been to say "We weren't able to find the full cases
| _and we now believe they probably dont exist_ ". Im not
| sure if the latter part is material if they already
| admitted they cant find the cases. If you cant produce
| the cases, is the reason relevant at that point?
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| > They said we found these cases on ChatGPT and thought
| they were real
|
| Just like Wikipedia, ChatGPT is great for generating
| leads, but you need to check the actual primary sources!
| How do people not get this?
| jaclaz wrote:
| >Where is this doubling down? It certainly isn't in this
| article
|
| It is mentioned also in the article:
|
| >then continued to stand by the fake opinions after
| judicial orders called their existence into question."
| hartator wrote:
| It is:
|
| > then continued to stand by the fake opinions after
| judicial orders called their existence into question.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Did they?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Here's a longer video with more explanation: https://yout
| ube.com/watch?v=oqSYljRYDEM&pp=ygUOQ2hhdGdwdCBsY...
|
| At first it was just generated citations. The opposing
| lawyers and judges could not find the cases, and so they
| then asked chatGPT for them, and it generated them, and
| they were submitted to the court. (One of the lawyers
| notarized the other's filings.)
|
| There are even transcripts of chatGPT telling the accused
| that it is not an authoritative or up-to-date legal
| database.
|
| ---
|
| The punishment could arguably be more severe, since it
| demonstrated that these lawyers do not read their cases,
| particularly the one that notarized everything.
| djur wrote:
| The judge cannot disbar them, but the opinion provides all
| of the evidence necessary.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| The punishment isn't just the $5,000, it's the public shaming
| that came with it. You're not going to be able anyone's name
| here for many years without this case coming up. The world at
| large has been watching this unfold gleefully.
|
| That, combined with the lawyers involved having decades-long
| clean slates, as well as this case being outside the normal
| realm this team would operate in, as well as ChatGPT being
| relatively new at the time this happened makes it all seem
| pretty proportional.
|
| Maybe you could say they deserve worse for how they handled
| things after they got caught, but I struggle to really have a
| problem with this punishment considering the records of those
| involved.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The punishment isn't just the $5,000, it's the public
| shaming that came with it.
|
| Both the fine and the public shaming are very light
| "punishments". Everyone's pointing and laughing now, but in
| a year nobody will even remember their name and their
| career will be fine.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Sure, but when you Google a lawyer's name and this comes
| up you may choose not to use him.
| loeg wrote:
| On the other hand, there are certain kinds of lawyer with
| low-research clients who won't suffer much from this, and
| these lawyers are likely that kind (representing a client
| suing Avianca for a drinks cart complaint).
| sigstoat wrote:
| local legal communities have long memories. they'll be
| griefed about it at their retirement parties.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > local legal communities have long memories.
|
| So does Google, and anyone researching these lawyers or
| this firm in the future...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Why do you think that would be better than a warning or a fine?
| harles wrote:
| It needs to be a warning to the industry, which requires real
| consequences for those involved. A warning could encourage
| abuse by others - there's little to lose except having to
| stop after getting caught.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Because it wasn't just a simple mistake. It was such
| egregious professional negligence that it calls into question
| not only the basic competence of the attorney, but also their
| basic sense of ethics.
| cyrialize wrote:
| To add onto this - the lawyers failed to verify their
| resources! This is something that every lawyer carefully
| pays attention to before submitting anything.
|
| The fact that they did no research on ChatGPT, and they
| didn't verify the output from ChatGPT, is pretty bad.
|
| They're being punished more so on how they used their
| resources, not for using ChatGPT.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > They're being punished more so on how they used their
| resources, not for using ChatGPT
|
| Yes, exactly. If they'd used a human intern instead of
| ChatGPT, it wouldn't change the situation at all.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Huh, I think it would? It's still really bad, the quality
| of the service the client got is still abysmal, and it's
| still ultimately the lawyer's responsibility. That much
| is certainly unchanged, it would also be considered a
| much more understandable mistake.
| smcl wrote:
| If they followed exactly the same processes (showing a
| screenshot of a text conversation saying "Is X a real
| case?" when challenged about the nonexistent cases) then
| I imagine they would have have been treated the same way.
| However they probably wouldn't have gone down that route,
| because they know "uhhhh I included those cases because
| my intern insisted they exist?" absolutely wouldn't fly.
| The difference is that they thought they could chance it
| because ChatGPT is a shiny, new thing that some people
| have a pretty mixed understanding of.
| emilsedgh wrote:
| Why so eager to end someone's career? He did a lazy/stupid
| thing. People do far worse things.
|
| The client may want to sue them and seek damages or something
| and that'd be fair but I don't think their career should end.
| That's harsh.
| AmVess wrote:
| Things like this is what causes lawyers to lose cases for
| their clients. Imagine being a client of a lawyer who uses
| ChatGPT. You lose the case and then your livelihood or worse.
|
| These twits should be disbarred, and without hesitation.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Imagine being a client of a lawyer who uses ChatGPT. You
| lose the case and then your livelihood or worse.
|
| This presupposes that the use of ChatGPT is the reason the
| case was lost. In this case, the judge found the mistake,
| called it out, and fined the lawyers for their
| carelessness. It doesn't necessarily follow that p1)
| ChatGPT was used, p2) Case was lost, c) Case would have
| been won if ChatGPT was not used.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, the use of ChatGPT is the only reason that they
| thought they had a colorable argument that the case could
| be won.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Things like this is what causes lawyers to lose cases for
| their clients.
|
| Or to waste a lot of their clients money on cases that they
| should have known could not be won from the outset, as is
| the case here.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Nobody cares about lazy/stupid. The problem is that he lied
| about it again and again.
|
| Stupid mistakes are usually not career ending, fraud and
| cover up usually is.
| hotsauceror wrote:
| Because to do otherwise is to normalize the use of false or
| non-existent information, whether due to bad faith, laziness,
| or gross ignorance, in processes where the outcomes may
| affect millions of dollars, thousands of people, or
| individuals' lives and freedoms.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Gross negligence. Checking sources is a cornerstone of
| professions that are highly reliant on citing sources.
| sgbeal wrote:
| > Why so eager to end someone's career?
|
| Because certain careers, e.g. lawyers, surgeons, and law
| enforcement give their practitioners the ability to make or
| break their clients, potentially killing them or ruining them
| financially and/or socially. Such professions must, for
| reasons of social sanity, be held to higher standards than
| someone who's career is, e.g., writing web apps or serving
| coffee.
| tptacek wrote:
| Because if someone gets a minor fine, and doesn't lose their
| career, it's less clear why this would be fun to talk about.
| This is the most important dynamic in message board threads
| about current events.
| bell-cot wrote:
| What they did was the professional equivalent of a surgeon
| thinking "I wonder what'd happen if I chopped out this
| thingie?", then acting on that impulse, then lying about his
| actions.
| emilsedgh wrote:
| With that logic all us programmer's careers should be ended
| due to the bugs we introduce because "they are equivalent
| of a surgeon thinking...".
|
| It's not equivalent to that. Nobody lost their leg over
| this.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Most programmers don't have to pass through rigorous
| education to be professionally certified on par with
| lawyers or surgeons.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or if not end career some real punishment like enough time (by
| USA standards couple decades) in prison.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| LegalEagle did a video on this case two weeks ago, digging into
| it in some more depth: https://youtu.be/oqSYljRYDEM
|
| They lied to a judge, doubled down, showed further incompetence
| by admitting to not knowing how the legal reference they
| supposedly quoted was even structured, then lied to a judge again
| trying to get more time to get their story straight, and all it
| cost them was $5000? And even then they have the guts to say they
| disagree with the judge?
|
| Levidow, Levidow & Oberman must either be run by fools or take
| the rest of the world for fools.
|
| I can understand how the rubber stamping lawyer signing all the
| paperwork got off easy; he was just signing documents because the
| lawyer who supposedly did all the work for the case couldn't
| operate in the court the case was transfered to.
|
| The other lawyer, the one who did the AI equivalent from copy
| pasting from the summary page of Google, should not be deemed fit
| to practice law.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > and all it cost them was $5000?
|
| They also have to write written apologies to their client, and
| all of the judges who were mentioned in their fake cases, with
| proof filed in the docket.
|
| And they are the brunt of a very well-publicized lawsuit. The
| judge is effectively saying that all that publicity is
| punishment enough; he doesn't need to do anymore. He doesn't
| need to refer them to the bar for disbarment--the bar _already
| knows about it_. (The judge has no power to disbar them
| himself, he can only refer to the bar for disbarment.)
|
| The biggest surprise is that they didn't get made to pay the
| defendant's legal fees as well, but that's because defendant
| didn't ask for any fees.
|
| Oh, and the final punishment... they lost the case--they get no
| chance to redo their opposition to the motion to dismiss.
| Arguably, their client can also sue them for malpractice, and
| their malpractice carrier is likely to prefer to settle that
| rather than actually fight the case.
| Zetice wrote:
| > They also have to write written apologies to their client,
| and all of the judges who were mentioned in their fake cases,
| with proof filed in the docket.
|
| I thought the judge said he couldn't force them to do that
| because it wouldn't be sincere.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Whether or they choose to apologize, they do have to send
| letters that include a copy of the transcript of the
| hearing on sanctions and the sanctions order.
| dwmcqueen wrote:
| What is even better is this attorney - who relied on ChatGPT
| for research - when called to task to provide the legal
| opinions....couldn't even get the affidavit right.
|
| "The April 25 affidavit was filed in response to the Orders
| of April 11 and 12, 2023, but is sworn to before a Notary
| Public on the 25th of January 2023. Mr. LoDuca should be
| prepared to address this anomaly on June 8, 2023 and bring
| with him a wet-ink signed copy of the affidavit with the
| notary's signature and stamp."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The _real_ punishment is this decision, laying out a record
| of Keystone-Cops-level buffoonery, dishonesty, and lying.
| Laying all that out in a published decision, in a case that
| 's receiving a fair amount of interest, which means that the
| decision will be all over the internet.
|
| This isn't going to go away. This decision will dog them for
| the entire rest of their careers.
| jldugger wrote:
| > This isn't going to go away. This decision will dog them
| for the entire rest of their careers.
|
| I get the impression from the events leading up to the use
| of GPT this is not the first time their competence led to
| outcomes that will "dog them for the entire rest of their
| careers."
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" They also have to write written apologies to their client,
| and all of the judges who were mentioned in their fake cases,
| with proof filed in the docket."_
|
| They'll probably just have ChatGPT write their apologies for
| them.
| voytec wrote:
| _Dear Client,_
|
| _As an AI language model..._
| cwillu wrote:
| You have been a bad lawyer.
|
| I have been a good Bing.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| Leonard French does a pretty good breakdown too:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5YaGACnJpg
| wubbert wrote:
| [dead]
| hgsgm wrote:
| Imagine if your only responsibility is to check the work of
| someone deemed untrustworthy, to protect everyone else from
| their malice or incompetence, and you just skip doing that and
| lie and say you did it.
|
| Why should you get off easy?
| loeg wrote:
| Also good coverage of the case on Serious Trouble (podcast):
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-legal-brief-beyond...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They lied to a judge, doubled down, showed further
| incompetence by admitting to not knowing how the legal
| reference they supposedly quoted was even structured, then lied
| to a judge again trying to get more time to get their story
| straight, and all it cost them was $5000?
|
| Well, no, they also have to right letters and attach the
| sanctions order, and the transcript of the sanctions hearing
| to:
|
| (1) their client in the case, and
|
| (2) each of the real judges to whom they (on the basis of
| ChatGPT "research") falsely attributed a decision.
|
| But, yes, sanctions are fairly light (particularly the absence
| of a disciplinary referral).
|
| > I can understand how the rubber stamping lawyer signing all
| the paperwork got off easy; he was just signing documents
| because the lawyer who supposedly did all the work for the case
| couldn't operate in the court the case was transfered to.
|
| > The other lawyer, the one who did the AI equivalent from copy
| pasting from the summary page of Google, should not be deemed
| fit to practice law.
|
| They both failed their duty in nearly identical ways; passing
| of someone else's work to which they did not apply independent
| professional analysis as their professional work. If anything,
| the one doing so directly to the court should be more, not
| less, liable to outside sanction (if the issue was sanctions
| within the firm, that's a different story, maybe.)
| Retric wrote:
| I don't the the absence of a formal disciplinary referral
| means much when the judge understands the amount of publicity
| from this is itself a referral.
| jldugger wrote:
| >They both failed their duty in nearly identical ways
|
| Once they showed up in court, one of them was unable to
| explain how to interpret a very basic "you should know this
| to practice law" case citation ("F.3d"[1]). Not only did they
| not "apply independent professional analysis" it seems they
| were woefully unprepared to even produce such a thing.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/oqSYljRYDEM?t=1526
| [deleted]
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| > They lied to a judge, doubled down, showed further
| incompetence by admitting to not knowing how the legal
| reference they supposedly quoted was even structured
|
| Sorry to be cynical, but this sounds like they delegated their
| defense to AI as well... in the near future this kind of
| argument will probably work in a lot of contexts.
|
| God help us when it helps in court.
| isp wrote:
| Related:
|
| - "A man sued Avianca Airline - his lawyer used ChatGPT" (27 days
| ago, 139 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36095352
|
| - "Lawyer who used ChatGPT faces penalty for made up citations"
| (15 days ago, 128 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36242462
|
| - "Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case
| law" (14 days ago, 175 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257545
|
| Original court documents:
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63107798/mata-v-avianca...
|
| The full document from the federal judge on sanctions:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.57...
|
| One of many highlights: dismissing the lawyer's bad-faith
| argument with a footnote quoting Alice in Wonderland (footnote
| 12, page 18).
| cj wrote:
| Are these all reporting on the same few lawyers or are these
| stories all isolated/unique cases?
| isp wrote:
| All the same case.
| notavalleyman wrote:
| > Levidow, Levidow & Oberman said in a statement on Thursday that
| its lawyers "respectfully" disagreed with the court that they had
| acted in bad faith. "We made a good-faith mistake in failing to
| believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out
| of whole cloth," it said.
|
| Seems like they still don't get it.
|
| It's not good faith representation of your client, it's not good
| lawyering to interrogate a chatbot for your case. Even if it
| could somehow only ever tell the truth.
|
| It's not a "good faith mistake" - so I think they still don't
| understand the problem here.
|
| It might be representative of greater society: when people
| interact with ChatGPT, they treat it as an oracle. I see it all
| the time on r/chatgpt - people say, "I asked ChatGPT about my
| long lost grandparent whose life I am researching. Apparently my
| grandma was a pilot!"
|
| Seems like the lawyers are shocked the oracle lied but still
| think they were right to consult it.
| eastbound wrote:
| The risk of ChatGPT is not that people take it seriously, since
| no-one does even those lawyers; The risk is that it is becomes
| acceptable to pretend to not understand the shortcomings of
| ChatGPT, and pretend that it does not make the person an
| irresponsible adult.
|
| Like editing Wikipedia then citing the contents. Impossible to
| defend in good faith, but passes as a legit excuse in a public
| court.
|
| Some people really know how to use public naivety to enforce
| the public's powerlessness.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Wikipedia is (almost always) not a citable source. Everyone
| who knows what "citing a source" is (including Wikipedia
| itself) knows that.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
|
| Sure, we all do it informally, but implicit in that is that
| you should check the real sources if you care about accuracy.
| enumjorge wrote:
| The cynic in me thinks they do get it and that their statement
| is an excuse to save face. It's easier to blame technology
| instead of admit they wanted to cut corners.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Oh boy, no wonder we invented religion.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Are we all using the same definition of "good faith"? That just
| means to deal honestly and sincerely without any intent to
| defraud, deceive, or harm the other party.
|
| I don't see any proof that shows they intended to deceive
| rather than that they were clueless.
| jstarfish wrote:
| This right here is what people are overlooking in their
| contempt.
|
| The attorney used it as a research tool, and even foolishly
| thought to use it to validate that it _wasn 't_ making shit
| up. It's a really embarrassing mistake that's only obvious in
| the eyes of people familiar with the technology. There is
| nothing about this that suggests they intended to deceive,
| only intent to be a lazy idiot.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| > Seems like they still don't get it.
|
| Oh they get it. ChatGPT explained it to them, and then
| suggested that they take this position because it was the least
| bad option.
| brewdad wrote:
| Right. They aren't completely finished with potential
| punishments. A review by the Bar is likely still ongoing.
| They can't do anything but pretend it was all done in good
| faith. Much like a person or company who may end up in a
| lawsuit can't issue a "real" apology when they screw up lest
| it be used against them.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| I bet a beer they came up with this defense line with a
| help of gpt.
| [deleted]
| dctoedt wrote:
| In court, _good_ lawyers think of themselves as "officers of the
| court" -- to use a sometimes-forgotten phrase -- who are working
| not just for their clients but also for the judge, to help the
| judge (and the judge's law clerks) to get it right, with rulings
| that will stand up on appeal if it comes to that.
|
| The _good_ lawyer 's job is not _just_ to advocate the client 's
| position -- it's also to do "completed staff work" for the court
| in the process, even acknowledging any weaknesses in the client's
| case (which builds credibility).
|
| As we've seen in the ChatGPT case, judges tend to respond badly
| when they think a lawyer is trying to put one over on them.
|
| And conversely, judges often respond favorably when they perceive
| that a lawyer is being thorough and intellectually honest, not
| merely throwing up any bullshit argument that comes to mind. A
| fond memory from years ago is when a federal judge called me and
| my opponent -- a well-known lawyer in our field -- into his
| chambers to talk about a pending motion that involved an
| uncertain point of law, which we had extensively briefed. My
| opponent had not done an especially-great job; my own briefing
| had acknowledged the weak points in my client's position but also
| explained why my client should win anyway. The judge said, _I don
| 't really know what the answer is here._ He then turned to me and
| said, _But I 'm more comfortable with your analysis._ And he
| ruled my way - which won the case for my client (a company you
| might well be a customer of today).
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Do they just not understand how ChatGPT works? Do they think it's
| a search engine?
| bell-cot wrote:
| "No" and "yes", evidently.
| asylteltine wrote:
| [dead]
| AHOHA wrote:
| You will be surprised how someone who's not techie, doesn't
| understand tech, heck, I even worked with people who supposedly
| are tech savvy but lack the basic of the basics. But overall,
| lawyers and doctors are the least knowledgeable in tech from my
| experience, I found farmers for example relatively are better,
| maybe because of a mindset that he/she needs to learn tech to
| navigate around by themselves, while a lawyer is snob a out it
| or just hire someone else to do the whole work.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Every other HN thread on ChatGPT: artificial general
| intelligence is near! Isn't this just the same thing as the
| brain? GPT4 is a game changer!
|
| This thread: do they not know what ChatGPT is? Did they not
| verify the output? How could they believe this?
|
| Just maybe when an army of grifters jumps on the next hottest
| AI thing to advance their careers that kind of bald-faced lying
| has consequences?
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Can you genuinely not tell the difference between "this new
| technology is amazing" and "you should take everything this
| model says as gospel"?
|
| Because if you can't, it's not the fault of "grifters"...
| stblack wrote:
| That's a shockingly low fine.
| gorbachev wrote:
| re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36242462
| lionkor wrote:
| I dont understand - ChatGPT says that it outputs inaccurate
| information RIGHT BELOW THE PROMPT BOX?! Illiterate lawyers?!
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