[HN Gopher] Law firm could face sanctions over fake case citatio...
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       Law firm could face sanctions over fake case citations generated by
       AI
        
       Author : amscotti
       Score  : 6 points
       Date   : 2025-02-13 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.abajournal.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.abajournal.com)
        
       | bell-cot wrote:
       | Hopefully _heavy_ sanctions. The case backlog in many courts is
       | already bad enough, without the judges having to double-check
       | that every case cited to them wasn 't hallucinated (or grossly
       | misrepresented) by some lazy lawyer's pet AI.
       | 
       | Plus - how many hour did Morgan & Morgan bill to their client,
       | for the "work" of preparing the bogus brief?
        
       | keernan wrote:
       | There is simply no excuse for this. If you submit a brief to a
       | judge asserting a legal principle is xyz as set forth in a
       | specific case, then you are ethically obliged to have actually
       | read the case when you make such a representation to the court.
       | 
       | Furthermore, it is your obligation to make certain that you are
       | actually reading an actual case. In today's world that means
       | being sure that the copy of the case you are reading is obtained
       | from a confirmed source, such as Lexis Nexis.
       | 
       | Beyond being of questionable ethics, such conduct has a
       | horrendous impact upon a trial attorney's ability to practice. As
       | a trial attorney, when I stand up and object to something in the
       | middle of trial, the judge does not have the time to go back to
       | chambers and verify every argument I make in the middle of trial.
       | There simply isn't time to do that for every objection. Often
       | times objections are routine and the trial judge has heard them
       | many times before and already knows how to rule.
       | 
       | But, there are also many times the judge isn't sure and is
       | listening to the arguments of counsel. Trial attorneys often
       | appear before the same judges over and over. I always made sure
       | that I never, ever, said something that the trial judge could not
       | rely as being absolutely rock solid if the judge took the time to
       | send the jury to recess and the judge looked up the case law in
       | chambers. I needed the Judge to know he/she could always, always
       | trust me that they would never find that I misrepresented what
       | the case stood for.
       | 
       | That starts with legal briefs. If I took a position that was
       | novel, I made sure I let the judge know that there was existing
       | case law against my position and why I felt the judge had the
       | authority to ignore that case law and why he/she should.
       | Misrepresenting the law to a Judge may win an argument in the
       | moment, but in the long term the Judge is going to learn about
       | the misrepresentation, is going to take away the momentary
       | victory, and has learned that the lawyer - and the law firm - has
       | lost future credibility with that judge - especially when the
       | attorney is making an argument in the middle of a hotly contested
       | case in the middle of trial when the court is going to rule then
       | and there from the bench without taking a recess.
       | 
       | Every skilled trial lawyer always wins those arguments during
       | trial because they have taken the time to build rock solid
       | credibility with the judiciary.
        
       | MathMonkeyMan wrote:
       | Disbar everyone involved. How could you justify any other
       | outcome?
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-13 23:02 UTC)