One of many things I'm concerned about is the growing trend of people using Gen AI in law, presenting to clients and to courts their Professional opinion, which may or may not in fact be based on existing precedent, nobody checked.

This is coming up today because there's yet another case of contempt of court: https://beige.party/@adub/115820660155470327

I noted in the comments that someone's compiling an international database where someone presented incorrect AI law in court: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/

In my opinion it entirely undermines the legal system, which is theoretically based on precedent, meaning specifically "what that judge said in that prior case." Not "what judges might plausibly have said, in a format that looks like fact, as programmed by tech bros."

Generative AI, I would submit, makes a mockery of the law.

#FediLaw #LawFedi

A-Dub 🥝 (@[email protected])

Using AI in court? Yikes. 😬 "In one notable case, a Toronto lawyer is facing a criminal contempt of court proceeding after including cases invented by ChatGPT in her submissions earlier this year, then denying it when questioned by the presiding judge. In a letter to the court months later, the lawyer said she misrepresented what happened out of "fear of the potential consequences & sheer embarrassment."" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/increasing-ai-use-canadian-courtrooms-carries-risk-9.7031131

beige.party
@Cassandra @neil I’m going to keep saying until it starts happening: start sending these lawyers to prison for a week or so and see how fast it stops happening.
@interpipes That is a possible outcome of contempt of court.
@Cassandra it sure is, but as far as I know (?), so far no court has seen fit to exact that level of punishment, and I think it clear that too few in the profession take the very well-published consequences to date very seriously

@interpipes Yeah, someone else was just commenting that her law firm *told* her to use AI. That's a pretty significant contrast.

The most severe outcome I saw from the database of cases was monetary sanctions.