Another week. Another law firm caught citing cases that don’t exist. But this time it was Sullivan and Cromwell, one of the most influential firms in the world. 36 errors. Three pages to describe them. Fabricated passages from real cases. S&C said its AI policies weren’t followed. That it had training designed to prevent exactly this.
We can keep talking about education, policies, and fines. We’re doing all of that. But it doesn’t seem to be working. Moreover, it isn’t just a lazy lawyering problem anymore. When the public hears that lawyers are citing cases that don’t exist, their first instinct, as I discovered recently, is that the lawyer made them up to win. Of course,
that’s not what typicaly happened. But the fact that it’s the immediate reaction says something about where we are. As Judge Bernes Aldana put it at a recent ABA conference: “The legitimacy of our courts depends on the public’s trust and confidence.” That’s why AI hallucinations aren’t just a sloppy practice problem. They’re helping to erode of the rule of and trust in law itself.
What can we actually do about it? Stronger penalities? Bar discipline? Better education and awareness? Maybe all three.
My post for Above the Law.