We at PC Gamer have covered the disturbing trend of lawyers—who are, on average, supposed to be competent and reasonably well-read, and quite literally where the phrase ‘passing the bar’ comes from—using AI citations in courtrooms before. But this one’s a doozy, because it turns out absolutely everyone involved had the same large language model blindspot.
As spotted by lawyer Rob Freund on X (thanks, 404Media), the case—which Freund accurately dubs a “comedy of AI errors”, took place during a dispute between Tom Withers and the city of Aberdeen. Withers was represented by Kathleen M. Wilson (with Shauncey Hunter Ridgeway as local counsel) and Kathryn Y. Williams (with Mark C. McClinton doing the same).
Per this document, both Wilson and Williams were found to be citing AI-hallucinated citations that did not exist: “The attorneys admitted that the hallucinatory citations cited by them, and identified by the Court, resulted from unverified AI use.”
A show-cause hearing, essentially a chance for the lawyers to defend themselves, ended mostly in WIlson and Williams hanging their heads in shame: “Each of the attorneys expressed embarrassment and apologized to the Court. They also provided explanations regarding their independent roles in conducting legal research and/or drafting the filings at issue.
“In short, Williams and Wilson, the two out-of-state attorneys, assumed responsibility for drafting the filings at issue on behalf of their respective clients. Williams admitted to using an AI tool to conduct legal research, and Wilson admitted to using generative AI to draft her respective filing. Neither of them verified the legal authority output by AI before filing their briefs.”
What’s more, both Ridgeway and McClinton admitted to “failing to review the subject filings”, and being unable to catch the entirely made-up citations in their duties as local counsel. So to sum things up, four entire lawyers—with degrees and everything—used AI to try and skimp out on doing work, or likely didn’t double-check their cases at all, let alone for hallucinations.
This resulted in the judge scrapping the entire thing and punishing everyone involved. Wilson and William were ordered to pay fines ($2,500 and $3,500 respectively) and barred from practicing in the district for two years. Meanwhile, Ridgeway and McClinton were ordered to shell out $1,000 for their poor double-checking.
Both Withers and the city were given 60 days to find new counsel—who hopefully both won’t believe ChatGPT to be some almighty legal god, this time.
