ChatGPT Goes to Court
The fault lies not in our machines, but in ourselves
I attended a show-cause hearing for two attorneys and their firm who submitted nonexistent citations and then entirely fictitious cases manufactured by ChatGPT to federal court, and then tried to blame the machine. “This case is Schadenfreude for any lawyer,” said the attorneys’ attorney, misusing a word as ChatGPT might. “There but for the grace of God go I…. Lawyers have always had difficulty with new technology.”
The judge, P. Kevin Castel, would have none of it. At the end of the two-hour hearing in which he meticulously and patiently questioned each of the attorneys, he said it is “not fair to pick apart people’s words,” but he noted that the actions of the lawyers were “repeatedly described as a mistake.” The mistake might have been the first submission with its nonexistent citations. But “that is the beginning of the narrative, not the end,” as again and again the attorneys failed to do their work, to follow through once the fiction was called to their attention by opposing counsel and the court, to even Google the cases ChatGPT manufactured to verify their existence, let alone to read what “gibberish” — in the judge’s description—ChatGPT fabricated. And ultimately, they failed to fully take responsibility for their own actions.
