--- title: "Attorney Pleads for Mercy After Using AI in Court, Where It Made Up Fake Lawsuits" description: "Plaintiff's lawyers in an ongoing lawsuit against Walmart could face sanctions for citing case law made by an AI model." date: "2025-02-15" modified: "2025-02-15" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/lawyer-trouble-ai-in-court" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai models" - "generative ai" - "lawyers" - "the digest" --- # Attorney Pleads for Mercy After Using AI in Court, Where It Made Up Fake Lawsuits ![Plaintiff's lawyers in an ongoing lawsuit against Walmart could face sanctions for citing case law made by an AI model.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* Few settings would seem worse suited for submitting AI-generated text than a court of law, where everything you say, write, and do, is subjected to maximum scrutiny. And yet lawyers [keep getting caught]() [relying on crappy, hallucination-prone AI models anyway](), usually to the judge's — and the client's — chagrin. After all the public shaming, you'd think they'd know better by now. The latest high-profile instance, [*The Register* reports](), comes from a 2023 lawsuit filed against Walmart and Jetson Electric Bikes, in which the plaintiff alleged that a hoverboard sold by the two companies was responsible for a fire that burned down their home. These are serious claims. But the legal minds involved apparently took the easy route, to disastrous effect. On Thursday, a federal judge in Wyoming asked the plaintiff's lawyers to give him a good reason not to impose sanctions on them for citing nine totally-made-up legal cases in the suit. And you guessed it: they were conjured up by a shoddy AI model. The lawyers, from the firms Morgan & Morgan and Goody Law Group, withdrew the filing that contained the botched case law, and ate humble pie in a follow-up one. "Our internal artificial intelligence platform 'hallucinated' the cases in question while assisting our attorney in drafting the motion in limine," they wrote, per *The Register*. "This matter comes with great embarrassment and has prompted discussion and action regarding the training, implementation, and future use of artificial intelligence within our firm." This is classic AI bullshittery. If a large language model can't come up with a confident answer, [it'll make up one instead]() — usually convincingly, if you're not paying close enough attention, and without dropping the authoritative tone. In this case, the [defendants found]() that when they tried to look up some of the lawsuits, most couldn't be found by the names provided. At least one of them was a case fabricated by ChatGPT, and which could only be found on the chatbot. And as it turned out, the provided case number for the fabrication actually belonged to a real lawsuit. Score one, and them some, for the corporate lawyers. One of the plaintiff's attorneys explained that an "internal AI tool" was responsible for the errors. In a nutshell, he uploaded a draft of the motion he intended to file to the AI tool and asked it to pull relevant federal case law. And that it did — out of thin air. Honest mistake or not, the consequences could be serious. Pointing to other instances where lawyers were sanctioned for reckless AI usage, the judge asked why he shouldn't descend on them with his full wrath, too. That could mean fines, a suspension, or even disbarment. The guilt-stricken attorney pleaded for mercy. "This was the first time in my career that I ever used AI for queries of this nature," the attorney said in the latest filing, per *The Register*. "With a repentant heart, I sincerely apologize to this court, to my firm, and colleagues representing defendants for this mistake and any embarrassment I may have caused." **More on AI:** *[Elon Musk's AI Company Just Sacked an Engineer for Posting About Its Upcoming AI Model]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()