Dear Doc:
What’s the latest scoop on lawyers using generative artificial intelligence in their work?
Signed,
ChatGPT
Dear Chat:
What Happened in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia Case?
File this under “stupid lawyer tricks.” In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man deported to a Salvadoran prison by (the U.S. Government’s own admission) a mistake, it looks to the Doc like the lawyers for the United States Department of Justice used a chatbot program to draft a response to interrogatories. The DOJ response was,
Defendants’ Response to Interrogatory No. 1: Defendants object to Interrogatory No. 1 as based on the false premise that the United States can or has been ordered to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador. See Abrego Garcia, 604 U.S.—, slip op. at 2 (holding Defendants should “take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United State” (sic emphasis added). Defendants further object to Interrogatory No. 1 as calling for information that is protected by the attorney-client privilege, the deliberative process privilege, the state secrets privilege, and the governmental privilege. Defendants incorporate their objections to definitions and objections to instructions.
Now that seems pretty straightforward, until you realize that the actual Supreme Court order (which clocks in at just 217 words) said nothing of the kind. The actual Supreme Court said,
The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.
The “take all available steps” quote in the Defendant’s response to Interrogatory No. 1 may actually have originated in the District Court’s order,
So, how do a bunch of government lawyers manage to misquote the Supreme Court (and get the name of our country wrong, as well)? The time-honored answer is: GIGO, which, as every computer science student knows, stands for “Garbage In – Garbage Out.” This rule is so time-honored that not even modern artificial intelligence systems can avoid it. If you give AI a bad prompt (e.g., ask a blatantly stupid question), then you get a bad answer. Misquote or paraphrase the Supreme Court in your prompt, and it will get spit back in the answer. Then all you have to do is cut and paste, and you, too, can be a DOJ lawyer.
The Mike Lindell Case: Fake Citations and AI Mistakes
In other news, attorneys for Mike Lindell (the My Pillow™ guy and all-around purveyor of election misinformation) have until May 5, 2025, to explain to Federal Judge Nina Wang of the District of Colorado why almost 30 fake citations ended up in a brief that they filed in her court. Judge Wang wrote,
These defects include but are not limited to misquotes of cited cases; misrepresentations of principles of law associated with cited cases, including discussions of legal principles that simply do not appear within such decisions; misstatements regarding whether case law originated from a binding authority such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; misattributions of case law to this District; and most egregiously, citation of cases that do not exist.
After the Judge challenged Lindell’s lead counsel, Christopher I. Kachouroff of the law firm of McSweeney Cynkar & Kachouroff PLLC, to explain this, declined to offer any explanation. When Judge Wang finally directly accused him of using generative artificial intelligence, he admitted that he, “did, in fact, use generative artificial intelligence. After further questioning, Mr. Kachouroff admitted that he failed to cite check the authority in the Opposition after such use before filing it with the Court…”
Why Lawyers Must Rely on Genuine Legal Work, Not AI
Each of these cases represents yet another example of how using Google (or any other search engine), with or without AI, is not the equivalent of simply doing the hard work required of good lawyering. Reading the actual words of judges, and knowing the actual evidence, takes time and effort, which the vast majority of practicing attorneys do in quiet law libraries and offices every day. While the old joke that “99% of all attorneys give the rest of us a bad name” may be in bad taste, the converse is certainly true, and these few lazy ones are casting a dark shadow on those who make every effort to achieve excellence in representation of their clients.
It is unfortunate that many briefs and other legal documents should now come with the warning “Caveat Lector” (Let the reader beware). As in many other areas of life, we can no longer trust what others write, most especially in court papers where the stakes are so very high (like getting an innocent man out of a foreign prison quickly).
Do you have a legal matter that would benefit from the attention of a very hard-working and careful attorney? Call the lawyers at LW&H. They read every word.
Until next month,
The “Doc
— Lawrence A. Husick, Esq.