Distinguished Fellow, National Judicial College
MONTH-IN-BRIEF (Dec 2024)
Stanford Study Reveals Hallucinations in Lexis & Westlaw Tools
Artificial intelligence (AI) in law practice continues to make headlines, with the technology morphing at an ever-accelerating pace. “Proponents of AI tout its potential to increase access to justice,” Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, but he also noted the disturbing reports about “hallucinations” in the work product of generative artificial intelligence (GAI). We have all read such accounts. These so-called “hallucinations” typically take the form of false (or worse yet, nonexistent) legal authority to support a particular argument or proposition in a filing before a tribunal (as that term is defined in the Terminology section of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct). Many of these were cut and pasted from drafts authored by GAI platforms (ChatGPT and the like) and uncritically incorporated in such filings. Reported incidents of hapless (or brain-dead) lawyers facing sanctions for such misconduct are already too numerous to be counted on one’s fingers.
