A bankruptcy lawyer in the US has been fined after using ChatGPT to cite fake legal cases in court. According to a PCGamer report, Thomas Nield, an attorney from Semrad Law Firm, was found to have submitted four fabricated case citations while representing a client in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy case. As per the report, the matter came to light when Judge Michael Slade reviewed Nield’s filings and spotted multiple inconsistencies. “In sum, what happened here is that Mr Nield cited four cases for a proposition of law, but none of them exist as alleged in his brief,” the judge said.
Lawyer admits using AI
The report says that Thomas Nield admitted to using AI to assist with the legal brief. He told the publication: “’I think the citation element of these cases, I guess, was—I ran it through AI to some extent, but I didn’t think that the citation was wrong.”Nield told the court he had never used AI before for legal research and did not verify the output because he trusted the program’s accuracy. “He assumed that an AI program would not fabricate quotes entirely,” the court noted.
Judge Slade raised concerns over use of AI in the legal environment, saying this practice was “unacceptable”. He said “At this point, to be blunt, any lawyer unaware that using generative AI platforms to do legal research is playing with fire is living in a cloud.”
He said: “The bottom line is this: at this point, no lawyer should be using ChatGPT or any other generative AI product to perform research without verifying the results. Period.”
He added that tools like ChatGPT “can write a story that reads like it was written by Stephen King (but wasn’t) or pen a song that sounds like it was written by Taylor Swift (but wasn’t). But they can’t do your legal research for you. ChatGPT does not access legal databases like Westlaw or Lexis, draft and input a query, review and analyze each of the results, determine which results are on point, and then compose an accurate, Bluebook-conforming citation to the right cases.”
Four fake cases flagged by the court
The PC Gamer report lists four fake citations that the bankruptcy lawyer used in the legal case. These include:
- In re Montoya: The quote did not appear in the actual case, and the case did not discuss the issue cited.
- In re Coleman: The case was cited with the wrong jurisdiction and included a quote not found in the opinion.
- In re Russell: Wrong court location and no relevance to the legal argument.
- In re Jager: This case simply “does not exist.”
According to Judge Slade, none of the quotations matched actual court opinions.
None of the quotes matched actual court opinions, and some of the cited cases were entirely fictional. “None of the quotations relied upon in the Semrad brief are actual statements written by any court,” said Judge Slade.
Judge fines law firm
Lawyer Thomas Nield and Semrad Law Firm admitted to the mistake, promised not to repeat it, withdrew their request for legal fees, and completed a legal education course. However, Judge Slade ruled that “there must be consequences.”
He ordered the firm to pay a $5,500 fine and required Nield and a senior attorney from the firm to attend a mandatory AI ethics session at the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges.
Calling the $5,500 fine a “modest sanction,” the judge warned future offenders: “The next lawyer who does the same thing is warned that he or she will likely see a more significant penalty.”
