Czech lawyer fined for AI-generated legal complaint with fabricated citations
The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic fined a Prague lawyer 25,000 koruna after he used a professional legal AI system to draft a constitutional complaint that contained fabricated citations to non-existent court decisions. The lawyer failed to adequately verify the AI-generated content before submitting it, misleading the court and delaying its proceedings.
What happened
A Prague lawyer used a paid professional legal AI system to draft a constitutional complaint on behalf of a client disputing a temporary residence permit decision. The AI system generated citations to twelve Constitutional Court and European Court of Human Rights decisions. Upon review, the Constitutional Court discovered that a substantial portion of these cited decisions did not exist, and others were severely misinterpreted.
The lawyer confirmed to media that he had used AI to write the complaint and had not adequately reviewed the output. The complaint appeared formally correct but contained fabricated legal citations that hindered the court's proceedings. The lawyer stated he used the tool partly because he did not frequently appear before the Constitutional Court and was under time pressure.
Reported impact
The fabricated citations misled the court and unnecessarily complicated and delayed its proceedings. The Constitutional Court had to conduct a demanding process to identify and correct the false and misinterpreted citations before the complaint could proceed.
Index analysis
The case demonstrates the responsibility of legal professionals to verify AI-generated content. The Constitutional Court stated that as legal professionals, lawyers bear full responsibility for submissions regardless of the tools used to create them, including the risk of AI hallucination.
Governance controls
The Constitutional Court imposed a disciplinary fine of 25,000 Czech koruna on the lawyer. Judge Tomáš Langášek, the presiding judge of the panel, noted in the decision that disciplinary fines are imposed only exceptionally by the Constitutional Court, with no other prior case of fining for AI hallucination found in its database.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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