UK court warns lawyers over fake AI-generated citations in legal filings
A UK High Court judge warned that generative AI tools like ChatGPT are unreliable for legal research after two lawyers submitted court filings containing citations to non-existent cases. Judge Victoria Sharp said lawyers face potential severe sanctions if they do not verify the accuracy of AI-generated legal research through authoritative sources before submitting it to the court.
What happened
In two cases ruled on by Judge Victoria Sharp and Judge Jeremy Johnson, lawyers submitted false citations apparently generated by AI tools. In one case involving a 90 million pound lawsuit over an alleged breach of a financing agreement with Qatar National Bank, a lawyer cited 18 cases that did not exist; Hamad Al-Haroun apologised for unintentionally misleading the court with false information produced by publicly available AI tools. In the other case, a barrister cited five cases that did not appear to exist in a tenant's housing claim against the London Borough of Haringey.
Judge Sharp wrote that generative AI tools like ChatGPT "are not capable of conducting reliable legal research" and "can produce apparently coherent and plausible responses to prompts, but those coherent and plausible responses may turn out to be entirely incorrect."
Reported impact
Judge Sharp said the misuse of AI has "serious implications for the administration of justice and public confidence in the justice system." The court noted that many cited cases "did not contain the quotations that were attributed to them, did not support the propositions for which they were cited, and did not have any relevance to the subject matter of the application."
Index analysis
The cases prompted lower court judges to raise concerns about "suspected use by lawyers of generative artificial intelligence tools to produce written legal arguments or witness statements which are not then checked," leading to false information being put before the court.
Governance controls
Judge Sharp said lawyers have a professional duty "to check the accuracy of such research by reference to authoritative sources, before using it in the course of their professional work." She noted that the court decided not to initiate contempt proceedings in these cases, adding that this is "not a precedent" and "Lawyers who do not comply with their professional obligations in this respect risk severe sanction."
Judge Sharp said her ruling will be forwarded to professional bodies, including the Bar Council and the Law Society. Both lawyers were either referred or referred themselves to professional regulators.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.